Quotes About Leadership

Consciously or unconsciously, you may choose to delay by burying yourself in other work or fool yourself into believing that the time isn't ripe to make the call. The result is what leadership thinkers have termed work avoidance: the tendency to avoid taking the bull by the horns, which results in tough problems becoming even tougher.1

the ability to delegate lies at the heart of leadership.3 Regardless of where you land in the organization, the keys to effective delegation remain pretty much the same: you build a team of competent people whom you trust, you establish goals and metrics through which you can monitor people's progress, you translate higher-level goals into specific responsibilities for your direct reports, and you reinforce them through some sort of management-by-objectives process.

Leaders who are onboarding into new organizations must therefore focus on learning and adapting to the new culture.

Having PMs go out and get certified as ScrumMasters is not sufficient. If a PM mind-set remains, the person will never become a ScrumMaster.

All right," said Spiff. "Now this is what I say, anyone who thinks they've got a better plan can say so afterwards.

Ideas are commodity. Execution of them is not.

I don't know why people aren't more curious, and why curiosity isn't considered a more important leadership trait. A journalist once asked me if I was ever bored as a kid. I only had to think about it for a second: I never was, not even for a minute, because I was so curious. Every day I'd wake up excited by all the new things there were to learn about.

In extraordinary circumstances and against the odds, Churchill became Prime Minister instead of Halifax, and that one decision changed the course of history.

You talk about a tide of history. Well, there are some occasions when one man seems to stand his ground and just refuses to accept getting washed away. That's how we arrogant Americans won the New World. And that's how you, Mr Churchill, have saved the Old World. But for you, the whole of Europe would by now be one vast concentration camp. Nobody's ever going to forget that.

JFK's great virtue, and the essential difference between him and George W. Bush, was that he had an instinctive appreciation for the chaotic forces of history.

A prime minister can chose his friends and his Cabinet but not his relatives. Part Chairman Lord Williams

The time for change is when it can no longer be resisted. In other words, when you have a man by the balls and are pulling hard, he will invariably follow in your footsteps.

La política requiere sacrificio. El sacrificio de los demás, por supuesto.

When the invitation came for Graham to return to the Soviet Union two years later in 1984, he would get the chance to lead a crusade through four cities and give twenty-three sermons in twelve days. By then, he knew how to order his steps.

If your business depends on you, you don't own a business—you have a job. And it's the worst job in the world because you're working for a lunatic!

A true business opportunity is the on that an entrepreneur invents to grow him or herself. Not to work in, but to work on.

Delegating your accountabilities is abdication

Tolerance for failure is a very specific part of the excellent company culture—and that lesson comes directly from the top. Champions have to make lots of tries and consequently suffer some failures or the organization won't learn. Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. In Search of Excellence

To The Manager, then, The Technician becomes a problem to be managed. To The Technician, The Manager becomes a meddler to be avoided. To both of them, The Entrepreneur is the one who got them into trouble in the first place!

most businesses are operated according to what the owner wants as opposed to what the business needs.

The challenge of developing or reestablishing a clear strategy is often primarily an organizational one and depends on leadership. With so many forces at work against making choices and tradeoffs in organizations, a clear intellectual framework to guide strategy is a necessary counterweight. Moreover, strong leaders willing to make choices are essential. In

Managers at lower levels lack the perspective and the confidence to maintain a strategy. There will be constant pressures to compromise, relax trade-offs, and emulate rivals. One of the leader's jobs is to teach others in the organization about strategy—and to say no. Strategy

Managers must clearly distinguish operational effectiveness from strategy.

MOST COMPANIES OWE THEIR INITIAL success to a unique strategic position involving clear trade-offs. Activities once were aligned with that position.