There is no perfect strategic decision. One always has to pay a price. One always has to balance conflicting objectives, conflicting opinions, and conflicting priorities. The best strategic decision is only an approximation – and a risk.
It is commonly believed that innovations create changes – but few ever do. Successful innovations exploit changes that have already happened.
An organization which just perpetuates today’s level of vision, excellence, and accomplishment has lost the capacity to adapt.
Unless strategy evaluation is performed seriously and systematically, and unless strategists are willing to act on the results, energy will be used up defending yesterday.
Successful people know they need to get many things done-and done effectively. Therefore, they concentrate their time and energy on doing one thing at a time-and on doing first things firs.
People who need certainty are unlikely to make good entrepreneurs.
Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.
An employer has no business with a man’s personality. The task is not to change personality, but to enable a person to achieve and to perform.
There is one qualification the manager cannot acquire but must bring to the task. It is not genius; it is character.
Strong people have strong weaknesses.
Not to innovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing organizations. Not to know how to manage is the single largest reason for the failure of new ventures.
Managers are agents of transformation, converting the workforce in developed countries from one of manual workers to one of highly educated knowledge workers.
Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institution. Training and development must be built into it on all levels – training and development that never stop.
The enterprise, by definition, must be capable of producing more or better than all the resources that comprise it.
People alone of all the resources can grow and develop.
Business enterprise is an organ of society. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.
Providing more desirable products, services, and customer experiences is vital to the continued existence of any business. And that is INNOVATION.
Leadership is all about getting results.
The most probable assumption is that no currently working ‘business theory’ will be valid 10 years hence.
You must accept that if the computer is a tool, it is the job of tool user to know what to use it for.