Building Teams Quotes

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There is immense power when a group of people with similar interests gets together to work toward the same goals.
Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
He who masters the power formed by a group of people working together has within his grasp one of the greatest powers known to man.
Idowu Koyenikan (All You Need Is a Ball: What Soccer Teaches Us about Success in Life and Business)
Remember teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.
Patrick Lencioni (The five dysfunctions of a team)
Coaching 101: First you build the team, and then you build the torture chamber for underperformers.
Jarod Kintz (This Book Has No Title)
Jason always tried to build a good relationship with his team. He'd learned the hard way that if somebody was going to have your back in a fight, it was better if you found some common ground and trusted each other. But Nico wasn't easy to figure out.
Rick Riordan (The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus, #4))
Remember that mentor leadership is all about serving. Jesus said, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
Tony Dungy (The Mentor Leader: Secrets to Building People and Teams That Win Consistently)
Great leaders help in building teams that work as one entity, trying to achieve the same common goal.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: "Why do I care if my high school's team wins the football game? I don't know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me... why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense." But the point is, it does make sense: It's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports.
Noam Chomsky
Security comes first from inside of you. Then, if you are very lucky, you will be in a position to find other people who also possess that same sort of security, and build some sort of family or community as a team.
Anthony Ravenscroft (Polyamory: Roadmaps for the Clueless & Hopeful)
Van Houten, I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invented anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.” A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
The purpose of data is to learn on time what is working and what is not and take any corrective actions according to that.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
There can’t be anything more fatal to a business than making decisions based on somebody else’s assumptions.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
A good marketing plan can’t be formed in just four hours. Plans are formed on extensive research.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
It’s very possible that your inexperienced intern knows more than you think, even if you have been part of the industry for over thirty years.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
If you can’t build a team that loves your company and your product the way you do, you’re going to face a hard time bringing your idea to life.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Building a team is a huge task. This task can’t be delegated to someone else. You’re the leader of your business and you have to behave like a leader for your employees.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Even though marketing is one of the building blocks of a successful business, we should make sure that our marketing is effective and productive.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
People skills are very crucial for the purpose of proper team building.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Being successful is not that tough, you just need a little mindset change.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Remember market research is like warming up. It will keep you safe from unnecessary injuries.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Market research is the process by which a business gathers and studies information related to the product or service it is providing or the market it is operating in.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
There is no alternative to market research.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
You don’t want to run your business based on mere suspicions and assumptions.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Business growth happens when people remember you.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
A successful business owner will know their business as good as they know their favorite celebrity, their partner, and even their dogs.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Market research helps you understand the need of your product in the existing market and the current competition.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Incorrect results of the market research when fed to the marketing strategy and action plans produce disastrous results.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Building an employee team or employee tribe is a little time consuming which requires little effort but in the long process of achieving business growth, it’s totally worth it.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
A team is built when your employees are inspired by the same vision and connected with the same goal.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Hiring is not as simple as you think. You have to make sure you are hiring somebody who is going to be a great fit in the kind of employee tribe you’re building.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Proper market research keeps you informed on what your competitors are doing, as well as their strengths and weaknesses.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Incorporate market research as an integral part of your business, and you’ll not just become competitive, but also profitable.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Market research is not an add-on feature, it’s a necessity for business survival and business success.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
In other words, market research is the swiss knife for the survival of any business.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Market research not only helps you in gaining competitive advantage, but also helps you in being prepared to handle any testing business times.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Become a leader that shows humility and not stubbornness.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Search engines' results aren’t always trustworthy. As a matter of fact, they can be easily manipulated.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
If we say that our office is like our second home. Then, our team should be like our second family.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
The first and the only rule of team building is employees being comfortable with each other.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Inaccurate market research always leads to a business wipe-out.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
The moment you will start considering market research as an ongoing process of your business, you will start uncovering so many hidden insights.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
You are either supporting the vision or supporting division
Saji Ijiyemi
We are adults undertaking a team-building activity in a professional capacity, so naturally we spend several minutes horsing around, striking poses with our paintball guns and making sound effects. Joshua and Sergeant Paintball watch us like orderlies at a mental facility.
Sally Thorne (The Hating Game)
Baseball isn't just a game. It's the smell of popcorn drifting in the air, the sight of bugs buzzing near the stadium lights,the roughness of the dirt beneath your cleats. It's the anticipation building in your chest as the anthem plays, the adrenaline rush when your bat cracks against the ball, and the surge of blood when the umpire shouts strike after you pitch. It's a team full of guys backing your every move, a bleacher full of people cheering you on. It's...life
Katie McGarry (Dare You To (Pushing the Limits, #2))
Growth happens in many ways, but a primary way is by giving your team authority equal to their responsibilities. This allows them to learn how to win by giving them the right to lose and, as a result, to learn from the experience
Andrew Wyatt (Pro Leadership: Establishing Your Credibility, Building Your Following and Leading With Impact)
It is great to do what you love but greater with the great team.
Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
Pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
In addition to building a strong team, you also have to motivate that team when their spirits are down, show your pride in them when they perform well, and be there when they make mistakes. You have to invest in their training and start treating them as partners in your business’ success.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Internet articles can be used to give direction to your research, but the real research will start after that. You can read The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, Economic Times, or Entrepreneur as much as you want but these still can’t replace market research.
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
Service to humanity is service to God.
Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
In 762, to symbolize and propel the new order, Al-Mansur decided to build the grand new capital of Baghdad as a massive round city. The caliph assembled an elite team of the empire’s top engineers, architects, and visionaries—notably including Zoroastrians, Christians, and Jews, such as Mashallah Ibnul-Athari.
Mohamad Jebara (The Life of the Qur'an: From Eternal Roots to Enduring Legacy)
Professionalism shouldn't be defined by a persons paycheck, role or title. It should be defined by a persons work ethic
Janna Cachola
Later, when they were almost asleep he had called out to her. 'Finke?' 'Yeah?' 'We'll make a great team. You plant. I build,
Melina Marchetta (The Piper's Son)
We email, teleconference, webinar, but we are not in the room with the people. It is a false connectedness - artificial team-building. It's like eating the menu instead of the food.
Linda Robinson (Chantepleure)
Introverts almost never cause me trouble and are usually much better at what they do than extroverts. Extroverts are too busy slapping one another on the back, team building, and making fun of introverts to get much done. Extroverts are amazed and baffled by how much some introverts get done and assume that they, the extroverts, are somehow responsible.
Mark Vonnegut
Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine. Then masturbate under the desk. The following day you will feel a deep and cohering sense of embarrassment.
Will Self
It doesn’t matter how good your engineering team is if they are not given something worthwhile to build.
Marty Cagan (Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love)
The more we are able to engage in enthusiastic disagreement with each other, the more we will be able to uncover the best in ourselves and each other.
Karen Kimsey-House (Co-Active Leadership: Five Ways to Lead)
Sign by elevator put up by computer geeks in office building: REMEMBER: FIRST YOU PILAGE, THEN YOU BURN. THOSE WHO DO NOT COMPLY WILL BE SUSPENDED FROM THE RAIDING TEAM. In Mr Perfect
Linda Howard
So how can a leader become great if they lack the natural characteristics necessary to lead? The answer is simple: a good leader builds a great team that counterbalances their weaknesses.
Jocko Willink (Leadership Strategy and Tactics: Field Manual)
You probably can’t be the Google of 2014 in terms of compensation or perks, but you can be like the Google of 1999 if you already have good answers about your mission and team.
Peter Thiel (Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future)
Often the difference between success and failure is belief.
Jon Gordon (You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life (Jon Gordon))
Leaders should never be satisfied. They must always strive to improve, and they must build that mind-set into the team. They must face the facts through a realistic, brutally honest assessment of themselves and their team’s performance. Identifying weaknesses, good leaders seek to strengthen them and come up with a plan to overcome challenges. The best teams anywhere, like the SEAL Teams, are constantly looking to improve, add capability, and push the standards higher. It starts with the individual and spreads to each of the team members until this becomes the culture, the new standard. The recognition that there are no bad teams, only bad leaders facilitates Extreme Ownership and enables leaders to build high-performance teams that dominate on any battlefield, literal or figurative.
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
Engage, educate, equip, encourage, empower, energize, and elevate. Those are the methods for maximizing the potential of any individual, team, organization, or institution for ultimate success and significance. Those are the methods of a mentor leader.
Tony Dungy (The Mentor Leader: Secrets to Building People and Teams That Win Consistently)
Working together as a team helps build a cohesive organization.
Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
The strength of every individual is the grace for great work.
Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
The value of a business is a function of how well the financial capital and the intellectual capital are managed by the human capital. You'd better get the human capital part right.
Dave Bookbinder (The NEW ROI: Return on Individuals: Do you believe that people are your company's most valuable asset?)
Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people. The management team
James C. Collins (Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't)
I tucked the keys into my pocket so they wouldn’t jingle and rushed back outside. Once out, I picked up my pace to a run. I was not a runner. I did not like to run. But I ran like I meant it. Maybe I should’ve joined the cross-country team after all because I wasn’t half bad at this. For about one stretch of sidewalk. By the time I made it to the Science building, I had cursed not only the entire cross-country team, but the sport as a whole. I had a cramp that was sending a painful jolt up my side and I could barely breathe.
Kasie West (P.S. I Like You)
A startup is a team of people on a mission, and a good culture is just what that looks like on the inside.
Peter Thiel (Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future)
There are going to be times when you can't wait for somebody. Now you're either on the bus or off the bus
Tom Wolfe (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test)
1.1.19.02.006: Team sports are mandatory in order to build character. Character is there to give purpose to team sports.
Jasper Fforde (Shades of Grey (Shades of Grey, #1))
[Team player vs team builder] Players focus on the wins and the loses. Builders focus on the team and future of the vision. Let's move our members from team player to team builder.
Janna Cachola
It does not matter who is in your team, what matters is who they will become because of you
Sunday Adelaja
Winning is a wonderful thing if you can help and respect others along the way. But if you stomp on others as you climb the ladder and treat them like losers once you reach the top, my opinion is that you debase your own humanity and undermine your team or organization.
Robert I. Sutton (The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't)
The Columbine crisis was never a hostage standoff. Eric and Dylan had no intentions of making demands. SWAT teams searched the building for over three hours, but the killers were lying dead the entire time. They had committed suicide in the library at 12:08, forty-nine minutes after beginning the attack. The killing and the terror had been real. The standoff had not.
Dave Cullen (Columbine)
The best thing you can do to come up with a lot of new ideas is to learn a lot of old ideas. Because new ideas are just connections between old ideas, the more ideas you have in your head, the more connections you’ll be able to create between them.
Yevgeniy Brikman (Hello, Startup: A Programmer's Guide to Building Products, Technologies, and Teams)
Smote.’ I haven’t gotten to use that word since my days upstairs. I kind of miss it. Lots of pomp and circumstance in a word like that.” He tapped his chin as the smile became sly. “Downstairs we just say slaughter or massacre or team-building exercise.
Rob Thurman (Trick of the Light (Trickster, #1))
Third places are those needed spaces, neither home nor work, where we are known by our names and valued for being whatever we decide to be -- the clown, the intellectual, the quiet person. Being part of a family is a wonderful thing, and I'm all for team-building at work, but having a place where you don't have to be anything to anyone makes a pleasant breather.
Wendy Welch (The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap: A Memoir of Friendship, Community, and the Uncommon Pleasure of a Good Book)
Companies that are made up of clusters of leaders will actually accelerate their growth by speeding up their rate of innovation as their competition pulls back, build better teams by investing in people while their rivals shrink training budgets, and pick up top talent as their industry peers lay people off. And so fast companies get that unsettling times are actually gifts for them and periods to get so far ahead of the competition that they can never catch up.
Robin S. Sharma (The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in)
As a leader, it is so important that your words equal your actions. It is imperative that you make sure that you go through a self-evaluation process on an almost daily basis to make sure that your actions are in line with your words. You must do what you say and say what you do.
Jon Gordon (You Win in the Locker Room First: The 7 C's to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life (Jon Gordon))
You don't treat the so-called little people poorly, because we don't have any little people here! The trainers, the managers, the secretaries, the people who work in the dorms and cafeterias and classroom buildings are all professionals, and they're all important or they wouldn't be working for Michigan football.
Bo Schembechler
Athletics lasts for such a short period of time. It ends for people. But while it lasts, it creates this make-believe world where normal rules don’t apply. We build this false atmosphere. When it’s over and the harsh reality sets in, that’s the real joke we play on people. . . . Everybody wants to experience that superlative moment, and being an athlete can give you that. It’s Camelot for them. But there’s even life after it.
H.G. Bissinger (Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, And A Dream)
What's the idea with Moonshine joining the team?" Cate leaned forward. "It's politics, Connor," she said. "Pure politics. When Barbarro persuaded Molucco to loan us out, he insisted that Moonshine come, too. He's under the impression it will be character building for him!" "Character building?" Connor exclaimed. "Are you sure that Barbarro isn't secretly hoping a Vampirate will do us all a favor and finish him off?" Bart laughed.
Justin Somper (Black Heart (Vampirates, #4))
You wanna be friends?" Click click. Was that so impossible? Was he so mad, suddenly disliked her so much again, that he didn't want to be in the same building? "Yes." "Friends like before or after we had sex on the floor?" Her thumb stopped. "Before." "Not interested." "Why?" "Because I don't want to be your friend." "Oh." She swallowed her disappointment. It might be for the best, but she suddenly didn't want what was for the best. She didn't want to hate Sam and have Sam hate her. What choice did she have? "Okay." "I want to be your lover. I can't pretend I don't want more. I want to be with you, Autumn. I want to get you naked and throw your legs over my shoulders" She dropped the pen. "I want to leave a mark on the inside of your thigh.
Rachel Gibson (Any Man of Mine (Chinooks Hockey Team, #6))
The Engineering Question Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements? 2. The Timing Question Is now the right time to start your particular business? 3. The Monopoly Question Are you starting with a big share of a small market? 4. The People Question Do you have the right team? 5. The Distribution Question Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product? 6. The Durability Question Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future? 7. The Secret Question Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see?
Peter Thiel (Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future)
a team of Japanese engineers had recently tried to build a 35-feet-high replica of the Great Pyramid (rather smaller than the original, which was 481 feet 5 inches in height). The team started off by limiting itself strictly to techniques proved by archaeology to have been in use during the Fourth Dynasty. However, construction of the replica under these limitations turned out to be impossible and, in due course, modern earth-moving, quarrying and lifting machines were brought to the site. Still no worthwhile progress was made. Ultimately, with some embarrassment, the project had to be abandoned.175
Graham Hancock (The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant)
...as of this moment there's the police department way, the federal law enforcement way, the military way... and my way. If you want me to function at my best then you're going to have to accept that I'm going to have to make up some of my own rules. I don't know enough about your playbook and, quite frankly, I don't like the way you operate. If I'm not a cop anymore then I'm something else, something new. Okay, then from here on out I'll decide what that is; and that includes building, shaping, and leading my team. My team, my rules.
Jonathan Maberry (Patient Zero (Joe Ledger, #1))
#TeamLightSkin vs. #TeamDarkSkin… REALLY, are you serious? To the black females that participate in this garbage, shame on you! Yes, I said it and I won’t take it back. After all that we’ve been through as a race regarding the light-skinned niggers versus the dark-skinned niggers, you’re actually keeping this garbage up? It’s time to wake up my Beautiful Black Queens! Educate yourself and know your history. This shouldn’t be something that we’re entertaining. WE are #TeamMelanin! Period. Enough of the foolishness! Respect yourself. Respect our race. We should be building one another up, not tearing each other down. Melanin is Exquisite Beauty in EVERY shade. Together, WE are strong, unstoppable, and powerful. Enough is enough! I encourage you to stop participating in things that keep us divided. Real Talk!
Stephanie Lahart
If you’re a manager, remember that one third to one half of your workforce is probably introverted, whether they appear that way or not. Think twice about how you design your organization’s office space. Don’t expect introverts to get jazzed up about open office plans or, for that matter, lunchtime birthday parties or team-building retreats. Make the most of introverts’ strengths—these are the people who can help you think deeply, strategize, solve complex problems, and spot canaries in your coal mine. Also, remember the dangers of the New Groupthink. If it’s creativity you’re after, ask your employees to solve problems alone before sharing their ideas. If you want the wisdom of the crowd, gather it electronically, or in writing, and make sure people can’t see each other’s ideas until everyone’s had a chance to contribute. Face-to-face contact is important because it builds trust, but group dynamics contain unavoidable impediments to creative thinking. Arrange for people to interact one-on-one and in small, casual groups. Don’t mistake assertiveness or eloquence for good ideas. If you have a proactive work force (and I hope you do), remember that they may perform better under an introverted leader than under an extroverted or charismatic one.
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
Let’s order too much of something just to see where our limits are. Let’s take a chance precisely because it might fail. Let’s take the hard way out. Let’s go to the moon. Fuck it; let’s go to the moon again. Let’s quit our jobs. Let’s work at being better at what we do by fucking up faster, not less. Let’s fuck up really fast. Let’s wrestle sharks, fight monsters, and disagree with the board. Let’s borrow so much money it becomes someone else’s problem. Let’s start a 10-hour drive by announcing “I’m not into you anymore.” Let’s dump everything out of the garage onto the sidewalk and build something really cool in that space. Let’s start out to build a better mousetrap, and halfway there let’s decide to jump on the mice’s team.
Mike Monteiro
Many building custodians across the country would tell you that UCLA left the shower and dressing room the cleanest of any team. We picked up all the tape, never there soap on the shower floor for someone to slip on, made sure all the showers were turned off and all towels were accounted for. The towels were always deposited in a receptacle, if there was one, or stacked nearly near the door. It seems to me that this is everyone's responsibility-not just the mangers's. Furthermore, I believe it is a form of discipline that should be a way of life, not to please some building custodian, but as an expression of courtesy and politeness that each of us owes to his follow-man. These little things establish a spirit of togetherness and consideration that help unite the team into a solid unit.
John Wooden (They Call Me Coach)
If your soulmate can't teach you a few things then what is the point of having one? I don't need someone to tell me I am right. I don't need someone to tell me I didn't screw up. I don't need someone to not push me to reach for my dreams. I don't need someone to not take an interest in making me better. I need a team mate, a best friend and someone that allows me enough room to have off days. I am allowed to be as silly, corny, upset at times, excited, scared and a million emotions, but still loved. I need someone that will be that way for me, also. I don't want perfection. I don't want to build my world around what other people think. I want to build it around positive experiences, spiritual growth, and adventure. That requires something deeper than just acting the way someone requires. It means finding someone imperfect that I have the ability to help and someone that sees my imperfectness and is willing to help me. If a soulmate is anything, it better be useful. Otherwise, it is simply a made up fantasy that has no place in God's plan for me.
Shannon L. Alder
Mother trees have an effect on the oceans as well, as Katsuhiko Matsunaga and his team in Japan had confirmed. The leaves, when they fall in the autumn, contain a very large, complex acid called fulvic acid. When the leaves decompose, the fulvic acid dissolves into the moisture of the soil, enabling the acid to pick up iron. This process is called chelation. The heavy, iron-containing fulvic acid is now ready to travel, leaving the home ground of the mother tree and heading for the ocean. In the ocean it drops the iron. Hungry algae, like phytoplankton, eat it, then grow and divide; they need iron to activate a body-building enzyme called nitrogenase. This set of relationships is the feeding foundation of the ocean This is what feeds the fish and keeps the mammals of the sea, like the whale and the otter healthy.
Diana Beresford-Kroeger (To Speak for the Trees: My Life's Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest)
I personally believe mavericks are people who write their own rulebook. They are the ones who act first and talk later. They are fiercely independent thinkers who know how to fight the lizard brain (to use Seth Godin’s term). I don’t believe many are born, rather they are products of an environment, or their experiences. They are usually the people that find the accepted norm does not meet their requirements and have the self-confidence, appetite, independence, degree of self reliance and sufficient desire to carve out their own niche in life. I believe a maverick thinker can take a new idea, champion it, and push it beyond the ability of a normal person to do so. I also believe the best mavericks can build a team, can motivate with their vision, their passion, and can pull together others to accomplish great things. A wise maverick knows that they need others to give full form to their views and can gather these necessary contributors around them. Mavericks, in my experience, fall into various categories – a/ the totally off-the-wall, uncontrollable genius who won’t listen to anyone; b/ the person who thinks that they have the ONLY solution to a challenge but prepared to consider others’ views on how to conquer the world &, finally, the person who thinks laterally to overcome problems considered to be irresolvable. I like in particular the third category. The upside is that mavericks, because of their different outlook on life, often sees opportunities and solutions that others cannot. But the downside is that often, because in life there is always some degree of luck in success (i.e. being in the right place at the right time), mavericks that fail are often ridiculed for their unorthodox approach. However when they succeed they are acclaimed for their inspiration. It is indeed a fine line they walk in life.
Ziad K. Abdelnour (Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics)
A separate, international team analyzed more than a half million research articles, and classified a paper as “novel” if it cited two other journals that had never before appeared together. Just one in ten papers made a new combination, and only one in twenty made multiple new combinations. The group tracked the impact of research papers over time. They saw that papers with new knowledge combinations were more likely to be published in less prestigious journals, and also much more likely to be ignored upon publication. They got off to a slow start in the world, but after three years, the papers with new knowledge combos surpassed the conventional papers, and began accumulating more citations from other scientists. Fifteen years after publication, studies that made multiple new knowledge combinations were way more likely to be in the top 1 percent of most-cited papers. To recap: work that builds bridges between disparate pieces of knowledge is less likely to be funded, less likely to appear in famous journals, more likely to be ignored upon publication, and then more likely in the long run to be a smash hit in the library of human knowledge. •
David Epstein (Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World)
Color blindness has become a powerful weapon against progress for people of color, but as a denial mindset, it doesn’t do white people any favors, either. A person who avoids the realities of racism doesn’t build the crucial muscles for navigating cross-cultural tensions or recovering with grace from missteps. That person is less likely to listen deeply to unexpected ideas expressed by people from other cultures or to do the research on her own to learn about her blind spots. When that person then faces the inevitable uncomfortable racial reality—an offended co-worker, a presentation about racial disparity at a PTA meeting, her inadvertent use of a stereotype—she’s caught flat-footed. Denial leaves people ill-prepared to function or thrive in a diverse society. It makes people less effective at collaborating with colleagues, coaching kids’ sports teams, advocating for their neighborhoods, even chatting with acquaintances at social events.
Heather McGhee (The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together)
I think that happiness is very important. But I will also say that the most effective people I know are not the happiest, and there is something to be said for effectiveness. Even if we were managing a team of nearly a hundred thousand volunteer social media users, living with my girlfriend and my monkey, watching Netflix, having breakfast, and taking care of a single lovingly spoiled potato plant was pretty fucking relaxing. But I think there's somethng inside of us, something that blooms in us in adolescence and never leaves...and it's just...want. Some people have more of it than others, but I think we all have it. And the most amazing tool that I think anyone in the world can have is the ability to control and direct that want. Some people work to minimize it with mindfulness and meditation; some people let it grow and run free and take over their lives. But some people, and I consider myself one of them, study their want, refine it, and build an engine that burns it. Even if their want pushes all in one direction, they can tack against it like a sailboat, getting somewhere better than where they wanted to be.
Hank Green (A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor (The Carls, #2))
Electricity poured though him like liquid agony, setting every nerve on fire. His body arched, his muscles going into spams, a cry tearing itself from between clenched teeth. Then Quintana stepped back, leaving Zach shaking, breathless, wanting to puke. Strangely, he found the pain easier to bear now than he had two weeks before. Perhaps it was just that he'd been through this before. Or perhaps it was the fact that his pain was buying time for the woman he loved. Why hadn't he told her? Why hadn't he told Natalie he loved her when he'd had the chance? It would've taken only a few seconds. What the hell had he been afraid of? And all at once it hit him- regret as deep and wide as the ocean. Natalie. If he died today, she would never know what she meant to him. If he died, he would never even get a shot at building a life with her, of knowing what it was like to come home every night and find someone waiting for him. Hell, he wouldn't even know whether he'd gotten her pregnant. Then don't die, McBride. Zach looked into the eyes of the man who was going to kill him. I love you, Natalie. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. Forgive me.
Pamela Clare (Breaking Point (I-Team, #5))
His goal was to be vigilant against " the bozo explosion" that leads to a company's being larded with second rate talent: For most things in life, the range between best and average is 30% or so. The best airplane flight, the best meal, they may be 30% better than your average one. What I saw with Woz was somebody who was fifty times better than the average engineer. He could have meetings in his head. The Mac team was an attempt to build a whole team like that, A players. People said they wouldn't get along, they'd hate working with each other. But I realized that A players like to work with A players, they just didn't like working with C players. At Pixar, it was a whole company of A players. When I got back to Apple, that's what I decided to try to do. You need to have a collaborative hiring process. When we hire someone, even if they're going to be in marketing, I will have them talk to the design folks and the engineers. My role model was J. Robert Oppenheimer. I read about the type of people he sought for the atom bomb project. I wasn't nearly as good as he was, but that's what I aspired to do.
Walter Isaacson