executive behavior Quotes

A molehill man is a pseudo-busy executive who comes to work at 9 AM and finds a molehill on his desk. He has until 5 PM to make this molehill into a mountain. An accomplished molehill man will often have his mountain finished before lunch.

People are kind of upset with British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward. Over the weekend, he was out on his yacht. And when President Obama found out that Tony Hayward was on his yacht, he was so angry, he missed a putt.

Despite his unimpressive appearance and manner, he was a brilliant fellow with a crystal-clear mind.... It was just that, when it came time for him to act like an executive, he was like a great many other people; when the time comes to make decisions, they have difficulty doing it.

Knowing when and where to sit is something every young executive should learn. A junior person who comes barging into a room and takes any seat he wants catches the disapproving eye of senior management.

I'm not trying to be anyone. You know why other executives always hire phonies? Because they're phonies. They hire phonies because they like phonies. They're comfortable with them.

Much of a leader's responsibility in creating a positive, high-performance culture is setting the right tone and acting on it consistently. That day-to-day execution - the tenor and tone - really makes the difference. One deviation - one exasperating meeting - and the CEO legitimizes bad behavior.

Bell Labs Cafeteria, New York, 1943: His high pitched voice already stood out above the general murmur of well-behaved junior executives grooming themselves for promotion within the Bell corporation. Then he was suddenly heard to say: "No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company."

In a career of trying to pry secrets, gossip, specificity and truth out of media executives, Ailes has been the most forthcoming, personal, compelling and honest I've ever dealt with.

Too many executives I've met over the years have the mentality of a bodybuilder; they've come to accept the idea that growth is synonymous with success.

At SGI board meetings... Jim Clark's face would get red and he'd start shouting that an investor and board member had cheated him and his engineers.

I don't play computer games. What I do is yell at my secretary and say, 'Go on the Internet, and find this or that.'

It was once rumored that fledgling executives walked around their offices backwards so they wouldn't have to face an issue.

For every rude executive who makes it to the top, there are nine successful executives with good manners.

Yeah, you will hear from people that my passion will sometimes result in a very effervescent or sometimes excitable senior executive.

It is always amazing to see how wide a spectrum of results can be obtained from replicating an identical negotiation with different principal actors; it makes no difference whether there subjects are inexperienced or whether they are senior executives and young presidents of business firms. That is an important lesson to be learned here.

Though top executives may work as hard as ever-in part perhaps because, being trained in an earlier day, they can hardly help doing so-their subordinates are somewhat less work-minded.

Capitalism's biggest political enemies are not the firebrand trade unionists spewing vitriol against the system but the executives in pin-striped suits extolling the virtues of competitive markets with every breath while attempting to extinguish them with every action.