14 quotes
All businesses operate below their true potential. That is unavoidable, given the fallibility of human beings.
The Decision makers (1989)
Letting I dare not wait upon I would is a mug's game, and those who play it usually get mugged.
The Decision makers (1989)
Effective management always means asking the right question.
The supermanagers: Managing for Success, the Movers and the Doers, the Reasons Why (1984)
No decision in business provides greater potential for the creation of wealth (or its destruction, come to think of it) than the choice of which innovation to back.
The Decision makers (1989)
What goes wrong [in long-range planning] is that sensible anticipation gets converted into foolish numbers: and their validity always hinges on large loose assumptions.
The Naked Manager (1972)
Never ignore a gut feeling, but never believe that's enough.
Robert Heller; cited in: Hubert J. M. Hermans (2012)
Managers are to information as alcoholics are to booze. They consume enormous amounts, constantly crave more, but have great difficulty in digesting their existing intake.
Robert Heller (1975)
Here lies one of the world's rare generalized TINAs. There Is No Alternative to creativity and innovation: these days, obscurantism and conservatism will do for you every time.
The Decision Makers (1989)
The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of management is that success equals skill.
Robert Heller cited in : Jonathon Green (1984)
Decisions should be pushed down as far as possible, to the level of competence. This allows senior managers more time for making decisions of a more complex nature
The Pocket Manager (1987)
CEO of General Electric for 30 years, Jack Welch was declared the greatest manager of the 20th century. Focusing firmly on results, he revolutionized management to achieve phenomenal growth for his company.
Robert Heller (2001)
The difference between management and administration (which is what the bureaucrats used to do exclusively)... is the difference... between choice and rigidity.
Director Vol 35 (1982)
Management is a far more homely business than its would be scientists suggest, more closely allied to cookery than any other human activity. Like cooking, it rests on a degree of organisation and on adequate resources. But just as no two chefs run their kitchens the same way, so no two managements are the same.
The Naked Manager (1972)
Although he reputedly hated the label of ‘guru’, Peter Drucker was, by any standards, the greatest management guru the world has yet seen. In 1996, the McKinsey Quarterly journal described him as the ‘the one guru to whom other gurus kowtow’ and Robert Heller described him as ‘the greatest man in the history of management’, praise indeed for a man who described himself as ‘just an old journalist’.
Robert Heller and Alistair Schofield (2006)