Does that mean that we should never hire or promote an inexperienced manager who had not already learned to do what needs to be done in this assignment? The answer: it depends. In a start-up company where there are no processes in place to get things done, then everything that is done must be done by individual people–resources. In this circumstance, it would be risky to draft someone with no experience to do the job–because in the absence of processes that can guide people, experienced people need to lead. But in established companies where much of the guidance to employees is provided by processes, and is less dependent upon managers with detailed, hands-on experience, then it makes sense to hire or promote someone who needs to learn from experience.
- Clayton M. Christensen
Notable Quotables
Go from me to we. This is the job of every leader.
- Magic Johnson and David Novak
You don’t want to negotiate the price of simple things you buy every day.
- Jeff Bezos
You must not ever think that anything is common sense.
- Clay Clark
God has amazing things in your future.
- Joel Olsteen
[In February 2011] We’ve not done a lot of marketing whatsoever. A lot of it has just been word of mouth.
- Jack Dorsey
We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a knowledge workers should not take on work, jobs and assignments. It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.
- Peter Drucker
To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.
- Peter Drucker
I’ve always been fascinated by cities and how they work. And I taught myself how to program so I can understand how the city works.
- Jack Dorsey
20% of what you do accounts for 80% of your results
- Brian Tracy
If I do you a favor you will reciprocate even in greater measure if possible. Through the proper use of this law / can get you to do whatever I wish you to do. If I wish you to dislike me and to lend your influence toward damaging me, I can accomplish this result by inflicting upon you the sort of treatment that I want you to inflict upon me through retaliation.
- Napoleon Hill
But no parties could live under such labels as Petitioners and Abhorrers. Instead of naming themselves they named each other. The term “Whig” had described a sour, bigoted, canting, money-grubbing Scots Presbyterian. Irish Papist bandits ravaging estates and manor-houses had been called “Tories”.
- Winston Churchill
I was taken by the power that savoring a simple cup of coffee can have to connect people and create community.
- Howard Schultz
China gets their oil from Libya. Why isn’t China involved? They’re going out spending billions of dollars a day on trying to take over the world economically. And we’re spending billions and billions and billions of dollars on policing the world. Why isn’t China involved with Libya? That – we don’t get oil from Libya, China does.
- Donald Trump
Direct results always come first. In the care and feeding of an organization, they play the role calories play in the nutrition of the human body.
- Peter Drucker
From my experience, there are so many regulations for investing in the United States that they become an impediment, a barrier to investing.
- Michael Otto
Do it. Try it. Fix it.
- Sam Walton
The thing that motivates me is a very common form of motivation. And that is, with other folks counting on me, it’s so easy to be motivated.
- Jeff Bezos
If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel you.
- Dale Carnegie
Today, getting people to hear your story on social media, and then act on it, requires using a platform’s native language, paying attention to context, understanding the nuances and subtle differences that make each platform unique, and adapting your content to match.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
What if there were no longer only two sides? Not just capital versus labor, but a third team, one that straddled elements of both? I think there’s a huge opportunity for a third kind of participant, a linchpin, and now there is an opportunity to change all the rules that we’ve lived with all our lives. There is a shortage of this third kind of worker, and that shortage means that the market needs you desperately. The con game is ending, at least for people passionate enough to do something about it.
- Seth Godin
The fishing is best where the fewest go, and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone else is aiming for base hits. There is just less competition for bigger goals.
- Timothy Ferriss
The AIDS is a disease that is hard to talk about.
- Bill Gates
You can change your world by changing your words… Remember, death and life are in the power of the tongue.
- Joel Olsteen
The dangers of unchecked bureauracy are a constant thorn in the CEO’s side.
- Jack Welch
We’re talking about changing every aspect of our lives.
- John Chambers
Men like a ref decision because they just want to get back to the game.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
- Socrates
I’d like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that’s not just e-mail with a view.
- Elon Musk
So the rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous advantage.
- Dale Carnegie
Always go to the expert.
- Jack Nadel
About 80% of our locations are second-generation. In other words, the building used to be, say, a Wal-Mart that moved out to become a Super Wal-Mart, or a Kmart that closed. It seems that such a site becomes available almost every year in every city.
- David Green
You learn more in failure than you ever do in success.
- Jay-Z
Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory, nor defeat.
- James C. Collins
The difference between a stranger sending you a message that you might be interested in at a very low volume level, no repetition, just sending it to very few people, and that being done as spam – those things get close enough that you want to be careful never to filter out something that’s legitimate.
- Bill Gates
I don’t believe that government is good at picking technology, particularly technology that is changing. By the time you get it done and go through democracy, it’s so outdated.
- Michael Bloomberg
Sam hired me in 1970 as a district manager in charge of new store openings. He had eighteen Wal-Marts and some variety stores doing about $31 million a year. I moved my family and as the van was unloading furniture into our rented house, they called from the office and said, Can you set up this new store in Missouri? My wife, who had three babies and a moving van to deal with, helped me find some clothes and I left. I didn’t see her again for two weeks. Then there was a managers’ meeting so I didn’t see her again for two more weeks. It would be safe to say that in those days we all worked a minimum of 16 hours a day.
- Jack Shewmaker
The most obvious market segment in email-based payments was the millions of emigrants still using Western Union to wire money to their families back home. Our product made that effortless, but the transactions were too infrequent.
- Peter Thiel
You want to have a future where you’re expecting things to be better, not one where you’re expecting things to be worse.
- Elon Musk
I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.
- Winston Churchill
I believe God’s keeping the records, and I believe you will be rewarded even in this life. Somehow, someway, God will make it up to you. It may be He protected you from an accident you never knew. You can’t give God something without God giving you more in return, whether it’s peace or joy or satisfaction.
- Joel Olsteen
Do you remember the things you were worrying about a year ago? How did they work out? Didn’t you waste a lot of fruitless energy on account of most of them? Didn’t most of them turn out all right after all?
- Dale Carnegie
Indecision is the seedling of fear.
- Napoleon Hill
Bordeaux would be naive not to recognize that Robert Parker was driving the brand equity. If the next generation doesn’t care about Chateau Pichon-Lalande, then you have a problem.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Don’t buy preground coffee.
- Howard Schultz
Remember the proverb of Solomon: “He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand; but the hand of the diligent maketh rich.
- P.T. Barnum
You can be in the storm, but don’t let the storm get in you.
- Joel Olsteen
A successful manager told me that stopped wearing a watch. She found that the work was so immersive, anchoring it to whatever hour it happened to be was pointless. The watch reminded her of the rigors of appointments and the status quo, while her goal was to be there, right here, right now, in the moment, and to do the work in front of her. The watch had no role in doing that right, so, for now, it’s gone.
- Seth Godin
The most common cause of fear of old age is associated with the possibility of poverty.
- Napoleon Hill
My strength is programming. I also think my biggest strength is simplification. That’s what I love doing.
- Jack Dorsey
You may have heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There’s another day you might want to know about: Giving Tuesday. The idea is pretty straightforward. On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, shoppers take a break from their gift-buying and donate what they can to charity.
- Bill Gates
People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.
- Zig Ziglar
You can be happy where you are.
- Joel Olsteen
I am results-oriented.
- Bill Gates
The McDonald brothers were simply not on my wavelength at all. I was obsessed with the idea of making McDonald’s the biggest and the best. They were content with what they had, they didn’t want to be bothered with more risks and more demands.
- Ray Kroc
Learn to say No to the good so that you can say Yes to your best.
- John Maxwell
Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, ‘Too much of a good thing can be wonderful’.
- Warren Buffett
The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong questionl
- Peter Drucker
No, markets weren’t “efficient” at finding the truth; they were just very efficient at converging on a conclusion—often the wrong conclusion.
- Ben Horowitz
The great thing is we’re going to have a lot of new facilities, where the others were 10 years old or older. That’s a plus for the fans. The new State Road 20 is going to open. That’s a huge addition for us, probably one of the biggest things that’s happened since we bought the track in 1990.
- Ed Clark
My general attitude to life is to enjoy every minute of every day. I never do anything with a feeling of, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to do this today.’
- Richard Branson
We all need a daily checkup from the neck up to avoid stinkin’ thinkin’ which ultimately leads to hardening of the attitudes.
- Zig Ziglar
I have made the tough decisions, always with an eye toward the bottom line. Perhaps it’s time America was run like a business.
- Donald Trump
You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.
- Bill Cosby
No one’s going to be able to operate without a grounding in the basic sciences. Language would be helpful, although English is becoming increasingly international. And travel. You have to have a global attitude.
- Rupert Murdoch
The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren’t thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about – they weren’t putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home.
- Jeff Bezos
I enjoy the competition and the process of learning as we compete. The whole thing is just fascinating. I don’t know what I’ll do when I retire. When I go sailing, I look around … anyone want to race? I just love competing as opposed to just going out and watching the sunset.
- Larry Ellison
Never, give in! Never give in! Never, never, never… In nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions or honor and good sense!
- Winston Churchill
In the journey of entrepreneurship, tenacity of purpose is supreme.
- Aliko Dangote
Buddha said: ‘Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love,’ and a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person’s viewpoint.
- Dale Carnegie
No effort has been spared in ensuring the best designs for all our projects.
- Lee Shau Kee
Stop doing things that waste time. Don’t replace time with your family or things that you need to do. I needed to put together two fantasy teams this weekend because that’s something I enjoy, but I did stop playing Nintendo Wii for hours on end.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you’re too inefficient.
- Sam Walton
Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.
- Winston Churchill
Experience has proven that the best educated people are often those who are known as self-made, or self-educated. It takes more than a college degree to make one a person of education. Any person who is educated is one who has learned to get whatever he wants in life without violating the rights of others. Education consists no so much of knowledge, but of knowledge effectively and peristently applied. Men are paid nor merely for tha they know, but more particulary for what they do with that which they know.
- Napoleon Hill
Most people already know what they’re doing wrong. When I get them to church I want to tell them that you can change.
- Joel Olsteen
When I’m bored or tired of being blonde, I’ll throw on a wig. It’s a lot less of a permanent way to change your look, and I have about 10 – all different colors, shapes, bobs, long hair, short, feathered.
- Sara Blakely
Anytime you look at anything that’s considered artistic, there’s a commercial world around it: the ballet, opera, any kind of music. It can’t exist without it.
- Steve Martin
I may be wrong. I frequently am. Let’s examine the facts.
- Dale Carnegie
The people of Southwest have always been my pride, my joy and my love. Their indomitable dedication and esprit de corps have taken Southwest from a three-airplane dream to a 500-airplane reality.
- Herb Kelleher
It’s true that every great entrepreneur is first and foremost a designer.
- Peter Thiel
Any time a company grows as fast as Wal-Mart has, pockets of duplication are going to build up, and there will be areas of the business which we may no longer need. No boss or employee really likes to dwell on such matters; it’s only human nature not to want to have your job, or the jobs of the people who work for you, eliminated. But it is absolutely the responsibility of a company’s top management to be thinking about this issue all the time – to ensure the sound future for the overall company.
- Sam Walton
End-user buyers re-emerged in the market at a time when local commercial banks were keen to offer preferential terms for home mortgage loan business.
- Lee Shau Kee
Our people, our shareholders, me, Bill Gates, we expect to change the world in every way, to succeed wildly at everything we touch, to have the broadest impact of any company in the world.
- Steve Ballmer
One day, I’d like to write a book about the worst ads ever run, but my fear is that it would be too long.
- Seth Godin
We’ve grown from 18% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry to 23% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry over the last five years. Profits are up over 70%, where the industry profit is up about 35%. Pretty good.
- Steve Ballmer
Luke: What’s in there? Yoda: Only what you take with you.
- Yoda
Music, even with these dial-up connections you have to the Internet, is very practical to download.
- Bill Gates
We’re seeing an explosion in new approaches, new models and new forms of interaction. This growth comes from change, insight and exploration, not obedience.
- Seth Godin
There’s no substitute for a full-time dad. Dads who are fully engaged with their kids overwhelmingly tend to produce children who believe in themselves and live full lives.
- Tony Dungy
Time has its role to play in one’s behaviour and how one conducts himself in society. With the passage of time, we master our lives better and become more refined and polished, step by step.
- Cheng Yu-tung
When I was growing up, I always knew I’d be in the top of my class in math, and that gave me a lot of self-confidence.
- Sergey Brin
Thee may be some concern about rising inflation, shortage of labour and increased trade protectionism but the economy is generally in good shape.
- Cheng Yu-tung
A Timid Trapeze Artist Is a Dead Trapeze Artist.
- Seth Godin
Just as ships are built to sail the seas and planes to fly the heavens, so is man created for a purpose.
- Zig Ziglar
Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut.
- Winston Churchill
Before success comes in any man’s life, he’s sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That’s exactly what the majority of men do.
- Napoleon Hill
After Scour, I started a company called Red Swoosh. The idea was to take those litigants who sued us for a huge amount of money and turn them into customers with the same technology. I wanted to get them to pay me. It was a revenge business.
- Travis Kalanick
The best way a mentor can prepare another leader is to expose him or her to other great people.
- John C. Maxwell
I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
