Harold Sydney Geneen (1910–97) was an American business executive. As president and CEO of International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT,) he transformed it from a minor telecommunications firm into one of the most powerful multinational corporations of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Born in Bournemouth, England, Geneen attended New York University and went to work as an accountant. He steadily moved up the corporate ladder at American Car Company 1942–46, Bell and Howell 1946–50, Jones and Laughlin Steel 1950–56, Raytheon 1956–59 before joining ITT. Geneen embarked on a determined diversification program that made ITT one of the largest conglomerates in the world by buying insurance, finance, hotels, tourism, publishing, defense manufacturing, and computer companies. By the early 1980s, ITT controlled over 270 companies in sixty countries.
Assessed one of the most effective managers in history, Geneen contributed to the art of management the ability to organize and operate a vast multinational. He was the epitome of scientific management and control accounting carried to its logical extent.
Geneen wrote Managing (1984) and The Synergy Myth and Other Ailments of Business Today (1997.) Biographies include Robert Schoenberg’s Geneen (1985) and Anthony Sampson’s The Sovereign State: The Secret History of ITT (1973.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Harold S. Geneen
When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Books, Reading
Do you want my one-word secret of happiness? It’s growth–mental, financial, you name it.
—Harold S. Geneen
It’s better to take over and build upon an existing business than to start a new one.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Business
In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Business, Experience
The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it’s egotism.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Business
It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises but only performance is reality.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Business, Promises
Management manages by making decisions and by seeing that those decisions are implemented.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Time Management, Time
Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Attitude, Leadership
We must not be hampered by yesterday’s myths in concentrating on today’s needs.
—Harold S. Geneen
Performance is your reality. Forget everything else.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Performance
If you keep working you’ll last longer. I’d hate to spend the rest of my life trying to outwit an 18-inch fish.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Work
Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Leadership
I don’t believe in just ordering people to do things. You have to sort of grab an oar and row with them.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Leaders, Leadership
Every company has two organizational structures: The formal one is written on the charts; the other is the everyday relationship of the men and women in the organization.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Organization
You read a book from beginning to end. You run a business the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach it.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Business
It is much more difficult to measure non-performance than performance. Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Non-performance can almost always be explained away.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Business, Performance
You can’t run a business or anything else on a theory.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Business
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