Jonathan Donihue

“There is tremendous stress these days on liking people, helping people, getting along with people, as qualifications for a manager. These alone are never enough. In every successful organization there are bosses who do not like people, who do not help them, and who do not get along with them. Cold, unpleasant, demanding, they often teach and develop more people than anyone else. They command more respect than the most likable person ever could. They demand exacting workmanship of themselves and other people. They set high standards and expect that they will be lived up to. They consider only what is right and never who is right. And though often themselves persons of brilliance, they never rate intellectual brilliance above integrity in others. The manager who lacks these qualities of character—no matter how likable, helpful, or amiable, no matter, even, how competent or brilliant—is a menace who is unfit to be a manager.”
― Peter F. Drucker, Management, Revised Edition

“In the sea battles of World War I, German sailors were sometimes stranded in lifeboats for days or weeks after their ships were sunk. Invariably, the first men to die were the youngest. This phenomenon remained a mystery until it was realized that the older sailors, who had survived earlier sinkings, knew that the crisis could be weathered; lacking such experience, the young sailors perished because they saw themselves as trapped in a hopeless situation.”
― Deepak Chopra, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The Quantum Alternative to Growing Old

“He whose happiness is within, whose contentment is within, whose light is all within, that Yogī, being one with Brahman, attains eternal freedom in divine consciousness.”
― Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation and Commentary With Sanskrit Text -- Chapters 1 to 6

“Effective managers make effective decisions. There are six steps of effective decision making and five characteristics of effective decisions. First, and by far the most important step, effective decision makers define and classify the problem. It is much easier to fix a wrong solution to a problem if the problem has been defined correctly than it is to fix a “correct” solution to a problem that has been defined incorrectly. If a problem has been defined incorrectly, no solution to that problem can be found. Conversely, if a problem is defined correctly, then an incorrect solution will provide useful feedback information, leading the executive closer to the right solution. The remaining five steps of effective decision making are Ask, “Is this problem generic or unique?” Decisions that are generic ought to be solved by finding and applying a rule that someone else has used to solve the problem. For problems that are unique, the decision maker must next determine the boundary conditions that must be satisfied in order for the decision to be effective. Establishing boundary conditions requires an answer to the question, “What does the decision have to accomplish to be effective in solving the problem?” Next, the decision maker asks, “What is the right solution, given these conditions?” Then—and this is where a great many decisions fail—the decision maker must convert the decision into action by assigning to one or more persons the responsibility for carrying out the decision and by eliminating any barriers faced by those who must act. Finally, the effective decision maker follows up on the decision, obtains feedback on what actually happened as a result of the decision, and compares this with the intended or desired results.”
― Peter F. Drucker, Management, Revised Edition