| "I'd
rather be approximately right than perfectly wrong."
|
| —Warren
Buffett, October 2, 2008, speaking in support of the federal
government purchase
of distressed assets from financial institutions.
|
 |
|
"If you
can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't
know what you are doing."
|
| —W.
Edwards Deming |
|
| "94%
of business problems are the result of the process. 6%
are caused by people. Where will you put your improvement
efforts?" |
| —W.
Edwards Deming |
|
| "Tell
me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and
I'll understand." |
| —Chinese
Proverb |
|
| "Growth
means change, and change means risk, stepping from the known
to the unknown." |
| —Albert
Einstein |
|
| "The
key measurements that are the best indicators of a company's
health are (in priority order): 1.) employee engagement, 2.)
customer satisfaction, and 3.) cash flow. Employee engagement
first. It goes without saying that no company, small or
large, can win over the long run without energized employees
who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it."
|
| —Jack
Welch, May 21, 2006 Business Week |
|
| "The
credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose
face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly,
who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great
enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy
cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if
he fails at least fails daring greatly so that his place shall
never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory
nor defeat." |
| —Theodore
Roosevelt |
|
|
"Some people
try to fend off disruptive forces of change by denouncing
or ignoring them. But in this new environment, confronting
reality has to become a leadership priority of the highest
order - a nonnegotiable behavior for everyone at all levels
of the organization.
Those who anticipate
trouble and opportunity ... are always looking for new information
- ideas, viewpoints, theories, scenarios. They want
to hear what customers, suppliers, and people outside their
industries think. They know that they can never know
enough."
|
| —Confronting
Reality, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan |
|
| "Whenever
you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous
decision ." |
| —Peter
F. Drucker |
|
|
"By its
very nature, a manager's job leaves little room for reflection.
The results? Contrary to what we might hope to hear,
managers tend to ignore or postpone dealing with the organization's
most crucial issues ... The real problem is that
even though executives know what to do, they simply do not
do those things. Instead, they spend their time spinning
their wheels, attending meetings and responding to every little
query and problem - anything but accomplishing the mission
with which they were charged in the first place."
|
| —A
Bias for Action, Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghosal |
|
| "Good
is the enemy of great. And that is one of the
key reasons why we have so little that becomes
great. We don’t have great schools, principally
because we have good schools. We don’t
have great government, principally because we
have good government. Few people attain great
lives, in large part because it is just so easy
to settle for a good life. The vast majority
of companies never become great, precisely because
the vast majority of them become quite good – and
that is the main problem." |
| —Good
to Great, Jim Collins, 2001 |
|
| "An
invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time
has come." |
| —Victor
Hugo |
|
| "Be
the change that you want to see in the world." |
| —Mahatma
Gandhi |
|
| "Change
is the unpleasant task of dealing with that which we have been
denying..." |
| —The
Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life, Twyla Tharp 2004
|
|
| "A politician thinks of the next election;
a statesman of the next generation." |
| —James Clark |
|
| "The
obscure we see eventually, the completely apparent takes longer."
|
| —Edward
R. Murrow, Broadcaster |
|
| "Always
do right - this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
|
| —Mark
Twain |
|
| "If indeed you must be candid, be
candid beautifully." |
| —Kahlil Gibran |
|
