Quotes, Aphorisms, Laws, and Thoughts

Management

A camel is a horse designed by a committee.
Anonymous

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.
Barnett Cocks (1907-1989)

A committee is a group that takes minutes and wastes hours.
Milton Berle (1908-2002)

A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988)

A continuing flow of paper is sufficient to guarantee the flow of paper.
Anonymous

A man with a briefcase can steal more money than any man with a gun.
Anonymous

A memorandum is not written to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
Dean Acheson (1893-1971)

A tidy desk is the sign of a sick mind.
Anonymous

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974)

Amand's Law of Management: Everyone is always someplace else.
Anonymous

Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it.
Anonymous

Any sufficiently advanced bureaucracy is indistinguishable from molasses.
Anonymous

Anything that can be changed will be changed until there is no time left to change anything.
Anonymous

At some time in the life cycle of every organisation, its ability to succeed in spite of itself runs out.
Anonymous

Cheops' Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988)

Committee: a group of the unfit appointed by the unwilling to do the unnecessary.
Carl C. Byers

Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then give it back to them.
Anonymous

Dates in the calendar are closer than they appear.
Anonymous

Delay is the deadliest form of denial.
Anonymous

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account.
Anonymous

I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of Committees.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would ever get done.
Anonymous

If not controlled, work will flow to the competent man until he submerges.
Anonymous

Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the Boss is reading it.
Anonymous

In any organisation there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.
Anonymous

Indecision is the key to flexibility.
Anonymous

Law of Probable Dispersal: Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
Anonymous

Management expands to meet the needs of management.
Anonymous

Never answer a letter until you get a second one on the same subject from the same person.
Anonymous

Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules: The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
Anonymous

Rule of Defactualization: Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.
Anonymous

Seminars: from 'semi' and 'arse', hence, any half-assed discussion.
Anonymous

Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
Archibald Putt

The big-type giveth, and the small-type taketh away.
Anonymous

The first myth of management is that it exists.
Anonymous

The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided by the number of people in the group.
Anonymous

The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing, the less time you have to do anything. Stability is achieved when you spend all your time doing nothing but reporting on the nothing you are doing.
Anonymous

The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
Anonymous

There is absolutely no substitute for a genuine lack of preparation.
Anonymous

Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving from where you left them to where you can't find them.
Anonymous

When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to make a decision.
Anonymous

You can get a lot more done with a kind word and a gun, than with a kind word alone.
Al Capone (1899-1947)