Robert Townsend Quotes

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.

Due to budget cutbacks, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off.

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.

The artist must conceive with warmth yet execute with coolness.

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

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.

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

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

To keep an organization young and fit, don't hire anyone until everybody's so overworked they'll be glad to see the newcomer no matter where he sits.

"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 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.

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.

Getting there isn't half the fun - it's all the fun.

An idea's worth is directly proportional to the opposition created.

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

We know there is a problem with communication but we are not going to discuss it in front of the entire staff.

Make every decision as if you owned the company.

Getting there isn't half the fun, it's all the fun.