Herb Kelleher Quotes

From the Olympian heights of an executive suite, in an atmosphere where your success is judged by the extent to which you can maximise profits, the overwhelming tendency must be to see people as units of production, as indices in your accountants' books.

I want to take IBM back to its roots.

Chick-fil-A is what it is today because of its people, purpose and product.

The Ford Motor Co. should stand for something more than cars and trucks. There is a Ford way of doing things that we cannot lose... We need to be continuously polishing that Ford oval.

I've spent a lot of time studying corporations and what makes them tick.

If you don't care about the lapel or the buttons or the fit, then you are doing a disservice to the consumer. We're all inside the tunnel, speaking the language of business, but we need to speak the language of customers.

If your employees are disengaged, and they don't take care of your customers, it doesn't matter how good your strategy is - your customers will still go somewhere else.

I liked being CEO of Blockbuster, but my job is to put it on the bottom line for shareholders.

I just want to make a difference. I want to make Chrysler the most profitable car company in the United States.

At my company, we have 300 employees spread across offices all over the world, and I send them all a voicemail each morning with a message from me about why our work is important and a reminder about one of our values. I call myself our company's 'chief spiritual officer.'

Nothing kills your company's culture like layoffs.

Keeping customers is about the experience, and the employees control the culture and temperature of the business. Never forget that.

I work with CEOs and their executive teams... and very few of these people are really indifferent about their employees or their customers.

If you want to retain your identity and culture, we're a really great mothership. If you want to sell out... there are definitely other companies to talk to.

Design and branding are inextricably linked to the way in which society, culture, the environment, and business interact.

If we want, we can be profitable, but we are focusing on growth. We don't comment on profitability, but we do look at it internally. And many of our Ola cities are profitable. But our focus across all cities is growth.

I can say firsthand Under Armour is a values-based people company, and this hasn't deviated for any administration.

People think about their business instead of their products.

To me, a great company starts with a great product and ends with a great product.

I'm so obsessed with Apple, and the chance to work with the people who really created Apple retail is the retail opportunity of a lifetime.

Delivering a service that consumers feel truly connected to and providing an experience that people love and love to organically share and talk about is the most effective form of marketing I know.

HCL is a corporation. It is for profits. A corporation stands for its shareholders, its profits, its employees, its discoveries, and its customers.

What Nintendo will do is simply try to do our best, believing that our strategy is right.

Values can set a company apart from the competition by clarifying its identity and serving as a rallying point for employees. But coming up with strong values - and sticking to them - requires real guts.

I do not work for the shareholder, to be honest. I work for the customer.