Words matter. These are the best Warren Bennis Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I’ve become more and more aware of the promise and struggle to teach the global mind nowadays because I use every chance I get to ask faculty and administrators of management education programs why we don’t offer at least one course – not even required, just an elective – on the world’s religions.
Learning in a face-to-face human community, as humans have evolved to do over hundreds of thousands of years, may always be the ideal – especially in an endeavor that is as relationship-driven as business.
Leaders keep their eyes on the horizon, not just on the bottom line.
Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.
Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.
One of the best teaching experiences Ed Schein and I had when we were teaching at MIT in the 1960s was inventing a course on leadership through film.
Learning options will indeed mushroom for business students and leaders, but it will take prudence and shrewdness to find and utilize the best option.
Good leaders make people feel that they’re at the very heart of things, not at the periphery.
Specialized management courses are useful but should come well after the complexity of management and business are understood.
Find the appropriate balance of competing claims by various groups of stakeholders. All claims deserve consideration but some claims are more important than others.
You need people who can walk their companies into the future rather than back them into the future.
Taking charge of your own learning is a part of taking charge of your life, which is the sine qua non in becoming an integrated person.
There is a profound difference between information and meaning.
I wanted the influence. In the end I wasn’t very good at being a president. I looked out of the window and thought that the man cutting the lawn actually seemed to have more control over what he was doing.
Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.
Leaders know the importance of having someone in their lives who will unfailingly and fearlessly tell them the truth.
Great things are accomplished by talented people who believe they will accomplish them.
The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
Leadership has become a heavy industry. Concern and interest about leadership development is no longer an American phenomenon. It is truly global. Though I will probably be in less demand, I wanted to move on.
Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.
A great director or leader knows his people, creates a great team, and then makes a great movie that can influence millions more than the readers of his column.
The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out.
The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
The primary goal of management education was, as originally conceived, to impart knowledge that could be applied to a variety of real-world business situations.
