Quotes About Development

These results stand in sharp contrast to the hype that microfinance has attracted in development policy circles. They throw cold water on models that suggest lack of access to finance is among the most important constraints that poor households face.

When economists get it right, the world gets better.

la experiencia de otros países evidencia que los bajos niveles de exportación y diversificación no son inexorables. Cambios considerables —y creíbles— en los incentivos a la exportación pueden generar reacciones importantes, aun cuando las exportaciones se limiten a unos cuantos cultivos tradicionales. Antes de su despegue comercial de principios de la década de los sesenta, Taiwán exportaba azúcar, arroz y poco más.

It would be many years before I began to understand that all of life is practice: writing, driving, hiking, brushing teeth, packing lunch boxes, making beds, cooking dinner, making love, walking dogs, even sleeping. We are always practicing. Only practicing.

The story always starts with the character. In a way, there's no decision. If there's no character there's no story.

Developing sound policies requires seeing natural resources as dividends of sustained ecosystem productivity rather than as a stockpile of assets.

We must depend upon the Boy Scout Movement to produce the MEN of the future.

A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. —Thomas Carruthers

Even the most creative skills—especially the most creative skills—require long periods of clumsiness.

Skill is a cellular insulation that wraps neural circuits and that grows in response to certain signals.

to get good, it's helpful to be willing, or even enthusiastic, about being bad. Baby steps are the royal road to skill.

To sum up: it's time to rewrite the maxim that practice makes perfect. The truth is, practice makes myelin, and myelin makes perfect.

Master teachers and coaches don't stand in front; they stand alongside the individuals they're helping. They don't give long speeches; they deliver useful information in small, vivid chunks.

After all, you aren't built to be transformed in a single day. You are built to improve little by little, connection by connection, rep by rep. As Wooden also said, "Don't look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That's the only way it happens—and when it happens, it lasts.

What ignited the progress wasn't any innate skill or gene. It was a small, ephemeral, yet powerful idea: a vision of their ideal future selves, a vision that oriented, energized, and accelerated progress, and that originated in the outside world.

Build a Wall Between Performance Review and Professional Development:

Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, who run a leadership consultancy, analyzed 3,492 participants in a manager development program and found that the most effective listeners do four things: 1. They interact in ways that make the other person feel safe and supported 2. They take a helping, cooperative stance 3. They occasionally ask questions that gently and constructively challenge old assumptions 4. They make occasional suggestions to open up alternative paths

The staggering babies embody the deepest truth about deep practice: to get good, it's helpful to be willing, or even enthusiastic, about being bad. Baby steps are the royal road to skill.

GIVE A NEW SKILL A MINIMUM OF EIGHT WEEKS

Give a mediocre idea to a good team, and they'll find a way to make it better. The goal needs to be to get the team right, get them moving in the right direction, and get them to see where they are making mistakes and where they are succeeding.

One does not become a master coach by accident.

If you have early success, do your best to ignore the praise and keep pushing yourself to the edges of your ability, where improvement happens. If you don't have early success, don't quit. Instead, treat your early efforts as experiments, not as verdicts. Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint.

The truth is, when you are starting out, you do not "play" tennis; you struggle and fight and pay attention and slowly get better. The truth is, we learn in staggering-baby steps. Effort-based language works because it speaks directly to the core of the learning experience, and when it comes to ignition, there's nothing more powerful.

We're prewired to imitate," Anders Ericsson says. "When you put yourself in the same situation as an outstanding person and attack a task that they took on, it has a big effect on your skill.