Top 30 Harold Geneen Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned.”

— Harold Geneen

2. “In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.”

— Harold Geneen

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3. “Better a good decision quickly than the best decision too late.”

— Harold Geneen

4. “A true leader has to have a genuine open-door policy so that his people are not afraid to approach him for any reason.”

— Harold Geneen

5. “I think it is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality.”

— Harold Geneen

6. “The best way to inspire people to superior performance is to convince them by everything you do and by your everyday attitude that you are wholeheartedly supporting them.”

— Harold Geneen

7. “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 Geneen

8. “If your desk isn’t cluttered, you probably aren’t doing your job.”

— Harold Geneen

9. “We must not be hampered by yesterday’s myths in concentrating on today’s needs.”

— Harold Geneen

10. “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 Geneen

11. “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 Geneen

12. “Uncertainty will always be part of the taking charge process.”

— Harold Geneen

13. “You can’t run a business or anything else on a theory.”

— Harold Geneen

14. “You can know a person by the kind of desk he keeps. If the president of a company has a clean desk then it must be the executive vice president who is doing all the work.”

— Harold Geneen

15. “It is much more difficult to measure nonperformance than performance.”

— Harold Geneen

16. “Management must manage!”

— Harold Geneen

17. “I don’t believe in just ordering people to do things. You have to sort of grab an oar and row with them.”

— Harold Geneen

18. “Management must have a purpose, a dedication and that dedication must have an emotional commitment. It must be built in as a vital part of the personality of anyone who truly is a manager.”

— Harold Geneen

19. “Ninety-nine percent of all surprises in business are negative.”

— Harold Geneen

20. “The highest art of professional management requires the literal ability to ‘smell’ a ‘real fact’ from all others.”

— Harold Geneen

21. “In the business world, everyone is always working at legitimate cross purposes, governed by self interest.”

— Harold Geneen

22. “Do you want my one-word secret of happiness? It’s growth – – mental, financial you name it.”

— Harold Geneen

23. “Business is many things, the least of which is the balance sheet. It is a fluid, ever changing, living thing, sometimes building to great peaks, sometimes falling to crumbled lumps.”

— Harold Geneen

24. “The professional’s grasp of the numbers is a measure of the control he has over the events that the figures represent.”

— Harold Geneen

25. “What you manage in business is people.”

— Harold Geneen

26. “Facts from paper are not the same as facts from people. The reliability of the people giving you the facts is as important as the facts themselves.”

— Harold Geneen

27. “Managers in all too many American companies do not achieve the desired results because nobody makes them do it.”

— Harold Geneen

28. “In a good meeting there is a momentum that comes from the spontaneous exchange of fresh ideas and produces extraordinary results. That momentum depends on the freedom permitted the participants.”

— Harold Geneen

29. “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 Geneen

30. “It’s better to take over and build upon an existing business than to start a new one.”

— Harold Geneen

31. “Management manages by making decisions and by seeing that those decisions are implemented.”

— Harold Geneen

32. “When I come upon a man who has a gleaming, empty, clear desktop, I am dealing with a fellow who is so far removed from the realities of his business that someone else is running it for him.”

— Harold Geneen