Management Theory Quotes

Any vigorous competition will entail at least two elements: offense and defense. Offense is the effort you put into scoring against your opponents, and defense is the effort you apply to stop them from scoring against you. Those who suggest that "a little healthy competition can't hurt" are thinking only of the offense part....The offense component of internal competition is problematic, but the defense component is always injurious. When peer managers play defense against each other (try to stop each other from scoring), they are engaging in anticooperation.

If the essential task of middle managers is reinvention, when is that task to be carried out? The answer is, during time that is not used up directing day-to-day business. The fact that managers have time on their hands (i.e., their operations tasks take up less than eight hours per day) gives them time for reinvention. The extra time is not waste, but slack. Without it they could function in only their operational roles. Reinvention would be impossible because the people who could make it happen are just too busy to take the time.Even companies that didn't fire their change centers have hurt themselves by encouraging their middle managers to stay extremely busy. In order to enable change, companies have to learn that keeping managers busy is a blunder. If you have busy managers working under you, they are an indictment of your vision and your capacity to transform that vision into reality. Cut them some slack.

There is no such thing as "healthy" competition within a knowledge organization; all internal competition is destructive. The nature of our work is that it cannot be done by any single person in isolation. Knowledge work is by definition collaborative.

Data may disappoint, but it never lies.

Jay Samit

Fate can be tricky and troublesome when not managed well.

20% of management theories are responsible for 80% of results. That’s assuming the Pareto Principle makes the cut.

If you put fences around people, you get sheep.

William L. McKnight

Self-disruption is akin to undergoing major surgery, but you are the one holding the scalpel.

Jay Samit

Disruption causes vast sums of money to flow from existing businesses and business models to new entrants.

Jay Samit

All Disruption starts with introspection.

Jay Samit

Would you rather work forty hours a week at a job you hate or eighty hours a week doing work you love?

Jay Samit

Disruption isn't about what happens to you, it's about how you respond to what happens to you.

Jay Samit

There is a difference between failing and failure. Failing is trying something that you learn doesn't work. Failure is throwing in the towel and giving up.

Jay Samit

There are riches to be found simply by capturing the value released through others' disruptive breakthroughs.

Jay Samit

The majority of people are not willing to risk what they have built for the opportunity to have something better.

Jay Samit

All businesses -- no matter if they make dog food or software -- don't sell products, they sell solutions.

Jay Samit

The business world is littered with the fossils of companies that failed to evolve. Disrupt or be disrupted. There is no middle ground.

Jay Samit

You have a choice: pursue your dreams, or be hired by someone else to help them fulfill their dreams.

Jay Samit

It is not incumbent on the world to conform to your vision of change. It is up to you to explain the future in terms that those living in the past and present can follow.

Jay Samit

CEOs will gladly overpay for a company if the acquisition enables them to keep their jobs.

Jay Samit

There are two types of people in this world: those whose look for opportunity and those who make it happen.

Jay Samit

Problems are just businesses waiting for the right entrepreneur to unlock the value.

Jay Samit

The most successful people have the same twenty-four hours in a day that you do.

Jay Samit

If you can imagine a solution, you can make it happen.

Jay Samit

A disruptor finds opportunity and profit from his misfortunes.

Jay Samit

A dream with a deadline is a goal.

Jay Samit

A negative mind will never find success. I have never heard a positive idea come from a person in a negative state.

Jay Samit

Whether driven by ambition or circumstance, every career gets disrupted.

Jay Samit

Data has no ego and makes an excellent co-pilot.

Jay Samit

Corporate planning cycles are a classic example of generals fighting the last war over again instead of preparing for what might lie ahead.

Jay Samit

If you don't know where you want to be in five years, how do you ever expect to get there?

Jay Samit

Plan for ways to get more enjoyment into your life and you will get more joy out of it.

Jay Samit

Accepting that the odds are against you is the same as accepting defeat before you begin.

Jay Samit

You will have more regrets for the things you didn't try than the ones you tried and didn't succeed at.

Jay Samit

Building a career or a company is about living a few years of your life like most people won't so that you can spend the rest of your life living at a level most people can't.

Jay Samit

You can truly have it all, just not all at the same time.

Jay Samit

The difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that successful ones know that the most unprofitable thing ever manufactured is an excuse.

Jay Samit

If life, you get what you believe you deserve.

Jay Samit

A career is just a longer trip with a whole lot more baggage.

Jay Samit

The most important tool you have on a resume is language.

Jay Samit

Be the best at what you do or the only one doing it.

Jay Samit

Starting each day with a positive mindset is the most important step of your journey to discovering opportunity.

Jay Samit

Your energy is a valuable resource, distribute it wisely.

Jay Samit

An average idea enthusiastically embraced will go farther than a genius idea no one gets.

Jay Samit

Insight and drive are all the skills you need. Everything else can be hired.

Jay Samit

The power of crowd sourcing always remains with the crowd, not the technological implementation.

Jay Samit

Lifelong learning is no longer a luxury but a necessity for employment.

Jay Samit

Speed to fail should be every entrepreneur's motto. When you finally find the one idea that can't be killed, go with it.

Jay Samit

Crowdsourcing is the ultimate disruptor of distribution because in a most Zen-like fashion, the content is controlled by everyone and no one at the same time.

Jay Samit

Billions of dollars worth of research knowledge lie dormant at American universities waiting for the right disruptor to come along and create a business.

Jay Samit

The customer is always right...even when they're wrong.

Jay Samit

Those that recognize the inevitability of change stand to benefit the most from it.

Jay Samit

The joy of disruption comes from accepting that we all live in a temporal state.

Jay Samit

Smart entrepreneurs learn that they must fail often and fast.

Jay Samit

Our world's future is far more malleable and controllable than most people realize.

Jay Samit

Every threat to the status quo is an opportunity in disguise.

Jay Samit

A free and open Internet is a despot's worst enemy.

Jay Samit

The best big idea is only going to be as good as its implementation.

Jay Samit

You'll never know how close you are to victory if you give up.

Jay Samit

Most startup failures result from entrepreneurs who are better at making excuses than products.

Jay Samit

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