Management Theory Quotes

An average idea enthusiastically embraced will go farther than a genius idea no one gets.

If you don't know where you want to be in five years, how do you ever expect to get there?

Data has no ego and makes an excellent co-pilot.

Disruption isn't about what happens to you, it's about how you respond to what happens to you.

To be successful, innovation is not just about value creation, but value capture.

Disruption causes vast sums of money to flow from existing businesses and business models to new entrants.

Data may disappoint, but it never lies.

A career is just a longer trip with a whole lot more baggage.

Pivoting is not the end of the disruption process, but the beginning of the next leg of your journey.

Any vigorous competition will entail at least two elements: offense and defense. Offense is the effort you put into scoring against your opponents, and defense is the effort you apply to stop them from scoring against you. Those who suggest that "a little healthy competition can't hurt" are thinking only of the offense part....The offense component of internal competition is problematic, but the defense component is always injurious. When peer managers play defense against each other (try to stop each other from scoring), they are engaging in anticooperation.

You will have more regrets for the things you didn't try than the ones you tried and didn't succeed at.

The best big idea is only going to be as good as its implementation.

The customer is always right...even when they're wrong.

Weak leadership will always hide behind ambiguity and rhetoric.

All Disruption starts with introspection.

Speed to fail should be every entrepreneur's motto. When you finally find the one idea that can't be killed, go with it.

No one who ever led a nation got there by following the path of another.

You can truly have it all, just not all at the same time.

The business world is littered with the fossils of companies that failed to evolve. Disrupt or be disrupted. There is no middle ground.

A disruptor finds opportunity and profit from his misfortunes.

Problems are just businesses waiting for the right entrepreneur to unlock the value.

At the heart of all sales and marketing is the ability to create demand even in the absence of logic.

There are riches to be found simply by capturing the value released through others' disruptive breakthroughs.

Those that recognize the inevitability of change stand to benefit the most from it.

There is no such thing as "healthy" competition within a knowledge organization; all internal competition is destructive. The nature of our work is that it cannot be done by any single person in isolation. Knowledge work is by definition collaborative.

Building a career or a company is about living a few years of your life like most people won't so that you can spend the rest of your life living at a level most people can't.

You have a choice: pursue your dreams, or be hired by someone else to help them fulfill their dreams.

Lifelong learning is no longer a luxury but a necessity for employment.

Insight and drive are all the skills you need. Everything else can be hired.

Self-disruption is akin to undergoing major surgery, but you are the one holding the scalpel.

A free and open Internet is a despot's worst enemy.

Accepting that the odds are against you is the same as accepting defeat before you begin.

Needless documentation hampers performance.

It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually.

If life, you get what you believe you deserve.

Whether driven by ambition or circumstance, every career gets disrupted.

You'll never know how close you are to victory if you give up.

Smart entrepreneurs learn that they must fail often and fast.

Plan for ways to get more enjoyment into your life and you will get more joy out of it.

Our world's future is far more malleable and controllable than most people realize.

It is not incumbent on the world to conform to your vision of change. It is up to you to explain the future in terms that those living in the past and present can follow.

Every threat to the status quo is an opportunity in disguise.

The most important tool you have on a resume is language.

The real challenge is for each of us to determine where we feel we can make the most impact.

The majority of people are not willing to risk what they have built for the opportunity to have something better.

No obstacle is so big that one person with determination can't make a difference.

A dream with a deadline is a goal.

There are two types of people in this world: those whose look for opportunity and those who make it happen.

CEOs will gladly overpay for a company if the acquisition enables them to keep their jobs.

If you put fences around people, you get sheep.

...[I]ron discipline does not preclude but presupposes criticism and contest of opinion within the Party. Least of all does it mean that discipline must be 'blind'. On the contrary, iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes conscious and voluntary submission, for only conscious discipline can be truly iron discipline.

Success doesn't teach as many lessons as failure

Would you rather work forty hours a week at a job you hate or eighty hours a week doing work you love?

Starting each day with a positive mindset is the most important step of your journey to discovering opportunity.

The difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that successful ones know that the most unprofitable thing ever manufactured is an excuse.

All businesses -- no matter if they make dog food or software -- don't sell products, they sell solutions.

Fate can be tricky and troublesome when not managed well.

Billions of dollars worth of research knowledge lie dormant at American universities waiting for the right disruptor to come along and create a business.

The most successful people have the same twenty-four hours in a day that you do.

In life, you get what you believe you deserve.