Quotes in managing people

Lead yourself, lead your superiors, lead your peers, and free your people to do the same. All else is trivia.

More quotes by   Dee Hock view quote details

You can't write or program well in units of an hour. That's barely enough time to get started. When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster.

We know we have to have some number of meetings. All we ask from those on the manager's schedule is that they understand the cost.

More quotes by   Paul Graham view quote details

Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his roots.


"Management" means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folklore and superstition, and of cooperation for force. . .

More quotes by   Peter Drucker view quote details

Management must provide employees with tools that will enable them to do their jobs better, and with encouragement to use these tools. In particular, they must collect data.

More quotes by   George Box view quote details

The greatest waste in America is failure to use the abilities of people.


numerical goals set for other people, without a road map to reach the goal, have effects opposite to the effects sought.


A leader is a coach, not a judge.


The merit rating nourishes short-term performance, annihilates long-term planning, builds fear, demolishes teamwork, [and] nourishes rivalry and politics. It leaves people bitter, crushed, bruised, battered, desolate, despondent, dejected, feeling inferior, some even depressed, unfit for work for weeks after receipt of rating, unable to comprehend why they are inferior. It is unfair, as it ascribes to the people in a group differences that may be caused totally by the system that they work in.


Management of a system requires knowledge of the interrelationships between all of the components within the system and of everybody that works in it.