Leadership & Management: Management Quotes

Explore concise insights from managers, executives, and thinkers who shaped how teams organize work and resources. The selections highlight planning, delegation, communication, accountability, and the balance between empathy and performance. Use these quotes to spark discussion, guide coaching, or anchor team retrospectives. Whether you lead a small group or a complex organization, they encourage practical decision-making, clarity of purpose, and sustainable results within the broader theme of Leadership & Management.

Similar topics:Decision-Making Leadership Servant Leadership Team Building Vision & Strategy

"A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer"

Dean Acheson, Statesman

Dean Acheson

"People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything"

Thomas Sowell, Economist

Thomas Sowell

"Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things"

Peter Drucker, Businessman

Peter Drucker

"Quality is everyone's responsibility"

W. Edwards Deming, Scientist

W. Edwards Deming

"Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action"

Peter Drucker, Businessman

Peter Drucker

"You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing"

Thomas Sowell, Economist

Thomas Sowell

"Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs"

Peter Drucker, Businessman

Peter Drucker

"Quality has to be caused, not controlled"

Phil Crosby, Author

"Quality is the result of a carefully constructed cultural environment. It has to be the fabric of the organization, not part of the fabric"

Phil Crosby, Author

"I love pitting people against each other. My whole life is based on that. It brings out the best in people and the worst in people. If the worst comes out, you don't want them working for you"

Donald Trump, Businessman

Donald Trump

"Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures"

Tom Peters, Businessman

Tom Peters

"Community begins in mystery and ends in administration. Leaders move away from people and into paper"

Jean Vanier, Philosopher

Jean Vanier

"Expansion means complexity and complexity decay"

C. Northcote Parkinson, Historian

C. Northcote Parkinson

"If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing"

W. Edwards Deming, Scientist

W. Edwards Deming

"I believe managing is like holding a dove in your hand. If you hold it too tightly you kill it, but if you hold it too loosely, you lose it"

Tommy Lasorda, Coach

"Managing can be more discouraging than playing, especially when you're losing because when you're a player, there are at least individual goals you can shoot for. When you're a manager all the worries of the team become your worries"

Al Lopez, Coach

"The art of effective listening is essential to clear communication, and clear communication is necessary to management success"

James Cash Penney, Businessman

James Cash Penney

"Any supervisor worth his salt would rather deal with people who attempt too much than with those who try too little"

Lee Iacocca, Businessman

Lee Iacocca

"Managers in all too many American companies do not achieve the desired results because nobody makes them do it"

Harold S. Geneen, Businessman

Harold S. Geneen

"A great opera house isn't run by a director, but by a great administrator"

Steven Berkoff, Actor

Steven Berkoff

"Negotiating means getting the best of your opponent"

Marvin Gaye, Musician

Marvin Gaye

"If a chairman sacks the manager he initially appointed, he should go as well"

Brian Clough, Athlete

"If you cannot be on the project each day to check on things, then you should not try and be your own contractor"

Robert Metcalfe, Inventor

"I'm not the manager because I'm always right, but I'm always right because I'm the manager"

Gene Mauch, Athlete

"This is not a business where you can hand off and run by remote control"

David Neeleman, Businessman

"The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands"

Benjamin Franklin, Politician

Benjamin Franklin

"The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product"

Peter Drucker, Businessman

Peter Drucker

"My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions"

Peter Drucker, Businessman

Peter Drucker

"The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions"

Charles de Montesquieu, Philosopher

Charles de Montesquieu

"The first thing the secretary types is the boss"

Donald Trump, Businessman

Donald Trump

"Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people"

John D. Rockefeller, Businessman

John D. Rockefeller

"Good managers have a bias for action"

Tom Peters, Businessman

Tom Peters

"Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status"

Laurence J. Peter, Writer

Laurence J. Peter

"Managing is getting paid for home runs that someone else hits"

Casey Stengel, Athlete

"The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided"

Casey Stengel, Athlete

"Good executives never put off until tomorrow what they can get someone else to do today"

John C. Maxwell, Clergyman

"Eliminate numerical quotas, including Management by Objectives"

W. Edwards Deming, Scientist

W. Edwards Deming

"Obviously, the highest type of efficiency is that which can utilize existing material to the best advantage"

Jawaharlal Nehru, Leader

Jawaharlal Nehru

"The smaller the function, the greater the management"

C. Northcote Parkinson, Historian

C. Northcote Parkinson

"Perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse"

C. Northcote Parkinson, Historian

C. Northcote Parkinson

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