And no matter how serious an environmental problem the automobile poses in today’s big city, the horse was dirtier, smelled worse, killed and maimed more people, and congested the streets just as much.
Capitalism is being attacked not because it is inefficient or misgoverned but because it is cynical. And indeed a society based on the assertion that private vices become public benefits cannot endure, no matter how impeccable its logic, no matter how great its benefits.
The subordinate’s job is not to reform or reeducate the boss, not to make him conform to what the business schools or the management book say bosses should be like. It is to enable a particular boss to perform as a unique individual.
There is every indication that the period ahead will be an innovative one, one of rapid change in technology, society, economy, and institutions .
Organizationally what is required – and evolving – is systems management.
The first organization structure in the modern West was laid down in the canon law of the Catholic Church eight hundred years ago.
The tool user, provided the tool is made well, need not, and indeed should not, know anything about the tool.
We do not need more laws. No country suffers from a shortage of laws. We need a new model .
Wherever an impact can be eliminated by dropping the activity that causes it, this is therefore the best-indeed the only truly good-solution.
A success that has outlived its usefulness may, in the end, be more damaging than failure.
A management decision is irresponsible if it risks disaster this year for the sake of a grandiose future.
It has been said, and only half in jest, that a tough, professionally led union is a great force for improving management performance. It forces the manager to think about what he is doing and to be able to explain his actions and behavior.
The experience of the human race indicates strongly that the only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetent.
Important decisions are risky. They should be controversial. Acclamation means that nobody has done the homework.
There is nothing worse than doing the wrong thing well.
The monomaniac is unlikely to succeed. Most leave only their bleached bones in the roadless desert. But the rest of us, with our multiple interests instead of a single mission, are certain to fail and have no impact at all.
Any organisation develops people; it either forms them or deforms them.
Of all the decisions an executive makes, none is as important as the decisions about people, because they determine the performance capacity of the organization.
Follow effective action with quiet reflection.
In the next economic downturn there will be an outbreak of bitterness and contempt for the supercorporate chieftains who pay themselves millions. In every major economic downturn in US history the villains have been the heroes during the preceding boom.