117 Management Quotes and Sayings
This collection of management quotes represents practical knowledge and insights that managers may put to use at their company.
Sometimes the best way to learn is not from your own experience but rather from others. It shortens the learning curve and exposes you to the wisdom you might not otherwise gain.
So, with that in mind, read these inspirational management quotes and see if some don’t hit home for the challenges you face at work. Enjoy.
Ten Best Management Quotes
You can learn a lot about good management by working under someone who is a bad manager.
Charles Murray
This is the key to time management – to see the value of every moment.
Menachem Mendel Schneerson
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Unknown
To be a good manager of people requires both fairness and bluntness.
James Cook
Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet.
Henry Mintzberg
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
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A successful team, in sports or business, extends from the top of management down to the guys at the bottom of the roster or organizational chart.
Mark Schlereth
The first rule of management is delegation. Don’t try and do everything yourself because you can’t.
Anthea Turner
The art of effective listening is essential to clear communication, and clear communication is necessary to management success.
James Cash Penney
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Good Management Quotes
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
Don’t follow the crowd; let the crowd follow you.
Margaret Thatcher
Product management really is the fusion between technology, what engineers do – and the business side.
Marissa Mayer
Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
Stephen Covey
One bad day from one member of my staff doesn’t mean they are not really good at their jobs the rest of the time. I play a long game in terms of management.
Helen McCabe
Fit no stereotypes. Don’t chase the latest management fads. The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team’s mission.
Colin Powell
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Effective Leadership
Keeping the risk management plan up to date can transform it from a doorstop into a vital project management tool. Remember: what you don’t know can kill your project.
Bruce Pittman
Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.
Stephen Covey
Corporate culture matters. How management chooses to treat its people impacts everything – for better or for worse.
Simon Sinek
When it comes to time management, I talk a lot more about energy management. I try to give people 100% of my energy even if I’m giving them very little of my time.
Jay Shetty
See 117 Best Investing Quotes and Sayings.
Funny Manager Quotes
Did I say that the President’s entire job is image management? Of course not.
Gwen Ifill
When I talk to managers, I get the feeling that they are important. When I talk to leaders, I get the feeling that I am important.
Alexander den Heijer
Managing to have a sense of humor makes it a lot easier to manage people.
Steve Wilson
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
I am definitely going to take a course on time management — just as soon as I can work it into my schedule.
Louis E. Boone
Trying to manage a project without project management is like trying to play a football game without a game plan.
K. Tate
Rich people manage their money well. Poor people mismanage their money well.
T. Harv Eker
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Short Management Quotes
Project management is like juggling three balls – time, cost, and quality.
G. Reiss
Not doing what we love in the name of greed is very poor management of our lives.
Warren Buffett
No business in the world has ever made more money with poorer management.
Bill Terry
Leadership is about emotional intelligence. Management is taught; leadership is experienced.
Rajeev Suri
Management must manage!
Harold S. Geneen
Time management is the key to becoming a successful entrepreneur.
Clay Clark
See Finance Quotes and Sayings.
Leadership is working with goals and vision; management is working with objectives.
Russel Honore
Own the outcome.
Ryan G Wright
The relationship between talent and management is uneasy, at best.
Jessica Savitch
The more games you play, the more game management you learn.
Jordan Pickford
The secret to winning is constant, consistent management.
Tom Landry
See Best Technology Quotes and Captions.
Being a Good Manager
Boundary setting is really a huge part of time management.
Jim Loehr
I think management is about just that – managing people via man-to-man skills.
Stuart Pearce
Time management is a big part of the director’s job.
Debbie Allen
Inventories can be managed, but people must be led.
Ross Perot
Managing senior programmers is like herding cats.
Dave Platt
Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.
Kin Hubbard
Employers are like horses — they require management.
P.G. Wodehouse
The key to management is to get rid of the managers.
Ricardo Semler
The smaller the function, the greater the management.
C. Northcote Parkinson
Time management is an oxymoron.
John C. Maxwell
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Management Sayings
Now more than ever is the time to really work on learning a money management system that can work, no matter how low things seem right now.
T. Harv Eker
Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
Peter Drucker
I have been rich, and I have been broke. Some of it is my fault for choosing bad management and making bad investments. But that is life – we all take risks.
Ronnie Wood
What should be the aim of management? What is their job? Quality is the responsibility of the top people. Its origin is in the boardroom. They are the ones who decide.
W. Edwards Deming
Program management is like a troupe of circus performers standing in a circle, each juggling three balls and swapping balls from time to time.
G. Reiss
We’re not in an information age anymore. We’re in the information management age.
Chris Hardwick
The fundamental work of investment management is filtering. The question is, what do you filter.
Donald Luskin
A good coach is good in the management of his men; he gives all of his players the desire to fight until the last.
Ashley Cole
Human Resources Quotes and HR Captions
Coaching Quotations
Football management is such a pressurized thing – horseracing is a release.
Alex Ferguson
Management is not about shouting and bawling because some guys will not like that. They take it personally.
Mark Hughes
Event management is the same as for any project – the project plan needs to include an appropriate change control process.
Brenda Treasure
See Best Research Quotes and Captions.
Positive Management Quotes
Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.
Tom Peters
Being a Project Manager is like being an artist; you have the different colored process streams combining into a work of art.
Greg Cimmarrusti
A key to achieving success is to assemble a strong and stable management team.
Vivek Wadhwa
A leader is the one who can outline the broad vision and the direction and say, here’s where we are going to go, here’s why we need to go there, and here’s how we are going to get there. A manager is the one who actually gets up under the hood and tunes the carburetor.
Mike Huckabee
Leadership is inspiring people. Management is keeping the trains running on time.
Andy Dunn
See Good Personal Productivity Quotations and Sayings.
Being a Good Manager Insights
That is what a good manager does – you study and think and discuss, and you come up with a model of playing.
Carlo Ancelotti
Effective management always means asking the right question.
Robert Heller
Good management has helped me find much of the success I’ve got.
Sarah Vaughan
Don’t be a time manager, be a priority manager. Cut your major goals into bite-sized pieces. Each small priority or requirement on the way to the ultimate goal becomes a mini goal in itself.
Denis Waitley
Game management, game decisions, adjustments, seeing things during games – it’s all-important.
Bill Belichick
When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
Warren Buffett
Leadership is all about emotional intelligence. Management is taught, while leadership is experienced.
Rajeev Suri
Management is a position that is granted; leadership is a status that is earned.
K. Scott Derrick
Why Being a MIddle Manager is Hard Video
Inspirational Management Quotes
These management quotes might inspire you to be a better leader.
Management is the opportunity to help people become better people. Practiced that way, it’s a magnificent profession.
Clayton M. Christensen
Management is nothing more than motivating other people.
Lee Iacocca
A manager can’t act like a role model. They need to be a role model.
Ben Horowitz
My idea of management is that what your job is as the boss is to find really good people and empower them and leave them alone.
Ruth Reichl
When you are on the management side, you still have to understand the artistic sensibility so that there is a dialogue with the creative side.
Bernard Arnault
Management’s job is to convey leadership’s message in a compelling and inspiring way. Not just in meetings, but also by example.
Jeffrey Gitomer
Management is nothing more than motivating other people.
Lee Iacocca
The most challenging one to manage is you. “Self-leadership” isn’t a concept that most of us think about all that often.
Scott Belsky
Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.
Peter F. Drucker
For real change, we need feminine energy in the management of the world. We need a critical number of women in positions of power, and we need to nurture the feminine energy in men.
Isabel Allende
Management must speak with one voice. When it doesn’t, management itself becomes a peripheral opponent to the team’s mission.
Pat Riley
This is the key to time management – to see the value of every moment.
Menachem Mendel Schneerson
Interesting Management Quotes for Leaders
To be a good manager, a manager tries to constantly fight to reduce waste.
Eliyahu Goldratt
Poor management can increase software costs more rapidly than any other factor.
Barry Boehm
I believe in decentralized management that includes a lot of delegation, empowerment, and accountability.
Anthony Scaramucci
Parenting is one of the best management training programs there is.
Irene Rosenfeld
The obligation of every ethical management is to make sure we optimize the long-term value of the company.
Jeff Bewkes
I think that the best training a top manager can be engaged in is management by example.
Carlos Ghosn
If I had learned more about business ahead of time, I would have been shaped into believing that it was only about finances and quality management.
Anita Roddick
I think time management as a label encourages people to view each 24-hour period as a slot in which they should pack as much as possible.
Tim Ferriss
Management manages by making decisions and by seeing that those decisions are implemented.
Harold S. Geneen
Good management consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.
John D. Rockefeller
As a manager, your job is not to teach people talent. Your job is to help them earn the accolade “talented” by matching their talent to the role. To do this well, like all great managers, you have to pay close attention to the subtle but significant differences between roles.
Marcus Buckingham
Quotations About Management
Management, at every level, is about the effort to frame challenges, define end states, and allocate resources to navigate between them.
Steven Sinofsky
Management is getting people together to figure out how to transform inputs into outputs. In the process of figuring out the process of how people work together, you’ve got to figure out who’s got what responsibilities, and how do they work together.
Clayton M. Christensen
Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.
Peter Drucker
The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of management is that success equals skill.
Robert Heller
Management is all about managing in the short term while developing the plans for the long term.
Jack Welch
Time management is the mantra of my life.
Vir Das
The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work.
Agha Hasan Abedi
Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people.
John Rockefeller
Family business management is a discipline that has evolved from an art into a science.
Sanjaya Baru
Management teams aren’t good at asking questions. In business school, we train them to be good at giving answers.
Clayton M. Christensen
There’s more honor in investment management than in investment banking.
Charlie Munger
Active management leads to lots of poor investor behavior. It sends people chasing after whoever has the hot hand at the moment.
Barry Ritholtz
Administration Quotes
Success in management and success in sport is derived from the same basic principles.
Will Carling
If you don’t have the money management skills yet, using a debit card will ensure you don’t overspend and rack up debt on a credit card.
T. Harv Eker
The true measure of the value of any business leader and manager is performance.
Brian Tracy
The best thing you can do is learn from those mistakes so that you continue to get better. That’s the management style or leadership style I believe in, which is pushing people to their limits such that they can become better than they thought they could be.
Lisa Su
I thought if we could put our hard-working culture as traders into the asset management, it will be a great combination, and we did do that.
Ivan Glasenberg
The more senior your management position is, the more important it is to connect the organization or the project to the outside world. You know, how does this fit in with what we’re doing? What is the real goal, the real mission?
Allan Mullaly
Management Philosophy
His management philosophy, tempered in his rain-dancing days, was always to give the project to whoever had the most to gain from success – or the most to lose from failure.
Michael Crichton
My job involves a lot of different skills now – I’m as much an entrepreneur and management consultant as anything else these days – but IA is still my favorite part of the work I do.
Jesse James Garrett
The art of effective listening is essential to clear communication, and clear communication is necessary to management success.
James Cash Penney
Sports betting is all about money management, so the most money won on one event is not the most important thing.
Bruce Dern
Final Thoughts
Please use these management quotes in your presentations, meetings, and emails to drive home important management and leadership concepts.
By Michael O’Halloran
Michael O’Halloran founded Greeting Card Poet in 2014 and has worked as its publisher and editor ever since. He has co-authored four books on kids’ trivia and four on coaching. Previously, Michael was the president of Magnetic Poetry. He has invented and brought over 75 new gift and toy products to market, most of which deal with wordplay. Mike is married and a father of four daughters.
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