100 Management Quotes with Practical Wisdom
Managing people, projects, and priorities is part science, part art.
It requires balancing strategic goals with human dynamics, all while keeping things on track.
These management quotes explore the many facets of management, from decision-making and delegation to motivation and morale.
If you’re leading a team or fine-tuning your workflow, you’ll find practical wisdom and inspiration here.
Top Management Quotes
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. ~ Peter Drucker
The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work. ~ Agha Hasan Abedi
The art of effective listening is essential to clear communication, and clear communication is necessary to management success. ~ James Cash Penney
Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them. ~ Paul Hawken
Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet. ~ Henry Mintzberg
The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager. ~ Peter Drucker
Management is nothing more than motivating other people. ~ Lee Iacocca
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it. ~ Theodore Roosevelt
The secret of successful managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven’t made up their minds. ~ Casey Stengel
Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. ~ Stephen Covey
A good manager is a man who isn’t worried about his own career but rather the careers of those who work for him. ~ H. S. M. Burns
The first rule of management is delegation. Don’t try and do everything yourself because you can’t. ~ Anthea Turner
People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. ~ Peter Drucker
Management by objective works if you first think through your objectives. Ninety percent of the time you haven’t. ~ Peter Drucker
The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions. ~ Peter Drucker
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work. ~ Peter Drucker
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results, not attributes. ~ Peter Drucker
The essence of management is to make knowledge productive. ~ Peter Drucker
No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings. ~ Peter Drucker
Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing. ~ Tom Peters
Effective Management Quotes
The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided. ~ Casey Stengel
A good manager is a man who isn’t worried about his own career but rather the careers of those who work for him. ~ H. S. M. Burns
The first rule of management is delegation. Don’t try and do everything yourself because you can’t. ~ Anthea Turner
Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term. ~ Jack Welch
The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why. ~ Warren Bennis
A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge. ~ Peter Drucker
The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it. ~ Warren Bennis
A manager is not a person who can do the work better than his men; he is a person who can get his men to do the work better than he can. ~ Frederick W. Smith
The manager administers; the leader innovates. ~ Warren Bennis
A good manager doesn’t try to eliminate conflict; he tries to keep it from wasting the energies of his people. ~ Robert Townsend
The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective. ~ Warren Bennis
A manager takes people where they want to go. A great manager takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be. ~ Rosalynn Carter
The manager maintains; the leader develops. ~ Warren Bennis
A manager says ‘Go.’ A leader says ‘Let’s go.’ ~ John C. Maxwell
The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust. ~ Warren Bennis
A manager is a guide. He takes a group of people and says, ‘With you I can make us a success; I can show you the way.’ ~ Arsene Wenger
The manager has his eye on the bottom line; the leader has his eye on the horizon. ~ Warren Bennis
A manager needs to provide direction, while a leader needs to provide inspiration. ~ Anonymous
The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people. ~ Warren Bennis
A manager makes sure things are done right; a leader makes sure the right things are done. ~ Peter Drucker
Organizational Leadership Quotes
The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things. ~ Ronald Reagan
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit. ~ Arnold H. Glasow
Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. ~ John F. Kennedy
The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly. ~ Jim Rohn
Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better. ~ Bill Bradley
A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. ~ Lao Tzu
The key to successful leadership is influence, not authority. ~ Kenneth H. Blanchard
Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. ~ Peter Drucker
The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. ~ John Maxwell
A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. ~ Douglas MacArthur
Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another. ~ John C. Maxwell
The task of the leader is to get their people from where they are to where they have not been. ~ Henry Kissinger
Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work. ~ Seth Godin
Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. ~ Warren Bennis
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. ~ Peter Drucker
A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. ~ John C. Maxwell
The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. ~ Ralph Nader
Leadership is not about being in charge. It’s about taking care of those in your charge. ~ Simon Sinek
A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be. ~ Rosalynn Carter
Performance Management Quotes
What gets measured gets managed. ~ Peter Drucker
The true measure of the value of any business leader and manager is performance. ~ Brian Tracy
Performance is your reality. Forget everything else. ~ Harold Geneen
The best way to predict your future is to create it. ~ Peter Drucker
Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things. ~ Peter Drucker
The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. ~ Stephen Covey
You don’t build a business, you build people, then people build the business. ~ Zig Ziglar
The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team. ~ Phil Jackson
Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. ~ Henry Ford
Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships. ~ Michael Jordan
None of us is as smart as all of us. ~ Ken Blanchard
Great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people. ~ Steve Jobs
If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself. ~ Henry Ford
Individual commitment to a group effort—that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work. ~ Vince Lombardi
The ratio of We’s to I’s is the best indicator of the development of a team. ~ Lewis B. Ergen
The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime. ~ Babe Ruth
No one can whistle a symphony. It takes an orchestra to play it. ~ H.E. Luccock
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. ~ Helen Keller
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. ~ African Proverb
The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual. ~ Vince Lombardi
Strategic Management Quotes
The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. ~ Michael Porter
Without a strategy, an organization is like a ship without a rudder. ~ Joel Ross
The best CEOs I know are teachers, and at the core of what they teach is strategy. ~ Michael Porter
Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different. ~ Michael Porter
You have to be fast on your feet and adaptive or else a strategy is useless. ~ Charles de Gaulle
Sound strategy starts with having the right goal. ~ Michael Porter
The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that’s changing quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks. ~ Mark Zuckerberg
If everybody’s doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going exactly in the opposite direction. ~ Sam Walton
Good strategy requires leaders to say no to a whole array of possible initiatives, even though each one on its own looks promising. ~ Richard Rumelt
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. ~ Sun Tzu
The essence of strategy is that you must set limits on what you’re trying to accomplish. ~ Michael Porter
A strategy delineates a territory in which a company seeks to be unique. ~ Michael Porter
Strategy is a pattern in a stream of decisions. ~ Henry Mintzberg
The best strategies are those that create a sustainable competitive advantage. ~ Michael Porter
Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different. ~ Michael Porter
The underlying principles of strategy are enduring, regardless of technology or the pace of change. ~ Michael Porter
Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art. ~ Peter Drucker
The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. ~ Michael Porter
A good strategy must be accompanied by a strong execution culture. ~ Ram Charan
Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point. ~ Henry Mintzberg
