I'm slowly becoming a convert to the principe that you can't motivate people to do things, you can only demotivate them. The primary job of the manager is not to empower but to remove obstacles.

Scott Adams

When I ask people ‘what’s the problem with command and control?’ they usually focus on the ‘command’ word – bosses are too bossy – so we need ‘servant leaders’, leaders as ‘coaches’ and the like. But actually the problem is the ‘control’ word.

John Seddon

Organizations learn only through individuals who learn. Indvidual learning does not guarantee organizational learning. But without it no organizational learning occurs.

Peter Senge

In a learning organization, leaders are designers, stewards, and teachers. That is, they are responsible for learning.

Peter Senge

Hierarchies implicitly and explicitly devalue the people who are actually doing the work to produce products and deliver services.

Esther Derby

Managers think the numbers they look at constitute knowledge, they don't. They represent the score, they say nothing about the means. And acting on the score without knowledge of the means is the most common form of tampering.

John Seddon

It's poorly designed systems, not incompetent or unmotivated individuals, that cause most organszational problems.

Peter Senge

The behaviour we see today in organisations isn't consequence of human nature; it's consequence of the way we organise and manage people.

Douglas McGregor

When I ask people ‘what’s the problem with command and control?’ they usually focus on the ‘command’ word – bosses are too bossy – so we need ‘servant leaders’, leaders as ‘coaches’ and the like. But actually the problem is the ‘control’ word.

John Seddon

Managers love empowerment in theory, but the command-and-control model is what they trust and know best.

Chris Argyris

Command and control' is not to do with being 'bossy'. It is a logic about how to run an organisation.

John Seddon

An enterprise is a community of human beings, not a collection of 'human resources'.

Henry Mintzberg

The crippling disease: lack of constancy of purpose.

W. Edwards Deming

The central issue is never strategy, structure, culture or systems. The core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people.

John Kotter

Most corporate mission statements are worthless. They often formulate necessities as objectives; for example, "to achieve sufficient profit." This is like a person saying his mission is to breathe sufficiently.

Russel L. Ackoff

To manage, one must lead. To lead, one must understand the work that he and his people are responsible for.

W. Edwards Deming

It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does.

Robert Fritz

If the team can't be fed by two pizza, then it's too big.

Jeff Bezos

The only reason an organization has dead wood is that management either hired dead wood or it hired live wood and killed it.

W. Edwards Deming

The only viable method for improving our systems will be one that is normative by design and focused on changing management thinking.

Hermanni Hyytiälä

My first message is: listen, listen, listen to the people who do the work.

H. Ross Perot

Get the [management] assumptions wrong and everything that follows from them is wrong.

Peter Drucker

People are responsible adults at home. Why do we transform them into adolescents with no freedom when they reach the workplace?

Ricardo Semler

The basic assumptions underlying much of what is taught and practiced in the name of management are hopelessly out of date.

Peter Drucker

What matters most in social discipline such as management are the basic assumptions.

Peter Drucker

To empower people in an unaligned organization can be counterproductive.

Peter Senge

CEOs always act on leading indicators of good news, but only act on lagging indicators of bad news.

Andy Grove

Management exists for the sake of the institution's results. It has to start with the intended results and has to organize the resource of the institution to attain these results. Management has to be focused on results and performance.

Peter F. Drucker

A manager of people needs to understand that all are different. He needs to understand that the performance of anyone is governed largely by the system that he works in, the responsibility of management.

W. Edwards Deming

Bosses are experts, knowing and telling, with heaviness. Leaders are students, curious and listening, with lightness.

David Marquet

When managers complain about those below them in the hierarchy having "learned helplessness," those managers are often the (often unwitting) teachers, and they have been successful in their teaching.

Esther Derby

Top performers set their goals to improve behaviors and processes rather than outcomes.

Joseph Grenny

At its core, a fully functioning business is basically a set of systems and processes.

John Jantsch

One of the greatest weaknesses in management today is the haphazard installation of a solution without truly understanding the underlying problem.

Klaus Leopold

Presteren kent geen compromissen. Het is goed of slecht.

Toon Gerbrands

Cultuur is als zwaartekracht: je ruikt, voelt en ziet niets, totdat je een meter in de lucht springt. Ondergronds vernietigt de stille kracht van cultuur de wortels van de methoden die haar vreemd zijn.

Fons Tompenaars

De bedrijfscultuur is het fundamentele weefsel aan gemeenschappelijke veronderstellingen, waarden en overtuigingen die gelden als de juiste manier om over problemen en kansen van de organisatie na te denken en erop te reageren.

Edgar H. Schein

Management is een grootschalig project om toeval uit te sluiten.

Rene ten Bos & Ruud Kaulingfreks

Als ik een generaal beval (...) zich in een watervogel te veranderen, en als die generaal het bevel niet uitvoerde, wie zou er dan ongelijk hebben, hij of ik? (...) Men moet van niemand meer eisen dan hij geven kan. Gezag steunt in de eerste plaats op verstand.

Antoine de-Saint-Exupéry (Dialoog tussen de koning en de kleine prins, in De kleine prins)

The culture precedes positive results. It doesn't get tacked on as an afterthought on your way to the victory stand. Champions behave like champions before they're champions: they have a winning standard of performance before they are winners.

Bill Walsh

The difficulty is not a matter of knowing how to measure. The difficulty, rather, is knowing what requires attention and what does not.

M.W. Meyer

The less managers expect of their subordinates, the less they get.

Russel Ackoff

You can't manage people. You lead people. You manage processes, products, and projects. If processes, products, and projects are well managed, the people and the resulting performance of the organization, take care of themselves.

Karen Martin

Management of many is the same as management of few. It is a matter of organization.

Sun Tzu

Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying, 'make me feel important.' Never forget this message when working with people.

Mary Kay Ash

Voor ons bestaat de essentie van management uit de kunst om de intellectuele krachten van al onze medewerkers te mobiliseren.

Konosuke Matsushita

Voor ons bestaat de essentie van management uit de kunst om de intellectuele krachten van al onze medewerkers te mobiliseren.

Konosuke Matsushita

Voor ons bestaat de essentie van management uit de kunst om de intellectuele krachten van al onze medewerkers te mobiliseren.

Konosuke Matsushita

Keep in mind that all metrics are proxies for what ultimately matters, but some are better than others.

Jeff Bladt & Bob Filbin