Frances Hesselbein Quotes

Business principles are only as good as the practices that back them up.

When I was a CEO, the books on management that I read weren't very much help after the first few months on the job. They were all designed to give you directions on how not to screw up your company.

What should be the aim of management? What is their job? Quality is the responsibility of the top people. Its origin is in the boardroom. They are the ones who decide.

When I wear the hat of management, it is important that our management behaves and conducts as management accountable to the board.

Creative tension is constructive. Its purpose is to bring out the very best in management so that senior executives can generate the greatest value for shareholders, stakeholders, and society at large.

We are ready to say that we rule the entire Elgin enterprise as irrelevant to the present.

The main professional responsibility of a person in business is business.

You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient.

I brought one big question with me to Harvard. Why do smart companies fail?

The lesson is that, No. 1, this management has to be at the highest class possible. No. 2, they have to have a succession plan.

If the staff lacks policy guidance against which to test decisions, their decisions will be random.

Managerial discretion can take many forms, some very subtle. Individual managers may run slack operations; they may pursue subgoals that are at variance with corporate purposes; they can engage in self-dealing.

As the Executive Chairman of 'Breitbart News' with a long run in business and finance, I can tell you, it's hard to run a company that is infinitesimally smaller than Fox; it takes a steady and experienced hand.

Strategic Work is all about the big questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? Tactical Work is all about answers: This is the system we use to do each task. This is how we do it, how we measure it, how we monitor it.

Look first at management. That's the key to a company.

I think having a visionary CEO is awesome, and visionary leadership is one thing, but you also need checks and balances on whether this company can withstand a very honest and critical look at itself.

Having spent almost 25 years in different roles within Investor, I have truly enjoyed working with creating long-term value in our companies.

I am the CEO of HCL Corporation, and, of course, a large part of my time does get spent in HCL Corporation, whether it is in actively managing our investments or perhaps even the governance and accountability and really seeing the strategic direction forward for HCL Corporation.

Quality starts in the boardroom.

Barbarian Management Bureau

Often, entrepreneurs don't build a board until they are forced to by their VCs when they raise their first financing round. This is dumb, as you are missing the opportunity to add at least one person to the team who - as a board member - can help you navigate the early process of building your company and raising that first round.

Tactical Work is the work you do every day in your business to generate income, along with all of the operational, financial, and management tasks that entails.

We're very much focused on full shareholder-value return. We have to get our stock moving. But I won't do something in the short run that I don't feel is right for the long run. That, I've watched many CEOs do.

As you grow as a company, you get layers and hierarchy that, in theory, should make your decisions a lot better. They get reviewed, and thoughtful people look at decision.

The only choice that leads small business owners to real success in their endeavors is the one that requires real thought. Understanding and building the systems they need within their company to afford them a framework of organization that can scale the business from a company of one to a company of one thousand.