Frederick Smith Quotes
20 quotes from Frederick Smith — Founder of FedEx..
“In an environment where there is a shared vision of excellence, where people can be the best they can be on a daily basis, where they know what is expected of them, understand that reward is linked to performance, and believe they can make a difference because they will be heard, they will make a difference. They will go beyond our expectations and great things will happen.”
“A manager is not a person who can do the work better than his men; he is a person who can get his men to do the work better than he can.”
“Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something.”
“If you look historically, what creates growth and wealth is innovation and investment, and increase in scale - more customers.”
“Leaders get out in front and stay there by raising the standards by which they judge themselves - and by which they are willing to be judged.”
“Every time we make an investment decision at FedEx, we ask ourselves: 'What is the return on this investment?”
“I'm not afraid to take a swing and miss.”
“Information about the package is as important as the package itself.”
“I do not believe I could have built FedEx without the skills I learned from the Marine Corps.”
“The biggest part of our business has always been moving things, not paper.”
“The tax rate of 35 percent is impossible to provide an incentive to the large corporations, that have $1.7 trillion offshore, to put their money back in the United States.”
“I am not someone who tends to advocate for increased government involvement in the private sector.”
“My innovation involved taking an idea from the telecommunications and banking industries, and applying that idea to transportation business.”
“As society automated, as people began to put computers in banks to cancel checks — rather than clerks — society and the manufacturers of that automated society were going to need a completely different logistics system.”
“At any risk, at any cost, he refused to let Federal Express die.”
“The thing that's interested me are the institutions and the causes, not the naming or the recognition.”
“The Vietnam experience was the defining part of my life. Everything I ever accomplished in business is mostly what I learned in the Marine Corps.”
“The common trait of people who supposedly have vision is that they spend a lot of time reading and gathering information, and then they synthesize it until they come up with an idea.”
“If you don't like change, you're going to hate extinction.”
“I wanted to do something productive after blowing so many things up.”
