Warren Bennis Quotes

1925–2014 United States

Warren Gameliel Bennis (March 8, 1925 – July 31, 2014) was an American scholar, organizational consultant and author who is widely regarded as a pioneer of the contemporary field of leadership studies.

United States
Academics
Business theorists
Educators

Also known as: Warren G. Bennis

Random Warren Bennis quote

10 quotes

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.

Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.

Dianna Daniels Booher (1991)

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.

Warren G. Bennis; As cited in: Mark Fisher (1991)

A new leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless, soulless and visionless … someone's got to make a wake up call.

Reinventing Leadership : Strategies to Empower the Organization (2005)

Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens, people feel centered and that gives their work meaning.

Warren Bennis (1999)

Managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing. Both roles are crucial, and they differ profoundly. I often observe people in top positions doing the wrong things well.

Bennis Warren and Burt Nanus (1985)

Leaders encourage reflective backtalk. Norbert Wiener told me, “I never know what I say until I hear the response.” Leaders know the importance of having someone in their lives who will unfailingly and fearlessly tell them the truth.

Warren G. Bennis (2009)

We have more information now than we can use, and less knowledge and understanding than we need. Indeed, we seem to collect information because we have the ability to do so, but we are so busy collecting it that we haven’t devised a means of using it. The true measure of any society is not what it knows but what it does with what it knows.

Warren G. Bennis (1990)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Warren Bennis (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.