Great vision without great people is irrelevant.
Get the right people on the bus and in the right seat.
You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
The difference between a good leader and a great leader is humility.
If I’m going really, really fast, I can do a page of finished text a day, on average.
Not every financial company toppled during the 2008 crisis, and some seized the opportunity to take advantage of weaker competitors in the midst of the tumult.
The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconstancy. The signature of greatness is a disciplined and consistent focus on the right things.
I am completely Socratic.
The greatest leaders build organizations that, in the end, don’t need them.
I can just let my curiosity wander unleashed.
I am not failing – I am growing! Do you have the ability to reframe failure as growth in order to achieve your goals?
If you have a charismatic cause you don’t need to be a charismatic leader.
Discipline is consistency of action.
How can you succeed by helping others succeed? We succeed at our very best only when we help others succeed.
If we allow the celebrity rock-star model of leadership to triumph, we will see the decline of corporations and institutions of all types. The twentieth century was a century of greatness, but we face the very real prospect that the next century will see very few enduring great institutions.
If we only have great companies, we will merely have a prosperous society, not a great one. Economic growth and power are the means, not the definition, of a great nation.
Don’t take care of your career. Take care of your people. They will take care of your career.
The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a hiring mistake.
What separates people, Stockdale taught me, is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.
You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit. – HARRY S. TRUMAN1.