"Experience teaches only the teachable."
- Aldous Huxley
"Study the hard while it's easy.
Do big things while they are small.
The hardest jobs in the world start out easy,
the great affairs of the world start small.
So the wise soul, by never dealing with great things, gets great things done."
- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
- Thomas Edison
"The capacity to imagine exciting future possibilities is the defining competence of leaders."
- James Kouzes and Barry Posner
"The future will be vibrant for those who don't hunker down into business as usual, but rather, rise up and develop 'next practices' while executing today's 'best practices.' "
- Alexander Grashow, Managing Director,
Cambridge Leadership Associates
"To be a successful leader psychologically you have to be open, receptive, and active in searching for the signs that the business is being shifted or needs to be. You need to be surrounded with people whose conversations with you help you wrestle with these issues in a brutally honest manner."
- Ram Charan, Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate
People Who Perform From Those Who Don't
"A few degrees of change may not make much of a difference on a short journey, but for the long journey of life it may well put you in a completely different place."
- J.D. Hunter, The Servant
"Declarations of a fixed opinion, and of determined resolution never to change it, neither enlighten nor convince us. Positiveness and warmth on one side, naturally beget their like on the other."
- Benjamin Franklin, during the Constitutional Convention of 1787
"Listening is such a simple act. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don't have to do anything else. We don't have to advise, or coach, or sound wise. We just have to be willing to sit there and listen."
- Margaret J. Wheatley
"We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions."
- Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904 - 1991)
"Regardless of the industry, however, a new golden rule is emerging: Always strive to be the best at what your customers value most, and partner for everything else."
- Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams,
in Wikinomics:
How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
- Charles Darwin
"The speed with which a complex project is perfected is directly proportional to the number of informed people working on it."
- Eric S. Raymond, as summarized by Marshall Poe
in "The Hive," The Atlantic, September, 2006
"Leaders conceive and articulate goals that lift people out of their petty preoccupations, carry them above the conflicts that tear a society apart, and unite them in pursuit of objectives worthy of their best efforts."
- John W. Gardner, former Secretary of Health,
Education, and Welfare and leadership expert
"The way to make change is to first accept reality. The way to move on is to accept where you are. As long as you fight your present, you won't have the energy to move toward the future. Once you accept reality, all your energy is available to make change."
- Ichak Adizes
"History lessons for leaders:
1. No company is too big to grow.
2. No industry is 100 percent mature; there are always markets that are not fully penetrated.
3. No market is safe, because there's always someone who can come along and redefine it.
4. No company is too successful to fail."
- Every Business Can Be a Growth Business,
Ram Charan & Noel Tich
"Spend 10 percent of your time talking about where you've been; 30 percent
about where you are and why; and 60 percent talking about where you're going
and how you're going to get there."
- David Freeland, Watson Wyatt Worldwide
"The problem with our time is that the future is not what it used to be."
- Paul Valery, French romantic poet & writer
