Ag Leadership Quotes

Strategy needn’t be mysterious. Conceptually, it is simple and straightforward. It requires clear and hard thinking, real creativity, courage, and personal leadership.

But the truth is, true leadership requires understanding those you lead, making the best choices for them, and most of all, convincing them when they don’t realize what’s best for them. Leadership is about moments like this, when the people you’re charged with protecting have doubts, when the odds are against you.

Leadership is about moments like this, when the people you’re charged with protecting have doubts, when the odds are against you.

In leadership that 20/20 vision sometimes becomes 20/40 or 30/50 depending on how close you are to the situation. To my AG Warrior I may never meet thank you for your efforts in writing the prescription to reestablish the 20/20 for the good of the group.

A milestone moment in the career of a AG Warrior is when you can not only say but truly believe it doesn't matter who gets the credit if the team wins and you leave organizations healthier than you arrived no matter how small the positive might appear. Let that marinate and if you've already arrived at that special place in the cradle of the best supporting the rest let me hear from you. Train your best to overcome any test.

But the truth is, true leadership requires understanding those you lead, making the best choices for them, and most of all, convincing them when they don’t realize what’s best for them. Leadership is about moments like this, when the people you’re charged with protecting have doubts, when the odds are against you. Every morning, the crew gathers on the bridge. Oscar and

with my vision of the world, believing the world would follow me. But the truth is, true leadership requires understanding those you lead, making the best choices for them, and most of all, convincing them when they don’t realize what’s best for them. Leadership is about moments like this, when the people you’re charged with protecting have doubts, when the odds are against you.

Typically, in an acquisition, all the focus is on integration, on synergies, and on getting the right leadership in place. But synergy is not strategy. Strategy mattered most. We believed that P&G and Gillette were a good strategic fit and that Gillette’s capabilities married well with P&G’s. We believed that P&G could leverage that common ground to build new capabilities where it needed them.

could you configure your capabilities to enable your company to meet the needs of customers in a distinctively valuable way, underpinning a potential differentiation strategy? Or, at a minimum, could you configure your capabilities to enable the company to match competitors in meeting the needs of customers, underpinning a potential cost-leadership strategy? In other words, how could your capabilities be configured to translate to a measurable, sustainable competitive advantage?

I met with every president every month initially (every quarter by year ten) to work on strategy, leadership, and personnel issues. The presidents and I addressed a joint agenda collaboratively.

Companies that succeed have a founder or a leadership team that fundamentally understands their customers, sometimes even better than customers know themselves. They imagine what the customer wants before they know they want it, and they package it in a way that is irresistible. And, they manage well. xTV had the vision, but not the discipline.

growing, like a storm on the horizon, gathering, the echo of thunder distant but present. For whatever reason, it doesn’t affect me. I am certain that there is something out there, waiting for us. We press on, into the darkness, barreling at maximum speed, the three nuclear warheads on our ship armed and ready. I feel like Ahab hunting the white whale. I am a man possessed. When I launched into space aboard the Pax, my life was empty. I didn’t know Emma. My brother was a stranger to me. I had no family, no friends. Only Oscar. Now I have something to lose. Something to live for. Something to fight for. My time in space has changed me. When I left Earth the first time, I was still the rebel scientist the world had cast out. I felt like an outsider, a renegade. Now I have become a leader. I’ve learned to read people, to try to understand them. That was my mistake before. I trudged ahead with my vision of the world, believing the world would follow me. But the truth is, true leadership requires understanding those you lead, making the best choices for them, and most of all, convincing them when they don’t realize what’s best for them. Leadership is about moments like this, when the people you’re charged with protecting have doubts, when the odds are against you. Every morning, the crew gathers on the bridge. Oscar and Emma strap in on each side of me and we sit around the table and everyone gives their departmental updates. The ship is operating at peak efficiency. So is the crew. Except for the elephant in the room. “As you know,” I begin, “we are still on course for Ceres. We have not ordered the other ships in the Spartan fleet to alter course. The fact that the survey drones have found nothing, changes nothing. Our enemy is advanced. Sufficiently advanced to alter our drones and hide itself. With that said, we should discuss the possibility that there is, in fact, nothing out there on Ceres. We need to prepare for that eventuality.” Heinrich surveys the rest of the crew before speaking. “It could be a trap.” He’s always to the point. I like that about him. “Yes,” I reply, “it could be. The entity, or harvester, or whatever is out there, could be manufacturing the solar cells elsewhere—deeper in the solar system, or from another asteroid in the belt. It could be sending the solar cells to Ceres and then toward the sun, making them look as though they were manufactured on Ceres. There could be a massive bomb or attack drones waiting for us at Ceres.” “We could split our fleet,

But the truth is, true leadership requires understanding those you lead, making the best choices for them, and most of all, convincing them when they don’t realize what’s best for them.

An example that brings these elements to life comes from P&G Asia, where the leadership team has made creating an innovation culture a fundamental organizational strategy. They use the concept of “IDEAS” to emphasize the need for out-of-the-box ideas as a source of game-changing innovation, as well as a reminder of the behaviors required to create a more innovative culture. Inclusive: Reaping benefits of diverse thinking and ideas needed to foster game-changing innovation Decisive: Eliminating organizational swirl, debate, and overanalysis to enable faster innovation development, qualification, and commercialization External: Externally focused to get and stay in touch with consumers, customers, suppliers, and the need for honest and objective benchmarking versus external competition Agile: Quickly reacting to changing consumer and marketplace conditions, being forward-thinking, becoming more comfortable with taking (calculated) risks Simple: Ongoing streamlining and simplification of work structures/processes to free up more time for innovation

When working on innovation, you can’t rely on numbers alone as most innovations have never been done before. Innovation leadership requires relying more on personal instinct and developing experienced judgment. The more diverse the experiences, the better the instincts and judgment of the innovation leader. It is important to include an element that ensures an individual continues to build experience across a variety of innovation situations with increased complexity, increased uncertainty, and increased risk.

P&G’s entire corporate strategy now fits on one piece of paper. Every conversation at P&G begins with goals and strategies. It’s a fundamental discipline that focuses leadership and expands the capability of the organization. Clear and simple strategies are easy to deploy and easier to execute with more consistent, more sustainable results.

For innovation to have a payoff—for it to generate sustainable organic sales and profit growth—it must be integrated into how you run your business: its overall purpose, goals and strategies, structure and systems, leadership and culture.

Inspiring leadership No organization can work without leadership. In the integrated process of innovation, it is the leaders who link all the drivers of innovation together, energize people, and inspire them to new heights. Leaders are instigators. They continually look over the horizon to gauge the changing landscape in their industry. They set the goals that are stretching but achievable and require innovation.

P&G’s managerial breakthrough was to conceive of and implement innovation as an integrated process based on the idea of customer is boss. Many think of innovation as serendipitous, risky, and not as manageable as other business processes. The P&G experience clearly demonstrates that innovation can be part of a leader’s day-today routine. This is a huge step forward in the practice of leadership, especially the ability to drive organic growth day in and day out.

The P&G leadership also made a seminal change in the psyche and working of the organization. P&G changed from a technology-push innovation model to a customer-pull one. This is a radical change in the way a company works and is based on making operational the new approach of customer is boss.

Innovation is about “just-enough structure.” While some level of structure is needed, there is a balance that must be achieved between structure and creativity. The leadership skill is finding the right balance.