Business is not just doing deals; business is having great products, doing great engineering, and providing tremendous service to customers. Finally, business is a cobweb of human relationships.
Ross PerotRead
Inventories can be managed, but people must be led.
Interpretation
Effective leadership is essential for managing people, as opposed to simply managing resources.
This quote emphasizes the distinction between managing tangible assets, like inventories, and leading people. While inventories can be organized and controlled with systematic approaches, human beings require inspiration, motivation, and guidance to achieve their best potential. True leadership involves understanding and nurturing the human element in any organization or group.
In practice
In a corporate training session discussing the importance of leadership styles.
Business is not just doing deals; business is having great products, doing great engineering, and providing tremendous service to customers. Finally, business is a cobweb of human relationships.
Never ask anyone to do what you haven't done before and wouldn't do again. That's a pretty fundamental rule in leadership... treat them like you treat yourself. Things you don't like, they don't like.
Don't run your life by what's legal or illegal. Run your life based on what's right or wrong.
Punishing honest mistakes stifles creativity. I want people moving and shaking the earth and they're going to make mistakes.
Something in human nature causes us to start slacking off at our moment of greatest accomplishment. As you become successful, you will need a great deal of self-discipline not to lose your sense of balance, humility and commitment.
Communication is different in the clubhouse than it is in a boardroom. The heartbeat that exists in the clubhouse, you don't find that same type of heartbeat in the front office.
A boss who micromanages is like a coach who wants to get in the game. Leaders guide and support and then sit back to cheer from the sidelines.
For organizations seriously committed to making teamwork a cultural reality, I'm convinced that 'the right people' are the ones who have three virtues in common - humility, hunger, and people smarts.
It may seem odd to talk about something as soft and fuzzy as "passion" as an integral part of a strategic framework. But throughout the good-to-great companies, passion became a key part of the Hedgehog Concept.
Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats...
What is most important of this grand experiment, the United States? Not the election of the first president but the election of its second president. The peaceful transition of power is what will separate this country from every other country in the world.
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