Robert Townsend Quotes

If people are coming to work excited...if they're making mistakes freely and fearlessly...if they're having fun...if they're concentrating on doing things, rather than preparing reports and going to meetings...then somewhere you have a leader.

If you don't do it excellently, don't do it at all. Because if it's not excellent, it won't be profitable or fun, and if you're not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing there?

The soul is made for action, and cannot rest till it be employed. Idleness is its rust. Unless it will up and think and taste and see, all is in vain.

One of the most important tasks of a manager is to eliminate his people's excuses for failure.

Consultants are people who borrow your watch and tell you what time it is, and then walk off with the watch.

A leader is not an administrator who loves to run others, but someone who carries water for his people so that they can get on with their jobs.

True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders.

A good manager doesn't try to eliminate conflict; he tries to keep it from wasting the energies of his people. If you're the boss and your people fight you openly when they think that you are wrong - that's healthy.

"Top" management is supposed to be a tree full of owls-hooting when management heads into the wrong part of the forest. I'm still unpersuaded they even know where the forest is.

Compromise is usually bad. It should be a last resort. If two departments or divisions have a problem they can't solve and it comes up to you, listen to both sides and then pick one or the other. This places solid accountability on the winner to make it work. Condition your people to avoid compromise.

It's a poor bureaucrat who can't stall a good idea until even its sponsor is relieved to see it dead and officially buried.

Make every decision as if you owned the whole company.

Many ideas are good for a limited time - not forever.

A good leader needs to have a compass in his head and a bar of steel in his heart.

Is what I'm doing or about to do getting us closer to our objective?

The artist must conceive with warmth yet execute with coolness.

All organizations are at least 50 percent waste -- waste people, waste effort, waste space, and waste time.

Don't hire a master to paint you a masterpiece and then assign a roomful of schoolboy artists to look over his shoulder and make suggestions.

If asked when you can deliver something, ask for time to think. Build in a margin of safety. Name a date. Then deliver it earlier than you promised. You'll be very valuable wherever you are.

Managers must have the discipline not to keep pulling up the flowers to see if their roots are healthy.

Cars that have been seriously damaged in one state can be wind up in another.

Flooded vehicles are sometimes cleaned up by unscrupulous sellers without disclosure of flood damage. In most states, this is illegal, but unfortunately some vehicles will slip through the system.