Business Management Quotes:

Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.

- Zig Ziglar

source: "Smarter Branding Without Breaking the Bank: Five Proven Marketing Strategies You Can Use Right Now to Build Your Business at Little Or No Cost". Book by Brenda Bence (p. 91), November 7, 2011.

topic: Loyalty, Business, Educational, Customer Experience, Inspiring Business

The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work.

- Agha Hasan Abedi

topic: Real, People, Done, Top Management, Managing People

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

- Peter Drucker

topic: Inspirational, Life, Motivational, Way In Life, Young Entrepreneurs

People are definitely a company's greatest asset. It doesn't make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps.

- Mary Kay Ash

topic: Inspirational, Teamwork, Business, Great Company, Daily Business

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

- John Ruskin

topic: Inspirational, Motivational, Inspiring, Workmanship, Inspirational Commitment

If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse.

- Walt Disney

topic: Inspirational, Mother, Dream, Best Success, Managing Change

A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.

- Richard Branson

topic: Life, Success, Fun, Business Life, Succeeding In Business

Don't be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it, you can make it so.

- Belva Davis

source: Belva Davis, Vicki Haddock (2011). “Never in My Wildest Dreams: A Black Woman's Life in Journalism”, p.215, Berrett-Koehler Publishers

topic: Inspirational, Inspiring, Dream, Best Success, Managing Change

If at first you don't succeed, try management.

- Stephen Hawking

topic: Success, Perseverance, Persistence, Try Again, About Success

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.

- George S. Patton

topic: Motivational, Business, Learning, Military General, Being Weird

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

- Peter Drucker

source: Peter Drucker, Harvard Business Review (2016). “The Peter F. Drucker Reader: Selected Articles from the Father of Modern Management Thinking”, p.8, Harvard Business Review Press

topic: Jobs, Responsibility, Top Management, Strategic Management, Fellow Workers

Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

- Alan Kay

topic: Worry, Way, Live By, Way In Life, Young Entrepreneurs

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

- Bill Gates

topic: Leadership, Motivation, Business, Young Entrepreneurs, Business Life

The best way to predict the future is to study the past, or prognosticate.

- Robert Kiyosaki

topic: Past, Way, Study, Way In Life, Young Entrepreneurs

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

source: Peter Drucker (2012). “Managing in the Next Society”, p.187, Routledge

topic: Wise, Effectiveness, Together, Business Management

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

- Mark Twain

topic: Life, Inspiring, Meaningful, Imagine That, Inspirational Design

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

- Andy Warhol

source: Andy Warhol (2014). “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again”, p.124, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Inspirational, Life, Change, Managing Change, Times Have Changed

Smart people instinctively understand the dangers of entrusting our future to self-serving leaders who use our institutions, whether in the corporate or social sectors, to advance their own interests.

- James C. Collins

topic: Smart, Self, People, Entrusting, Business Management

Some of the best business and nonprofit CEOs I've worked with over a sixty-five-year consulting career were not stereotypical leaders. They were all over the map in terms of their personalities, attitudes, values, strengths, and weaknesses.

- Peter Drucker

topic: Attitude, Years, Careers, Nonprofits, Consulting

Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.

- Niccolo Machiavelli

topic: Change, Success, Philosophical, Top Management, Managing Change

Focus on a few key objectives ... I only have three things to do. I have to choose the right people, allocate the right number of dollars, and transmit ideas from one division to another with the speed of light. So I'm really in the business of being the gatekeeper and the transmitter of ideas.

- Jack Welch

topic: Ideas, Numbers, Keys, Top Management, Managing People

The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.

- Zig Ziglar

topic: Opportunity, Complaining, Customer Experience, Inspiring Business, Inspirational Service

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

- Bill Gates

source: Bill Gates, Nathan Myhrvold, Peter Rinearson (1996). “The Road Ahead”, Wheeler Pub Incorporated

topic: Information Technology, Daily Business, Manufacturing, Automation, Communication Technology

Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

- John D. Rockefeller

topic: Leadership, Average, People, Top Management, Managing People

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.

- W. Edwards Deming

topic: Change, Meaningful, Survival, Top Management, Systems Change

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

- Peter Drucker

topic: Inspirational, Change, Leadership, Top Management, Management Motivation

In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.

- Harold Geneen

source: "Managing". Book by Harold Geneen, 1984.

topic: Business, Two, Coins, Inspirational High School Graduation, Daily Business

People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.

- Peter Drucker

topic: Inspirational, Leadership, Mistake, Management Motivation, Managing People

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

- John Quincy Adams

topic: Inspirational, Life, Motivational, Top Management, Management Motivation

Excellent firms don't believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change.

- Tom Peters

topic: Inspirational, Loyalty, Educational, Inspirational Customer Service, Continuous Improvement

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

- Will Durant

topic: Inspirational, Life, Motivational, Daily Work, Top Management

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

- Winston Churchill

topic: Inspirational, Change, Inspiring, Managing Change, Times Have Changed

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

- Henry Ford

topic: Inspirational, Success, Graduation, Young Entrepreneurs, Make You Think Twice

Don't wait. The time will never be just right.

- Napoleon Hill

topic: Inspirational, Motivational, Change, Had A Great Time, Top Management

Management by objective works - if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don't.

- Peter Drucker

topic: Wise, Business, Goal, Quality In Business, Funny Boss Day

If you always do what you did, you'll always get what you got.

- Marian Diamond

topic: Change, Workout, Emotional, Young Entrepreneurs, Disruption

If you can dream it, you can achieve it.

- Zig Ziglar

topic: Positive, Dream, Achieve, Managing Change, Great Minds

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

- Peter Drucker

topic: Inspirational, Motivational, Change, Management Motivation, Managing People

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.

- Peter Drucker

topic: Leadership, Wise, Funny Inspirational, Managing Change, Managing People

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.

- Warren Buffett

topic: Inspirational, Inspiring, Success, Young Entrepreneurs, Makin Money

Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.

- Peter Drucker

topic: Life, Wise, Funny Inspirational, Project Management, Business Management

Management is nothing more than motivating other people.

- Lee Iacocca

topic: Inspirational, Motivational, Positive, Top Management, Management Motivation

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

- Will Rogers

topic: Inspirational, Life, Motivational, Daily Work, Management Motivation

You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.

- Steve Jobs

topic: Inspirational, Inspiring, Educational, Trying Something New, Innovation And Business

Persons who reach the higher rungs in business management, selling, engineering, religious work, writing, acting, and in every other pursuit get there by following conscientiously and continuously a plan for self-development and growth.

- David J. Schwartz

source: David J Schwartz (2016). “The Magic of Thinking Big”, p.17, Random House

topic: Religious, Writing, Self, Conscientiousness, Business Management

If you think you can't, you're right.

- Carol Bartz

topic: Inspirational, Positive, Smart, Thought Of The Day, Best Success

A fool cannot be protected from his folly. If you attempt to do so, you will not only arouse his animosity but also you will be attempting to deprive him of whatever benefit he is capable of deriving from experience. Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

- Robert A. Heinlein

source: Time Enough for Love "Prelude II" (1973)

topic: Pigs, Benefits, Waste, Teacher Motivational, Business Management

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

- Henry Ford

topic: Inspirational, Funny, Change, Management Motivation, Business Life