Marvin Bower Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

A business of high principle generates greater drive and effectiveness because people know that they can do the right thing decisively and with confidence.

Marvin Bower
The business with high ethical standards has three primary advantages over competitors whose standards are lower:
1) A business of high principle generates greater drive and effectiveness because people know they can do the right thing decisively and with confidence. ...
2) A business of high principle attracts high-caliber people more easily, thereby gaining a basic competitive and profit edge. ...
3) A business of high principle develops better and more profitable relations with customers, competitors , and the general public, because it can be counted on to do the right thing at all times. By the consistently ethical character of its actions, it builds a favorable image.

Marvin Bower
People should be judged on the basis of their performance, not nationality, personality, education, or personal traits and skills.

Marvin Bower
Decisions should be based on facts, objectively considered — what I call the fact-founded, thought-through approach to decision making.

Marvin Bower
... for all the reasons we have discussed in these pages, judgments brought to the board by leaders are likely to be better than those coming to the board in a command company. Moreover, the effective working relationships between leaders and directors in a leadership company further ensures the exercise of sound judgments for such momentous decisions...

Marvin Bower
I believe that leaders and leadership teams working together in a proper design will run the business more effectively than by hierarchical, command-and-control managing. But I can't prove that. And there are no models.

Marvin Bower
In large-scale organizations, the factual approach must be constantly nurtured by high-level executives. The more layers of authority through which facts must pass before they reach the decision maker, the greater the danger that they will be suppressed, modified, or softened, so as not to displease the "brass". For this reason, high-level executives must keep reaching for facts or soon they won't know what is going on. Unless they make visible efforts to seek and act on facts, major problems will not be brought to their attention, the quality of their decisions will decline, and the business will gradually get out of touch with its environment.

Marvin Bower
The difference between a leadership and a command company can be very great indeed, because in a hierarchical situation, people who have concerns about reactions against themselves would simply not put forward negative information.

Marvin Bower
Fourteen basic and well-known managing processes make up the components from which a management system for any business can be fashioned.

Marvin Bower
I believe that in a leadership company most people will like their work. But the company will be an even more enjoyable place to work if the culture is designed to make it that way. Leading fosters a working atmosphere that stimulates an open exchange of ideas and fosters dissent. People should show a genuine concern for one another and treat one another with fairness, as peers and friends. With such an atmosphere it should be a pleasure to come to work.

Marvin Bower