Robert Townsend Quotes (29 Quotes)


    All organizations are at least 50 percent waste -- waste people, waste effort, waste space, and waste time.

    If you don't do it excellently, don't do it at all. Because if it's not excellent, it won't be profitable or fun, and if you're not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing there

    A good leader needs to have a compass in his head and a bar of steel in his heart.

    Most people in big companies are administered, not led. They are treated as personnel, not people.



    Most computer technicians are complicators, not simplifiers. They're trying to make it look tough. Not easy. They're building a mystique, a priesthood, their own mumbo-jumbo ritual to keep you from knowing what they - and you - are doing.


    One of the most important tasks of a manager is to eliminate his people's excuses for failure.

    It's a poor bureaucrat who can't stall a good idea until even its sponsor is relieved to see it dead and officially buried

    Managers must have the discipline not to keep pulling up the flowers to see if their roots are healthy.

    Flooded vehicles are sometimes cleaned up by unscrupulous sellers without disclosure of flood damage. In most states, this is illegal, but unfortunately some vehicles will slip through the system.

    A leader is not an administrator who loves to run others, but someone who carries water for his people so that they can get on with their jobs.

    Deals aren't usually blown by principals they're blown by lawyers and accountants trying to prove how valuable they are.


    Compromise is usually bad. It should be a last resort. If two departments or divisions have a problem they can't solve and it comes up to you, listen to both sides and then pick one or the other. This places solid accountability on the winner to make it work. Condition your people to avoid compromise.

    Cars that have been seriously damaged in one state can be wind up in another.

    The artist must conceive with warmth yet execute with coolness.

    If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, it's OK. But you've got to shoot for something. A lot of people don't even shoot.

    A good manager doesn't try to eliminate conflict he tries to keep it from wasting the energies of his people. If you're the boss and your people fight you openly when they think that you are wrong -- that's healthy.

    Don't hire a master to paint you a masterpiece and then assign a roomful of schoolboy artists to look over his shoulder and make suggestions.

    If people are coming to work excited...if they're making mistakes freely and fearlessly...if they're having fun...if they're concentrating on doing things, rather than preparing reports and going to meetings...then somewhere you have a leader.

    True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers not the enrichment of the leaders.


    Consultants are people who borrow your watch and tell you what time it is, and then walk off with the watch.

    Top management is supposed to be a tree full of owls hooting when management heads into the wrong part of the forest. I'm still unpersuaded they even know where the forest is.

    If asked when you can deliver something, ask for time to think. Build in a margin of safety. Name a date. Then deliver it earlier than you promised. The world is divided into two classes of people the few people who make good on their promises (even if they don't promise as much), and the many who don't. Get in Column A and stay there. You'll be very valuable wherever you are.

    Is what I'm doing or about to do getting us closer to our objective.

    If you have to have a policy manual, publish 'The Ten Commandments'.

    When you get right down to it, one of the most important tasks of a leader is to eliminate his people's excuse for failure.


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