You can’t run a business or anything else on a theory.
—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: Performance, Business
We must not be hampered by yesterday’s myths in concentrating on today’s needs.
—Harold S. Geneen
Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Leadership
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: Reading, Books
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
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
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
Management manages by making decisions and by seeing that those decisions are implemented.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Time, Time Management
Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Attitude, Leadership
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
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: Promises, Business
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’s better to take over and build upon an existing business than to start a new one.
—Harold S. Geneen
Topics: Business
Do you want my one-word secret of happiness? It’s growth—mental, financial, you name it.
—Harold S. Geneen
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Jean Anouilh French Playwright
Cynthia Ozick American Novelist, Essayist
Sheryl Sandberg American Executive, Author
Jack Welch American Businessperson
Donald Trump American Businessperson, Head of State
Robert Kiyosaki American Businessperson
Max De Pree American Businessman
Howard Schultz American Businessman
Eric Berne Canadian-American Psychiatrist
Gene Moore American Designer, Window Dresser