Quotes on Managers

Managers will tell people what to do, whereas leaders will inspire them to do it, and there are a few things that go into the ability to inspire.

I've learned you don't always listen to your agents and managers. Sometimes they know nothing.

I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments.

The whole enterprise of teaching managers is steeped in the ethic of data-driven analytical support. The problem is, the data is only available about the past. So the way we've taught managers to make decisions and consultants to analyze problems condemns them to taking action when it's too late.

A CEO's behavior has a huge impact on managers down the line.

Mathematicians are like managers - they want improvement without change.

I suppose it is submerged realities that give to dreams their curious air of hyper-reality. But perhaps there is something else as well, something nebulous, gauze-like, through which everything one sees in a dream seems, paradoxically, much clearer. A pond becomes a lake, a breeze becomes a storm, a handful of dust is a desert, a grain of sulphur in the blood is a volcanic inferno. What manner of theater is it, in which we are at once playwright, actor, stage manager, scene painter and audience?

Modern tyrants are terror managers. Do not allow your shock to be turned against your freedom.

In every organization, there are many people, from senior leaders to first-time managers, who have the power to elevate women in the workplace. I wouldn't be in the position I'm in today without several key people in power believing in me and giving me a chance to succeed.

All the managers in the world, it doesn't matter how good you are, if your players don't understand what you are looking for or what you want, it makes no sense.

We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire—a crackpot machine—that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate. We are, most of us, dependent employees. …Edward Abbey (1927-1989)

Most managers were trained to be the thing they most despise - bureaucrats.

I love it when people say things to me in public and want to meet me, because I want to meet them! Early on, my manager told me, 'If you want to sell 500,000 records, then go out there and meet 500,000 people.'

There is no reason to believe that the people who staff the managerial and professional positions in our service institutions are any less qualified, any less competent or honest, or any less hard-working than the men who manage businesses. Conversely, there is no reason to believe that business managers, put in control of service institutions, would do better than the 'bureaucrats'. Indeed, we know that they immediately become bureaucrats themselves.

We don't need no more rappers, we don't need no more basketball players, no more football players. We need more thinkers. We need more scientists. We need more managers. We need more mathematicians. We need more teachers. We need more people who care; you know what I'm saying? We need more women, mothers, fathers, we need more of that, we don't need any more entertainers

We have learned how to develop five-minute and even one-minute managers. But we would do better to ask ourselves what it takes to be an executive who helps build a better future.

Managers must see themselves as experimenters who lead learning, not dictators who impose control.

Managers don't like giving appraisals, and employees don't like getting them. Perhaps they're not liked because both parties suspect what the evidence has proved for decades: Traditional performance appraisals don't work.

I would hope that American managers-indeed, managers worldwide-continue to appreciate what I have been saying almost from day one: that management is so much more than exercising rank and privilege, that it is much more than "making deals." Management affects people and their lives.

A good chef has to be a manager, a businessman and a great cook. To marry all three together is sometimes difficult.

The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.