“Winners have parties, losers have meetings”
“Winners have parties, losers have meetings” has been a motto (since at least 2001) of Sam Chisholm, a media executive in Australia and the United Kingdom. Meetings are often held be executives who are afraid of making decisions, while losers don’t have parties.
British businessman Philip Green has said (since at least 2007), “Successful companies have parties. Unsuccessful ones have meetings.”
Wikipedia: Sam Chisholm
Sam Chisholm (born 1939) is a media executive born in New Zealand. He was a significant figure in Australian media. He ran Kerry Packer’s Nine Network for a significant period during the 1980s before moving to the UK to work for Packer’s rival Rupert Murdoch in rescuing the newly established BSkyB from financial problems after the merger of Sky and British Satellite Broadcasting. In 2005 he returned to Australia as acting chief executive of Packer’s Nine Network after having received a double lung transplant.
Chisholm is currently the Chief Executive and Managing Director of British Sky Broadcasting Group and Chairman of Sky News.
Wikipedia: Philip Green
Philip Green (born 15 March 1952) is a British businessman. Green was born into a Jewish family in 1952, beginning as a businessman at the age of 15. The first and last quoted company Green took lead of was “Amber Day”, from which he stepped down as CEO and Chairman in 1992. Since then he has had links to a range of British companies; including a hostile bid for Marks and Spencer and the management of the Arcadia Group, both alongside or supporting his wife. He has been involved in a range of controversies related to both his personal and business life.
Google Books
Virtual Murdoch:
Reality wars on the information highway
By Neil Chenoweth
London: Secker & Warburg
2001
Pg. 99:
“Winners have parties, losers have meetings,” he (Sam Chisholm—ed.) told staff.
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
Big Jim snaps after not-so-happy snaps
By Kate McClymont
August 10 2002
(...)
As Chisholm quipped in Gerald Stone’s book Compulsive Viewing, The Inside Story of Packer’s Nine Network, “Winners have parties; losers have meetings.”
Broadcasting & Cable
Lyle’s Reality: A Channel To Program
Fine-tunes unscripted fare on new Fox cable network
By Anne Becker—Broadcasting & Cable, 6/12/2005 8:00:00 PM
From Australia to America, he has heard it called “factual entertainment” and “emotainment” and “lifestyle programming.” But to David Lyle, it’s all reality TV.
(...)
As he rose in the ranks at Nine, Lyle at one point worked under international-TV vet Sam Chisholm, who taught Lyle a mantra he still tries to follow: “Winners have parties, losers have meetings.”
The Guardian (UK)
Sentimental journey of TV’s tough guy
Former BSkyB chief Chisholm heads for London and its ‘amazing’ television
Cosima Marriner
The Guardian, Wednesday 15 June 2005 20.54 EDT
Half a world away in Australia, Sam Chisholm is missing London. He misses his Hyde Park apartment, his local boozer, the Enterprise, and Langan’s Brasserie. He misses Tottenham Hotspur football club, of which he was a director. The TV executive misses English humour and manners. Not least, he misses the broadcasting. “British broadcasting is amazing,” he sighs.
(...)
The purse-strings are tighter at the network these days but Chisholm’s notoriously hard-nosed ways haven’t changed. “Winners have parties, losers have meetings”, and “To err is human, to forgive is not my policy” are just two memorable Chisholm aphorisms.
Management Today
Remember this
Tuesday, 09 January 2007
‘Successful companies have parties. Unsuccessful ones have meetings.’ - Sir Philip Green said it.
The Engaging Brand
Mar 14, 2007
Meetings or Parties?
by Anna Farmery
(...)
I came across this quote that I love from Sir Phillip Green, a UK entrepreneur
“Successful companies have parties, Unsuccessful ones have meetings”
I love that!
Bexhill News - Bexhill Observer (East Sussex, UK)
Caring for the Elderly
Published on Friday 7 November 2008 08:55
(...)
In doing so he reminded them of the words of Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates: “Successful businesses have parties. Unsuccessful businesses have meetings…”
Manchester (UK) Evening News
Scott Mathie column: Losers have meetings, winners have parties
December 03, 2011
(...)
There’s a phrase in rugby circles, ‘losers have meetings, winners have parties’. No doubt we all enjoy the latter a whole lot more. However, the analysis process for every team is an important one which helps us identify and better manage the problem areas in our game.
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
Edmund Capon, an unlikely choice, was a risk worth taking
By Joyce Morgan.
December 17, 2011.
(...)
He approves of the adage that ‘‘successful people don’t have meetings, they have parties’‘.
’‘Meetings on the whole are for people who can’t make a decision. I still have great faith in the wit and humour of the individual,’’ he says.