[dropcap]M[/dropcap]ANAGEMENT AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
IT CAN BE SAID THAT THERE ARE NO “UNDERDEVELOPED COUNTRIES.” THERE ARE ONLY “UNDER MANAGED” ONES.
Management creates economic and social development. Economic and social development is the result of management. It can be said, without too much oversimplification, that there are no “under developed countries.” There are only “under managed” ones. Japan a hundred and forty years ago was an underdeveloped country by every material measurement. But it very quickly produced management of great competence, indeed, of excellence.
This means that management is the prime mover and that development is a consequence. All our experience in economic development proves this. Wherever we have only capital, we have not achieved development. In the few cases where we have been able to generate management energies, we have generated rapid development rapid development. Development, in other words, is a matter of human energies rather than of economic wealth. And the generation and direction of human energies is the ask of management.
ACTION POINT: What impact does your company have in the developing world? Are your activities there raising the managerial standards of local companies?
[dropcap]F[/dropcap]AILURE OF CENTRAL PLANNING
ANY SOCIETY IN THE ERA OF THE NEW TECHNOLOGY WOULD PERISH MISERABLY WERE IT TO RUN THE ECONOMY BY CENTRAL PLANNING.
The new technology will greatly extend the management area; many people now considered rank-and-file will have to become capable of doing management work. And on all levels the demands on the manager’s responsibility and competence, her vision, her capacity to choose between alternate risks, her economic knowledge and skill, her ability to manage managers and to manage worker and work, her competence in making decisions, will be greatly increased.
The new technology will demand the utmost in decentralization. Any society in the era of the technology would perish miserably were it to attempt to get rid of free management of autonomous enterprise so as to run the economy by central planning. And so would any enterprise that attempted to centralize responsibility and decision making at the top. It would go under like the great reptiles of the saurian age who attempted to control a huge body by a small, centralized nervous system that could not adapt to rapid change in the environment.
ACTION POINT: Do you micromanage your employees? Start empowering them by making sure they are trained properly to do their jobs, and then give them responsibility to do it. Provide room for failure.
It is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country.
ADAM SMITH
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
HENRY FORD
Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin.
JOSIAH STAMP
The trouble with being educated is that it takes a long time; it uses up the better part of your life and when you are finished what you know is that you would have benefited more by going into banking.
PHILIP K. DICK
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MANMOHAN SINGH
I saw a bank that said ’24 Hour Banking’, but I don’t have that much time.
STEVEN WRIGHT
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TINA BROWN
Canadians know that the promise of a recession didn’t happen because of anything we did here. If you look at all the causes of the recession, problems in mortgage markets, the problems in the banking sector, the problems in government finance in countries like Greece, none of those problems were in present Canada.
STEPHEN HARPER
Investment banking is not a business; it is a personal service where bankers work hand in hand with their clients. And it is a service that must not simply be about making bigger and bigger deals that reap rewards for only a small group of executives.
FELIX ROHATYN
The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing.
JOSIAH STAMP
There is no evidence that more regulation makes things better. The most highly regulated industry in America is commercial banking, and that didn’t save those institutions from making terrible decisions.
WILBUR ROSS
I have nothing against investment banking, but it’s like massaging money rather than creating money. If you’re in physics, you create inventions, you create lasers, you create transistors, computers, GPS.
MICHIO KAKU
Investment banking has, in recent years, resembled a casino, and the massive scale of gambling losses has dragged down traditional business and retail lending activities as banks try to rebuild their balance sheets. This was one aspect of modern financial liberalisation that had dire consequences.
VINCE CABLE
I sincerely believe… that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
John D. Rockefeller wanted to dominate oil, but Microsoft wants it all, you name it: cable, media, banking, car dealerships.
RALPH NADER
I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
SMEDLEY BUTLER
We need to increase the transparency of shadow banking markets so that authorities can monitor for signs of excessive leverage and unstable maturity transformation outside regulated banks.
JANET YELLEN
Banking is a very treacherous business because you don’t realize it is risky until it is too late. It is like calm waters that deliver huge storms.
NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB
There’s a loss of faith in the banking system that for so long has been the backbone of prosperity and growth.
LUCY POWELL
In the winter, things are dead and dull, but then there is an explosion of life. That’s what He promises people who believe in His Son. That’s what all the Robertsons are banking on.
SI ROBERTSON
Stripe is building payment infrastructure for the Web, so we make it easy to accept credit cards online. Before Stripe, the way you’d do this is using the legacy banking structure. It was slow, it was complex, it was expensive. It had this very chilling effect on e-commerce.
JOHN COLLISON