Quotes about Management

Good administrators make immediate choices." "Acceptable choices?" "They usually can be made to work. A bad administrator, on the other hand, hesitates, diddles around, asks for committees, for research and reports. Eventually, he acts in ways which create serious problems.

Give as few orders as possible,' his father had told him … once … long ago. 'Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.

I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself

Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere.

The most precious resource for businesspeople is not their time. It's their energy. Manage it well.

Now, Charlie, here's what you do: on this feature bin you put three for $1.00 panties, and on this one you put four for $1.00. And you put these nylons right in between the two of them. And then watch em sell.' And they did. Like crazy.

He became, really, the best utilizer of information to control absentee ownerships that there's ever been. Which gave him the ability to open as many stores as he opens, and run them as well as he runs them, and to be as profitable as he makes them.

And here it is: the more you share profits with your associates—whether it's in salaries or incentives or bonuses or stock discounts—the more profit will accrue to the company. Why? Because the way management treats the associates is exactly how the associates will then treat the customers. And if the associates treat the customers well, the customers will return again and again, and that is where the real profit in this business lies

If you want the people in the stores to take care of the customers, you have to make sure you're taking care of the people in the stores. That's the most important single ingredient of Wal-Mart's success.

These days, the real challenge for managers in a business like ours is to become what we call servant leaders. And when they do, the team—the manager and the associates—can accomplish anything.

I learned this early on in the variety store business: you've got to give folks responsibility, you've got to trust them, and then you've got to check on them.

Institutions mistake good intentions for objectives. They say "health care"; that's an intention, not an objective.