Harold S. Geneen Quotes

Do you want my one-word secret of happiness - It's growth - mental, financial, you name it.

Every company has two organizational structures: The formal one is written on the charts; the other is the everyday relationship of the men and women in the organization.

He suffered from paralysis by analysis.

I don't believe in just ordering people to do things. You have to sort of grab an oar and row with them.

I think it is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises - but only performance is reality.

If you keep working you'll last longer and I just want to keep vertical. I'd hate to spend the rest of my life trying to outwit an 18-inch fish.

In business, words are words; explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality.

In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.

It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises-but only performance is reality.

It is much more difficult to measure nonperformance than performance.

It's better to take over and build upon an existing business than to start a new one.

Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned.

Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.

Management manages by making decisions and by seeing that those decisions are implemented.

Management must manage!

Managers in all too many American companies do not achieve the desired results because nobody makes them do it.

Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Nonperformance can always be explained away.

The best way to inspire people to superior performance is to convince them by everything you do and by your everyday attitude that you are wholeheartedly supporting them.

The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success: Concentration, Discrimination, Organization, Innovation and Communication.

The worst disease which can afflict business executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.

You can know a person by the kind of desk he keeps. If the president of a company has a clean desk then it must be the executive vice president who is doing all the work.

You can't run a business or anything else on a theory.