A - F

G - L

• Your career is your business, and you are its CEO.
  • Andrew Grove (1999) cited in: George M. Dupuy, ‎David H. Dupuy (2004) Career preparation: a transition guide for students. p. 4

• By far the most difficult skill I learned as a C.E.O. was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared with keeping my mind in check.
  • Ben Horowitz "What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology." at bhorowitz.com, March 31, 2011.

M - R

• The organizational design is the responsibility of the CEO, and the designer's role is to act as midwife to aid in the rebirth of the organization.
  • Kenneth D. Mackenzie (1986), Organizational design: the organizational audit and analysis technology. p. 154

• Successful innovators have CEOs who act as technology evangelists.
  • Constantinos C. Markides, Game-Changing Strategies, 2013, p. 68

• The best CEOs I know are teachers, and at the core of what they teach is strategy.
  • Michael Porter, "The CEO as strategist," in: Henry Mintzberg, Bruce W. Ahlstrand, and Joseph Lampel (eds.). Strategy bites back: It is a lot more, and less, than you ever imagined. Pearson Education, 2005. p. 45

• Executives are constrained not by resources but by their imagination.
  • C.K. Prahalad in a column Harvard Business Review, April 2010.

• The dream of every CEO is to have one standardized, integrated, flexible and manageable landscape of aligned business and IT processes, systems and procedures. Having complete control over all projects implementing changes in that landscape so that they deliver solutions that perfectly fit the corporate and IT change strategies, makes this dream complete. The reality for many large organizations is quite the opposite. Many large organizations struggle to keep their operational and change costs in control. Key reasons are the inflexibility and enormous complexity of their business and IT structures, processes, systems, and procedures, often distributed across lines of business (LoB) and business divisions (BD) spread out over various regions, countries or even continents.., Over the last decade, Enterprise Architecture (EA) has been one of many instruments used by organizations in their attempt to get grip on the current operational environment and the implementation of changes. EA provides standardization, and sets a clear direction for the future to guide changes.
  • Bas van der Raadt and Hans van Vliet (2008). "Designing the enterprise architecture function." Quality of Software Architectures. Models and Architectures. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2008. p. 103.

S - Z

• Neurotic impostor CEOs are also highly likely to become addicted to consulting companies because reassurances provided by “impartial” outsiders compensate for the executives’ feelings of insecurity.
  • Manfred Kets de Vries. "The Dangers of Feeling Like a Fake," in: Harvard Business Review, September 2005

• Being a CEO is the nuts! A whole jumble of thoughts come to mind: Over the top. Wild. Fun. Outrageous. Crazy. Passion. Perpetual motion. The give-and-take. Meetings into the night. Incredible friendships. Fine wine. Celebrations. Great golf courses. Big decisions in the real game. Crises and pressure. Lots of swings. A few home runs. The thrill of winning. The pain of losing. It's as good as it gets! You get paid a lot, but the real payoff is in the fun.
  • Jack Welch, Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001) Ch. 24.

• Getting every employee's mind into the game is a huge part of what a CEO job is all about. Taking everyone's best ideas and transferring them to others is the secret. There's nothing more important.
  • Jack Welch, Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001) Ch. 24.