A strength is what you do that makes you feel strengthened.
Authenticity is your most precious commodity as a leader.
What do we know to be important but are unable to measure?
Gen Y is really quite distinct from Gen X; it’s really self-involved and very narcissistic – their cameras are filled with pictures of themselves; Facebook, it’s about me. It’s a generation that’s been pampered by their parents and their schools, given prizes for just taking part.
Great leaders rally people to a better future.
Clarity is the preoccupation of the effective leader. If you do nothing else as a leader, be clear.
Passion isn’t something that lives way up in the sky, in abstract dreams and hopes. It lives at ground level, in the specific details of what you’re actually doing every day.
You won’t find a CEO who doesn’t talk about a ‘powerful culture’ as a source of competitive advantage. At the same time, you’d be hard-pressed to find a CEO who has much of a clue about the strength of that culture.
Discover what you don’t like doing and stop doing it.
You will excel only by maximizing your strengths, never by fixing your weaknesses.
We’re all filled with naturally recurring patterns that make us unique – they’re called talents. And our charge is to bloody well use them.
We dream of having a clean house – but who dreams of actually doing the cleaning? We don’t have to dream about doing the work, because doing the work is always within our grasp; the dream, in this sense, is to attain the goal without the work.
The best way to find out whether you’re on the right path? Stop looking at the path.
It’s a special person – and personality – who can lead a start-up to soaring success and sustain that success for the long term. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg are star examples.
Remember, what you focus on expands; results follow focus.
Companies don’t have one culture. They have as many as they have supervisors or managers. You want to build a strong culture? Hold every manager accountable for the culture that he or she builds.
In most cases, no matter what it is, if you measure it and reward it, people will try to excel at it.
Sustained success means making the greatest possible impact over the longest period of time.
It’s odd that I’m a big name in America and not known in Britain.
If you want execution, hail only success. If you want creativity, hail risk, and remain neutral about success.