Management Quotes
from Christos Kartalis

 

  • Not everything you do will always be the right thing. From time to time, stop and have a reality check.
  • Courage is a personal trait–you either have it or you don’t.  Companies don’t have courage.
  • Top management is unforgiving. You need to manage expectations at all times.

More Management Quotes

  • Don’t start a meeting by sending the message that you know everything. Start discussions pretending your IQ is as low as 3 and then shoot it up exponentially till you reach 200.
  • Success is commensurate with the engagement of key contributors to a project. The opposite is also true.
  • Business is a race, not a couch discussion.
  • Team work resembles a relay 100-meter race. You need speed, synchronization, and focus only on what’s in front of you.
  • Decision-making authority is a privilege you have to earn. It’s not a job description that you can take as given.
  • Stretch the people who are slow more than the people who are already stretched.
  • You either trust your people or you don’t.
  • The critical step between deciding and achieving is doing.
  • When you treat losers like losers, they will not disappoint you. The same is true for winners.
  • Over-prioritization is a risk. Companies that focus on only 1 or 2 things lose sight of things 3, 4, or 5, all of which are just as important.
  • Prioritization is not about the things we need to focus on but also about the 33 things we need to stop doing.
  • Bosses love telling you WHERE they want you to go. They rarely tell you HOW to get there.
  • There is lots of merit in NOT finalizing strategy at 100%. Leave some part open while you move to execution, otherwise you block yourself…
  • The absolute performance comparison is with the past…you can’t change it! Budgets and facts are assumptions. The past is real!
  • More data is not always productive. More information always is.
  • The best decision is the one you choose to make the best. Once you make a decision, everyone should support it as if it were the only option available.
  • When things go well, communicate, once. When things don’t go well, communicate ten times more.
  • Managing opportunities proactively should be acknowledged once. Managing risks proactively risks must be acknowledged twice!
  • Don’t worry about having perfect information going into a project. Put your attention into having perfect results coming out of it.
  • Intentions, regardless of how sincere or deep, don’t win races. Delivery does.
  • Managers who have never looked under the hood have the largest number of breakdowns.
  • When you don’t get a response, escalate your efforts. Target a single person to get attention. Don’t spread your energy over various levels. The strength of a message is inversely proportional to the number of people who receive it.
  • Don’t be a power or control freak. Be a performance freak.
  • “Oh My God”–set your objectives according to the way you expect them to work out, as a miracle or as a plane crash.
  • Good companies grow; great companies prosper.
  • Management is a balancing/juggling act with many balls. Choose which ball to drop and drop it fast. We are trying to balance too many things. We know some of them will drop, and by proactively choosing which ones to drop sooner, we keep the focus on the more valued ones. Otherwise, we tend to drop some big ones as well.
  • Management is the ability to synthesize simplicity and simplify complexity.
  • Don’t over-estimate the importance of strategy over execution. Otherwise, you risk being left only with strategy.
  • It’s not how many times you score but how many shots at your goal you take.
  • When you don’t know the right answers, focus on asking the right questions. This will lead you to the right answers.
  • There are two types of problems: bad problems and good problems. Good ones are easy to manage, and you should treat them as opportunities. Bad problems consume energy and resources and should be dealt on the spot.
  • Numbers don’t lie. Words do. Look for the right numbers.
  • For every problem created, an equal opportunity is released somewhere in the system. The opportunity is up for grabs by everyone. The sooner you fix the problem, the sooner you can limit your loss of opportunity.