Finance Team Quotes

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Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.
Patrick Lencioni (The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable)
The only person that should wear your ring is the one person that would never… 1. Ask you to remain silent and look the other way while they hurt another. 2. Jeopardize your future by taking risks that could potentially ruin your finances or reputation. 3. Teach your children that hurting others is okay because God loves them more. God didn’t ask you to keep your family together at the expense of doing evil to others. 4. Uses religious guilt to control you, while they are doing unreligious things. 5. Doesn't believe their actions have long lasting repercussions that could affect other people negatively. 6. Reminds you of your faults, but justifies their own. 7. Uses the kids to manipulate you into believing you are nothing. As if to suggest, you couldn’t leave the relationship and establish a better Christian marriage with someone that doesn’t do these things. Thus, making you believe God hates all the divorced people and will abandon you by not bringing someone better to your life, after you decide to leave. As if! 8. They humiliate you online and in their inner circle. They let their friends, family and world know your transgressions. 9. They tell you no marriage is perfect and you are not trying, yet they are the one that has stirred up more drama through their insecurities. 10. They say they are sorry, but they don’t show proof through restoring what they have done. 11. They don’t make you a better person because you are miserable. They have only made you a victim or a bitter survivor because of their need for control over you. 12. Their version of success comes at the cost of stepping on others. 13. They make your marriage a public event, in order for you to prove your love online for them. 14. They lie, but their lies are often justified. 15. You constantly have to start over and over and over with them, as if a connection could be grown and love restored through a honeymoon phase, or constant parental supervision of one another’s down falls. 16. They tell you that they don’t care about anyone other than who they love. However, their actions don’t show they love you, rather their love has become bitter insecurity disguised in statements such as, “Look what I did for us. This is how much I care.” 17. They tell you who you can interact with and who you can’t. 18. They believe the outside world is to blame for their unhappiness. 19. They brought you to a point of improvement, but no longer have your respect. 20. They don't make you feel anything, but regret. You know in your heart you settled.
Shannon L. Alder
Just imagine if police enforced their zero-tolerance strategy in finance. They would arrest people for even the slightest infraction, whether it was chiseling investors on 401ks, providing misleading guidance, or committing petty frauds. Perhaps SWAT teams would descend on Greenwich, Connecticut. They’d go undercover in the taverns around Chicago’s Mercantile Exchange.
Cathy O'Neil (Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy)
Lenders assess a company's creditworthiness before approving a loan, considering factors like financial health and repayment ability. So if you’re leading a business, it’s really important for you and your team to be proactive about establishing good credit health for the business.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
I’ve learned that while the finance goals are important, they’re not the most important. Finance can hit all our objectives, and the company still can fail. After all, the best accounts receivables team on the planet can’t save us if we’re in the wrong market with the wrong product strategy with an R&D team that can’t deliver.
Gene Kim (The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win)
The majority of the employees here are civilians," explained my Alderman guide/protector/companion/would-be-executioner as we strode without a word to the security guards through the foyer towards the lifts. "They conduct themselves within perfectly standard financial services and regulations. There is one specialist suboperational department catering to the financing of more...unusual extra-capital ventures, and the executive assets who operate it have to undergo a rigorous level of training, psyche evaluation, personality assessment, and team operational analyses." We stared at him, and said, "We barely understood the little words." "No," he replied, "I didn't think you would.
Kate Griffin (The Midnight Mayor (Matthew Swift, #2))
What kind of soldier are you that you’re going to just sit in a cell while the world is thrown into chaos? Do you not understand what could happen if those weapons fall into the wrong hands? How could you be so selfish? (Syd) I’m selfish? Look, Agent Westbrook, your daddy’s a Boston stockbroker. I’m a death broker. I’m sure you don’t lecture Daddy on finance, so don’t even try to lecture me on assassination politics. I know all about them. Some bureaucratic ass-wipe sitting in a pristine office that’s totally isolated from the rest of the world decides the son of King Oomp-Loomp is a threat. He then hands down orders to people like me to go off King Oomp-Loompa’s son. Like an idiot, I do what he says without question. I hunt my target down, using information that is mostly bullshit and unreliable, gathered by someone like you who assured me it was correct as the time. But hey, if it changes minute by minute, and God forbid we pass that along to you. So me and my spotter lie in the grass, sand, or snow for days on end, cramped and hungry, never able to move more than a millimeter an hour until I have that one perfect shot I’ve been waiting for days. I take it, and then we lie there like pieces of dirt until we can inch our way back to safety, where hopefully the helicopter team will remember that they were supposed to retrieve us. Have you any idea of the nerves it takes to do what I do? To lie there on the ground while other armed men search for you? Have them step on you and not be able to even breathe or wince because if you do, it’s not only your life, but the life of your spotter? Do you know what it’s like to have the brains of your best friend spayed into your face and not be able to render aid to him because you know he’s dead and if you do, you’ll be killed too? I have been into the bowels of hell and back, Miz Westbrook. I have stared down the devil and made him sweat. So don’t tell me I don’t take this seriously. (Steele)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Bad Attitude (B.A.D. Agency #1))
Groups of men stood around, discussing politics, finance, and their favoured chariot teams: all the things men talk about. You could easily substitute football for gladiators and business suits for togas: nothing changes.
Jodi Taylor (Roman Holiday (The Chronicles of St Mary's, #3.5))
On its surface, the booming market in side bets on subprime mortgage bonds seemed to be the financial equivalent of fantasy football: a benign, if silly, facsimile of investing. Alas, there was a difference between fantasy football and fantasy finance: When a fantasy football player drafts Peyton Manning to be on his team, he doesn’t create a second Peyton Manning. When Mike Burry bought a credit default swap based on a Long Beach Savings subprime–backed bond, he enabled Goldman Sachs to create another bond identical to the original in every respect but one: There were no actual home loans or home buyers. Only the gains and losses from the side bet on the bonds were real.
Michael Lewis (The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine)
She found a way to calculate how much money his moodiness was costing the business. She spoke to him in his own financial language, adding a shot of her infectious humor to the communication, and Barry was moved. He went back to his team, told them about the feedback he’d received, and asked them to call him out when his mood was influencing their actions. The results were remarkable. In the subsequent weeks and months, many on the finance team spoke to me and Patty about the positive change in Barry’s leadership.
Reed Hastings (No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention)
1. Project What is the project? Why is it unique? Why is the business needed? Why will customers love your product? 2. Partners Who are you? Who are the partners? What are your educational backgrounds? How much experience do you all have? How are you and your partners qualified to make the project a success? 3. Financing What is the total cost of the project? How much debt and how much equity is there? Are partners investing their own money? What is the investor’s return and reward for their risk? What are the tax consequences? Who is your CFO or accounting firm? Who is responsible for investor communications? What is the investor’s exit? 4. Management Who is running your company? What is their experience? What is their track record? Have they ever failed? How does their experience relate to your industry? Do you believe this is the strongest management team you can assemble? Can you pitch them with confidence?
Donald J. Trump (Midas Touch)
When a CEO looks around her staff meeting, a good rule of thumb is that at least 50 percent of the people at the table should be experts in the company’s products and services and responsible for product development. This will help ensure that the leadership team maintains focus on product excellence. Operational components like finance, sales, and legal are obviously critical to a company’s success, but they should not dominate the conversation.
Eric Schmidt (How Google Works)
It takes an army to make a movie. Camera crews, lighting crews, wardrobe crews, makeup crews, hair crews, painters, builders (called grips), a crew to provide the props, a crew to provide the furnishings (the art department), electricians, special-effects people, stunt performers, stand-ins, the accountant, scheduling and finance (called the unit production manager), catering and someone to provide snacks and drinks (called craft service), and the team of walkie-talkie-armed Gestapo that police the second-by-second momentum of shooting: the assistant director staff.
Rob Lowe (Stories I Only Tell My Friends)
If you run a bakery, you need a baker, a shop assistant to sell the cakes, and someone to oversee the finances. Would you employ the same person to do all three jobs? Of course not. Your financial wizard may know nothing about baking, but he will keep your accounts in perfect order. Your shop assistant may know nothing about finances, but he understands how to treat his customers. Each brings a unique skill to his job. In the same way, you may know enough about each set of skills to be able to manage a team of people, but you aren’t necessarily the best person to actually do the baking, even if you have a rough knowledge of it.
Andrea Plos (Sources of Wealth)
Dr. Fauci, Bill Gates, and WHO financed a cadre of research mercenaries to concoct a series of nearly twenty studies—all employing fraudulent protocols deliberately designed to discredit HCQ as unsafe. Instead of using the standard treatment dose of 400 mg/day, the 17 WHO studies administered a borderline lethal daily dose starting with 2,400 mg.61 on Day 1, and using 800 mg/day thereafter. In a cynical, sinister, and literally homicidal crusade against HCQ, a team of BMGF operatives played a key role in devising and pushing through the exceptionally high dosing. They made sure that UK government “Recovery” trials on 1,000 elderly patients in over a dozen British, Welsh, Irish and Scottish hospitals, and the U.N. “Solidarity” study of 3,500 patients in 400 hospitals in 35 countries, as well as additional sites in 13 countries (the “REMAP-COVID” trial), all used those unprecedented and dangerous doses.62 This was a brassy enterprise to “prove” chloroquine dangerous, and sure enough, it proved that elderly patients can die from deadly overdoses. “The purpose seemed, very clearly, to poison the patients and blame the deaths on HCQ,” says Dr. Meryl Nass, a physician, medical historian, and biowarfare expert.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
In January 2016, KPMG issued a public statement after the ‘considerable exposure’ its report had received, which, according to KPMG, should not have happened ‘as the work was being conducted under strict rules of confidentiality which were clearly articulated in our letter of engagement as well as in our findings’.23 According to the statement, KPMG submitted a number of drafts to SARS on which they received feedback and their last report was submitted to SARS on 4 December 2015.24 ‘Our mandate was to undertake a documentary review and did not include interviewing individuals named in the report, nor were they given sight of our findings by us.’25 The KPMG report, which had cost the state R23 million, was therefore not a comprehensive forensic investigation but merely a ‘documentary review’. I also wonder how they could claim they didn’t interview anyone named in the report, when I met with the KPMG team on two occasions, at their request. The report contains sweeping statements, is factually incorrect and there is little or no substantiating evidence in too many instances to mention here. The following examples should give the reader an idea, though, of how taxpayers’ money was spent on a KPMG ‘investigation’. Take, for instance, the following finding: ‘We found no evidence indicating that the Minister of Finance, at the time, new about the existence of the Unit in SARS.’26 Firstly, the word ‘new’ means something entirely different from the word ‘knew’. Secondly, since that ‘unit’ was established there have been three ministers of finance and three deputy ministers and two SARS commissioners and deputy commissioners. Which particular minister was being referred to here, and why leave out the deputy ministers and commissioners?
Johann van Loggerenberg (Rogue: The Inside Story of SARS's Elite Crime-busting Unit)
The phone rang. It was a familiar voice. It was Alan Greenspan. Paul O'Neill had tried to stay in touch with people who had served under Gerald Ford, and he'd been reasonably conscientious about it. Alan Greenspan was the exception. In his case, the effort was constant and purposeful. When Greenspan was the chairman of Ford's Council of Economic Advisers, and O'Neill was number two at OMB, they had become a kind of team. Never social so much. They never talked about families or outside interests. It was all about ideas: Medicare financing or block grants - a concept that O'Neill basically invented to balance federal power and local autonomy - or what was really happening in the economy. It became clear that they thought well together. President Ford used to have them talk about various issues while he listened. After a while, each knew how the other's mind worked, the way married couples do. In the past fifteen years, they'd made a point of meeting every few months. It could be in New York, or Washington, or Pittsburgh. They talked about everything, just as always. Greenspan, O'Neill told a friend, "doesn't have many people who don't want something from him, who will talk straight to him. So that's what we do together - straight talk." O'Neill felt some straight talk coming in. "Paul, I'll be blunt. We really need you down here," Greenspan said. "There is a real chance to make lasting changes. We could be a team at the key moment, to do the things we've always talked about." The jocular tone was gone. This was a serious discussion. They digressed into some things they'd "always talked about," especially reforming Medicare and Social Security. For Paul and Alan, the possibility of such bold reinventions bordered on fantasy, but fantasy made real. "We have an extraordinary opportunity," Alan said. Paul noticed that he seemed oddly anxious. "Paul, your presence will be an enormous asset in the creation of sensible policy." Sensible policy. This was akin to prayer from Greenspan. O'Neill, not expecting such conviction from his old friend, said little. After a while, he just thanked Alan. He said he always respected his counsel. He said he was thinking hard about it, and he'd call as soon as he decided what to do. The receiver returned to its cradle. He thought about Greenspan. They were young men together in the capital. Alan stayed, became the most noteworthy Federal Reserve Bank chairman in modern history and, arguably the most powerful public official of the past two decades. O'Neill left, led a corporate army, made a fortune, and learned lessons - about how to think and act, about the importance of outcomes - that you can't ever learn in a government. But, he supposed, he'd missed some things. There were always trade-offs. Talking to Alan reminded him of that. Alan and his wife, Andrea Mitchell, White House correspondent for NBC news, lived a fine life. They weren't wealthy like Paul and Nancy. But Alan led a life of highest purpose, a life guided by inquiry. Paul O'Neill picked up the telephone receiver, punched the keypad. "It's me," he said, always his opening. He started going into the details of his trip to New York from Washington, but he's not much of a phone talker - Nancy knew that - and the small talk trailed off. "I think I'm going to have to do this." She was quiet. "You know what I think," she said. She knew him too well, maybe. How bullheaded he can be, once he decides what's right. How he had loved these last few years as a sovereign, his own man. How badly he was suited to politics, as it was being played. And then there was that other problem: she'd almost always been right about what was best for him. "Whatever, Paul. I'm behind you. If you don't do this, I guess you'll always regret it." But it was clearly about what he wanted, what he needed. Paul thanked her. Though somehow a thank-you didn't seem appropriate. And then he realized she was crying.
Suskind (The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill)
Mueller kicked off the meeting by pulling out a piece of paper with some notes. The attorney general and his aides believed they noticed something worrisome. Mueller’s hands shook as he held the paper. His voice was shaky, too. This was not the Bob Mueller everyone knew. As he made some perfunctory introductory remarks, Barr, Rosenstein, O’Callaghan, and Rabbitt couldn’t help but worry about Mueller’s health. They were taken aback. As Barr would later ask his colleagues, “Did he seem off to you?” Later, close friends would say they noticed Mueller had changed dramatically, but a member of Mueller’s team would insist he had no medical problems. Mueller quickly turned the meeting over to his deputies, a notable handoff. Zebley went first, summing up the Russian interference portion of the investigation. He explained that the team had already shared most of its findings in two major indictments in February and July 2018. Though they had virtually no chance of bringing the accused to trial in the United States, Mueller’s team had indicted thirteen Russian nationals who led a troll farm to flood U.S. social media with phony stories to sow division and help Trump. They also indicted twelve Russian military intelligence officers who hacked internal Democratic Party emails and leaked them to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The Trump campaign had no known role in either operation. Zebley explained they had found insufficient evidence to suggest a conspiracy, “no campaign finance [violations], no issues found. . . . We have questions about [Paul] Manafort, but we’re very comfortable saying there was no collusion, no conspiracy.” Then Quarles talked about the obstruction of justice portion. “We’re going to follow the OLC opinion and conclude it wasn’t appropriate for us to make a final determination as to whether or not there was a crime,” he said. “We’re going to report the facts, the analysis, and leave it there. We are not going to say we would indict but for the OLC opinion.
Philip Rucker (A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America)
Where should we be if every one had his rights? Fancy every one's having a hand in the government? Can you imagine a city ruled by its citizens? Why, the citizens are the team, and the team cannot be driver. To put to the vote is to throw to the winds. Would you have states driven like clouds? Disorder cannot build up order. With chaos for an architect, the edifice would be a Babel. And, besides, what tyranny is this pretended liberty! As for me, I wish to enjoy myself; not to govern. It is a bore to have to vote; I want to dance. A prince is a providence, and takes care of us all. Truly the king is generous to take so much trouble for our sakes. Besides, he is to the manner born. He knows what it is. It's his business. Peace, War, Legislation, Finance--what have the people to do with such things? Of course the people have to pay; of course the people have to serve; but that should suffice them. They have a place in policy; from them come two essential things, the army and the budget. To be liable to contribute, and to be liable to serve; is not that enough? What more should they want? They are the military and the financial arm. A magnificent rôle. The king reigns for them, and they must reward him accordingly. Taxation and the civil list are the salaries paid by the peoples and earned by the prince. The people give their blood and their money, in return for which they are led. To wish to lead themselves! what an absurd idea! They require a guide; being ignorant, they are blind. Has not the blind man his dog? Only the people have a lion, the king, who consents to act the dog. How kind of him! But why are the people ignorant? because it is good for them. Ignorance is the guardian of Virtue. Where there is no perspective there is no ambition. The ignorant man is in useful darkness, which, suppressing sight, suppresses covetousness: whence innocence. He who reads, thinks; who thinks, reasons. But not to reason is duty; and happiness as well. These truths are incontestable; society is based on them.
Victor Hugo (The Man Who Laughs)
In the spring of 1940, when the Nazis overran France from the north, much of its Jewish population tried to escape the country towards the south. In order to cross the border, they needed visas to Spain and Portugal, and together with a flood of other refugees, tens of thousands of Jews besieged the Portuguese consulate in Bordeaux in a desperate attempt to get that life-saving piece of paper. The Portuguese government forbade its consuls in France to issue visas without prior approval from the Foreign Ministry, but the consul in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, decided to disregard the order, throwing to the wind a thirty-year diplomatic career. As Nazi tanks were closing in on Bordeaux, Sousa Mendes and his team worked around the clock for ten days and nights, barely stopping to sleep, just issuing visas and stamping pieces of paper. Sousa Mendes issued thousands of visas before collapsing from exhaustion. 22. Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the angel with the rubber stamp. 22.​Courtesy of the Sousa Mendes Foundation. The Portuguese government – which had little desire to accept any of these refugees – sent agents to escort the disobedient consul back home, and fired him from the foreign office. Yet officials who cared little for the plight of human beings nevertheless had a deep reverence for documents, and the visas Sousa Mendes issued against orders were respected by French, Spanish and Portuguese bureaucrats alike, spiriting up to 30,000 people out of the Nazi death trap. Sousa Mendes, armed with little more than a rubber stamp, was responsible for the largest rescue operation by a single individual during the Holocaust.2 The sanctity of written records often had far less positive effects. From 1958 to 1961 communist China undertook the Great Leap Forward, when Mao Zedong wished to rapidly turn China into a superpower. Intending to use surplus grain to finance ambitious industrial projects, Mao ordered the doubling and tripling of agricultural production. From the government offices in Beijing his impossible demands made their way down the bureaucratic ladder, through provincial administrators, all the way down to the village headmen. The local officials, afraid of voicing any criticism and wishing to curry favour with their superiors, concocted imaginary reports of dramatic increases in agricultural output. As the fabricated numbers made their way back up the bureaucratic hierarchy, each official exaggerated them further, adding a zero here or there with a stroke of a pen. 23.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
Yet in 2012, he returned. Plenty of the speechwriters were livid. The club was the embodiment of everything we had promised to change. Was it really necessary to flatter these people, just because they were powerful and rich? In a word, yes. In fact, thanks to the Supreme Court, the rich were more powerful than ever. In 2010, the court’s five conservative justices gutted America’s campaign finance laws in the decision known as Citizens United. With no more limits to the number of attack ads they could purchase, campaigns had become another hobby for the ultrawealthy. Tired of breeding racehorses or bidding on rare wines at auction? Buy a candidate instead! I should make it clear that no one explicitly laid out a strategy regarding the dinner. I never asked point-blank if we hoped to charm billionaires into spending their billions on something other than Mitt Romney’s campaign. That said, I knew it couldn’t hurt. Hoping to mollify the one-percenters in the audience, I kept the script embarrassingly tame. I’ve got about forty-five more minutes on the State of the Union that I’d like to deliver tonight. I am eager to work with members of Congress to be entertaining tonight. But if Congress is unwilling to cooperate, I will be funny without them. Even for a politician, this was weak. But it apparently struck the right tone. POTUS barely edited the speech. A few days later, as a reward for a job well done, Favs invited me to tag along to a speechwriting-team meeting with the president. I had not set foot in the Oval Office since my performance of the Golden Girls theme song. On that occasion, President Obama remained behind his desk. For larger gatherings like this one, however, he crossed the room to a brown leather armchair, and the rest of us filled the two beige sofas on either side. Between the sofas was a coffee table. On the coffee table sat a bowl, which under George W. Bush had contained candy but under Obama was full of apples instead. Hence the ultimate Oval Office power move: grab an apple at the end of a meeting, polish it on your suit, and take a casual chomp on your way out the door. I would have sooner stuck my finger in an electrical socket. Desperate not to call attention to myself, I took the seat farthest away and kept my eyes glued to my laptop. I allowed myself just one indulgence: a quick peek at the Emancipation Proclamation. That’s right, buddy. Look who’s still here. It was only at the very end of the meeting, as we rose from the surprisingly comfy couches, that Favs brought up the Alfalfa dinner. The right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham had been in the audience, and she was struck by the president’s poise. “She was talking about it this morning,” Favs told POTUS. “She said, ‘I don’t know if Mitt Romney can beat him.
David Litt (Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years)
The electronics effort faced even greater challenges. To launch that category, David Risher tapped a Dartmouth alum named Chris Payne who had previously worked on Amazon’s DVD store. Like Miller, Payne had to plead with suppliers—in this case, Asian consumer-electronics companies like Sony, Toshiba, and Samsung. He quickly hit a wall. The Japanese electronics giants viewed Internet sellers like Amazon as sketchy discounters. They also had big-box stores like Best Buy and Circuit City whispering in their ears and asking them to take a pass on Amazon. There were middlemen distributors, like Ingram Electronics, but they offered a limited selection. Bezos deployed Doerr to talk to Howard Stringer at Sony America, but he got nowhere. So Payne had to turn to the secondary distributors—jobbers that exist in an unsanctioned, though not illegal, gray market. Randy Miller, a retail finance director who came to Amazon from Eddie Bauer, equates it to buying from the trunk of someone’s car in a dark alley. “It was not a sustainable inventory model, but if you are desperate to have particular products on your site or in your store, you do what you need to do,” he says. Buying through these murky middlemen got Payne and his fledgling electronics team part of the way toward stocking Amazon’s virtual shelves. But Bezos was unimpressed with the selection and grumpily compared it to shopping in a Russian supermarket during the years of Communist rule. It would take Amazon years to generate enough sales to sway the big Asian brands. For now, the electronics store was sparely furnished. Bezos had asked to see $100 million in electronics sales for the 1999 holiday season; Payne and his crew got about two-thirds of the way there. Amazon officially announced the new toy and electronics stores that summer, and in September, the company held a press event at the Sheraton in midtown Manhattan to promote the new categories. Someone had the idea that the tables in the conference room at the Sheraton should have piles of merchandise representing all the new categories, to reinforce the idea of broad selection. Bezos loved it, but when he walked into the room the night before the event, he threw a tantrum: he didn’t think the piles were large enough. “Do you want to hand this business to our competitors?” he barked into his cell phone at his underlings. “This is pathetic!” Harrison Miller, Chris Payne, and their colleagues fanned out that night across Manhattan to various stores, splurging on random products and stuffing them in the trunks of taxicabs. Miller spent a thousand dollars alone at a Toys “R” Us in Herald Square. Payne maxed out his personal credit card and had to call his wife in Seattle to tell her not to use the card for a few days. The piles of products were eventually large enough to satisfy Bezos, but the episode was an early warning. To satisfy customers and their own demanding boss during the upcoming holiday, Amazon executives were going to have to substitute artifice and improvisation for truly comprehensive selection.
Brad Stone (The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon)
Universities use their endowments to finance a range of activities, from scholarships to building projects. Harvard has promised to use its financial resources to make sure that anyone can afford to attend. Harvard did not give a reason for Ms. Mendillo’s departure. In an interview, Ms. Mendillo, a former chief investment officer of Wellesley College who spent an earlier 15-year period at the Harvard Management Company, said she felt the time was right to move on. “We’ve made a great recovery from the financial crisis, we’ve repositioned the portfolio and we’ve built a great team,” she said.
Anonymous
But the heart and soul of the Other Dream Team, as some called Lithuania, was the mustachioed guard Sarunas Marciulionis. It was Marciulionis, the first from the Soviet Union to play in the N.B.A., who secured the team’s financing by gaining the support of the Grateful Dead — helping explain the tie-dyed warm-ups — and he played spectacularly, averaging 23.4 points and 8.3 assists a game.
Anonymous
LEADERSHIP | Intuit’s CEO on Building a Design-Driven Company Brad Smith | 222 words Although 46 similar products were on the market when Intuit launched Quicken, in 1983, it immediately became the market leader in personal finance software and has held that position for three decades. That’s because Quicken was so well designed that using it is intuitive. But by the time Smith became CEO, in 2008, the company had become overly focused on adding incremental features that delivered ease of use but not delight. What was missing was an emotional connection with customers. He and his team set out to integrate design thinking into every part of Intuit. They changed the layout of the office, reduced the number of cubes, and added more collaboration spaces and places for impromptu work. They increased the number of designers by nearly 600% and now hold quarterly design conferences. They bring in people who have created exceptionally designed products, such as the Nest thermostat and the Kayak travel website, to share insights with Intuit employees. The company acquired one start-up, called Mint, and collaborates with another, called ZenPayroll, to improve customer experience. Although most people don’t think of financial software as a category driven by emotion or design, Smith writes, Intuit’s D4D (“design for delight”) program has paid off. For example, its SnapTax app, inspired by consumers’ migration to smartphones, led one user to write, “I want this app to have my babies.
Anonymous
Guideline #12: Hire a professional. Remember the definition of a job seeker I posted at the front of this book? Take a moment and go back to the definition, and study all the aspects of the job campaign you have to master or be proficient in. CEOs of Fortune 500 companies would be hard-pressed to master or be proficient in that many disciplines. They have finance professionals, sales teams, IT departments, management personnel, and consultants to help them. However, most job seekers conduct the job campaign solely on their own.
Jay A. Block (101 Best Ways to Land a Job in Troubled Times)
IN BRAZIL, where the state collects a hefty 36% of GDP in taxes and offers mediocre public services in return, tax-dodging is a national sport. The latest scam unearthed by police, treasury and finance-ministry sleuths sets a record. On March 26th they revealed that over the past ten years the government had been cheated of at least 5.7 billion reais ($1.8 billion) in back taxes and fines from firms, and perhaps as much as 19 billion reais. That would be enough to pay three-quarters of the bill for last year’s football World Cup. It is nearly twice the suspicious payments in a separate corruption scheme involving Petrobras, a state-controlled oil company. Unlike the petrolão, the tax imbroglio does not implicate top politicians. It centres instead on the Administrative Council of Fiscal Resources (CARF), part of the finance ministry, which hears appeals by firms that feel wronged by the tax collectors. Some of its 216 councillors, who decide cases in teams of six, allegedly promised to slash companies’ bills for various taxes, including sales and industrial tax, or make them disappear altogether. In exchange they apparently received 1-10% of the value of the forgone revenue. The bribes were paid in the form of bogus consulting contracts with law firms. To deflect suspicion, the conspirators used firms that do not specialise in tax law. The identity of the suspects remains secret for now. But leaks published in the press suggest that some of Brazil’s biggest firms, in industries ranging from banking to manufacturing, are involved. So, apparently, are a handful of multinationals. There is also much speculation that the dimensions of the scandal will grow: CARF has 105,000 cases pending, with a total value of 520 billion reais.
Anonymous
jobs. How it would work was that Mallett would take someone from one team—say, Yahoo Finance—and tell them to find six other people from around the company to build an entirely new product. It didn’t matter if the team all worked in the same place. Maybe you found someone in London who was good at building a real-time feed in HTML. Maybe the best sales person for the team was located in New York and the designer you needed was in Sunnyvale. Fine. Just go. Build it now. And don’t forget your day job.
Nicholas Carlson (Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!)
recognize that many do not have that luxury and I respect the choices they have to make in similar circumstances. All I can do is encourage them to rejoin work if they truly wish to. One of my colleagues took a break for seven years when her children were very young and spent her time baking cakes and organizing birthday parties. Now back at work, she is one of our most valuable people. Another colleague from our finance team said that she needed to quit as her son was in the tenth standard in school and needed attention, but we convinced her to stay on and work only half-day for the next one year, till the exams were done with. On
Naina Lal Kidwai (30 WOMEN IN POWER)
FOR MY SPIRITUAL LIFE... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to help others... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my relationship with God... ? FOR MY PHYSICAL HEALTH... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to achieve my diet goals... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to ensure that I exercise... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to relieve my stress... ? FOR MY PERSONAL LIFE... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my skill at ________... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to find time for myself... ? FOR MY KEY RELATIONSHIPS... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my relationship with my spouse/partner... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my children’s school performance... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to show my appreciation to my parents... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make my family stronger... ? FOR MY JOB... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to ensure that I hit my goals... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my skills... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to help my team succeed... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to further my career... ? FOR MY BUSINESS... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make us more competitive... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make our product the best... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make us more profitable... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve our customer experience... ? FOR MY FINANCES... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to increase my net worth... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my investment cash flow... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to eliminate my credit card debt... ? BIG IDEAS So how do you make The ONE Thing part of your daily routine? How do you make it strong enough to get extraordinary results at work and in the other areas of your life? Here’s a starter list drawn from our experience and our work with others. Understand and believe it. The first step is to understand the concept of the ONE Thing, then to believe that it can make a difference in your life. If you don’t understand and believe, you won’t take action. Use it. Ask yourself the Focusing Question. Start each day by asking, “What’s the ONE Thing I can do today for [whatever you want] such that by doing it everything else will be easier or even unnecessary?” When you do this, your direction will become clear. Your work will be more productive and your personal life more rewarding. Make it a habit. When you make asking the Focusing Question a habit, you fully engage its power to get the extraordinary results you want. It’s a difference maker. Research says this will take about 66 days. Whether it takes you a few weeks or a few months, stick with it until it becomes your routine. If you’re not serious about learning the Success Habit, you’re not serious about getting extraordinary results. Leverage reminders. Set up ways to remind yourself to use the Focusing Question. One of the best ways to do this is to put up a sign at work that says, “Until my ONE Thing is done—everything else is a distraction.” We designed the back cover of this book to be a trigger —set it on the corner of your desk so that it’s the first thing you see when you get to work. Use notes, screen savers, and calendar cues to keep making the connection between the Success Habit and the results you seek. Put up reminders like, “The ONE Thing = Extraordinary Results” or “The Success Habit Will Get Me to My Goal.” Recruit support. Research shows that those around you can influence you tremendously. Starting a success support group with some of your work colleagues can help inspire all of you to practice the Success Habit every day. Get your family involved. Share your ONE Thing. Get them on board. Use the Focusing Question around them to show them how the Success Habit can make a difference in their school work, their personal achievements, or any other part of their lives.
Gary Keller (The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results)
In 1857, to encourage continued settlement of the West, Congress passed the Pacific Wagon Road Act, which among other improvements to the trail called for the surveying of a shorter route to Idaho across the bottom of the Wind Rivers and the forested Bridger-Teton wilderness to the west. Frederick W. Lander, a hotheaded but experienced explorer and engineer, was assigned the job. He made Burnt Ranch the trailhead and main supply depot for the trail-building job, which became one of the largest government-financed projects of the nineteenth century. Lander hired hundreds of workers from the new Mormon settlement at Salt Lake and supplied the enterprise with large mule-team caravans that ferried provisions and equipment from U.S. Army depots in Nebraska and eastern Wyoming. “With crowds of laborers hauling wood, erecting buildings and tending stock,” writes historian Todd Guenther, “the area was a beehive of activity.” The engineers, logging crews, and workers quickly hacked out what became known as the Lander Cutoff, which saved more than sixty miles, almost a week’s travel, across the mountains. In places, the Lander Cutoff was a steep up-and-down ride, but the route offered cooler, high terrain and plentiful water, an advantage over the scorching desert of the main ruts to the south. Eventually an estimated 100,000 pioneers took this route, and the 230-mile Lander Cutoff was considered an engineering marvel of its time. This
Rinker Buck (The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey)
The quality of students wasn’t an issue; Tsinghua and nearby Peking University attracted the highest-scoring students from each year’s national examinations. But the SEM’s curriculum and teaching methods were dated, and new faculty members were needed. To be a world-class school required world-class professors, but many instructors, holdovers from a bygone era, knew little about markets or modern business practices. The school’s teaching was largely confined to economic theory, which wasn’t very practical. China needed corporate leaders, not Marxist theoreticians, and Tsinghua’s curriculum placed too little emphasis on such critical areas as finance, marketing, strategy, and organization. The way I see it, a business education should be as much vocational as academic. Teaching business is like teaching medicine: theory is important, but hands-on practice is essential. Medical students learn from cadavers and hospital rounds; business students learn from case studies—a method pioneered more than a century ago by Harvard Business School that engages students in analyzing complex real-life dilemmas faced by actual companies and executives. Tsinghua’s method of instruction, like too much of China’s educational system, relied on rote learning—lectures, memorization, and written tests—and did not foster innovative, interactive approaches to problem solving. Students needed to know how to work as part of a team—a critical lesson in China, where getting people to work collaboratively can be difficult. At Harvard Business School we weren’t told the “right” or “wrong” answers but were encouraged to think for ourselves and defend our ideas before our peers and our at-times-intimidating professors. This helped hone my analytical skills and confidence, and I believed a similar approach would help Chinese students.
Anonymous
How Much Money Can We Afford To Give To Charity? Knowing how much money you can safely give to charity is challenging for everyone. Who doesn’t want to give more to make the world a better place? On the other hand, no one wants to become a charity case as a result of giving too much to charity. On average, Americans who itemize their deductions donate about three or four percent of their income to charity. About 20% give more than 10% of their income to charity. Here are some tips to help you find the right level of donations for your family: You can probably give more than you think. Focus on one, two or maybe three causes rather than scattering money here and there. Volunteer your time toward your cause, too. The money you give shouldn’t be the money you’d save for college or retirement. You can organize your personal finances to empower you to give more. Eliminating debt will enable you to give much more. The interest you may be paying is eating into every good and noble thing you’d like to do. You can cut expenses significantly over time by driving your cars for a longer period of time; buying cars—the transaction itself—is expensive. Stay in your home longer. By staying in your home for a very long time, your mortgage payment will slowly shrink (in economic terms)with inflation, allowing you more flexibility over time to donate to charity. Make your donations a priority. If you only give what is left, you won’t be giving much. Make your donations first, then contribute to savings and, finally, spend what is left. Set a goal for contributing to charity, perhaps as a percentage of your income. Measure your financial progress in all areas, including giving to charity. Leverage your contributions by motivating others to give. Get the whole family involved in your cause. Let the kids donate their time and money, too. Get your extended family involved. Get the neighbors involved. You will have setbacks. Don’t be discouraged by setbacks. Think long term. Everything counts. One can of soup donated to a food bank may feed a hungry family. Little things add up. One can of soup every week for years will feed many hungry families. Don’t be ashamed to give a little. Everyone can do something. When you can’t give money, give time. Be patient. You are making a difference. Don’t give up on feeding hungry people because there will always be hungry people; the ones you feed will be glad you didn’t give up. Set your ego aside. You can do more when you’re not worried about who gets the credit. Giving money to charity is a deeply personal thing that brings joy both to the families who give and to the families who receive. Everyone has a chance to do both in life. There Are Opportunities To Volunteer Everywhere If you and your family would like to find ways to volunteer but aren’t sure where and how, the answer is just a Google search away. There may be no better family activity than serving others together. When you can’t volunteer as a team, remember you set an example for your children whenever you serve. Leverage your skills, talents and training to do the most good. Here are some ideas to get you started either as a family or individually: Teach seniors, the disabled, or children about your favorite family hobbies.
Devin D. Thorpe (925 Ideas to Help You Save Money, Get Out of Debt and Retire a Millionaire So You Can Leave Your Mark on the World!)
If you want to glide toward money, you have to make sure your message is clear as a bell, and you need to ensure that you have a unified team capable of communicating it.
Alejandro Cremades (The Art of Startup Fundraising)
The next step is, then, for each member of the group, beginning with the founder, to ask: ‘What are the activities that I am doing well? And what are the activities that each of my key associates in this business is actually doing well?’ Again, there is going to be agreement on most of the people and on most of their strengths. But, again, any disagreement should be taken seriously. Next, one asks: ‘Which of the key activities should each of us, therefore, take on as his or her first and major responsibility because they fit the individual’s strengths? Which individual fits which key activity?’ Then the work on building a team can begin. The founder starts to discipline himself (or herself) not to handle people and their problems, if this is not the key activity that fits him best. Perhaps this individual’s key strength is new products and new technology. Perhaps this individual’s key activity is operations, manufacturing, physical distribution, service. Or perhaps it is money and finance and someone else had better handle people. But all key activities need to be covered by someone who has proven ability in performance.
Peter F. Drucker (Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Routledge Classics))
The main reason I’m writing is that I’ve finished the screenplay for my next film, and I’ve been thinking about you a lot. This character, this woman I’ve been writing about for the past year and a half, is someone that I couldn’t picture in my head without thinking of you. I guess, in a lot of ways, I wrote this character with you in mind. And I don’t know what your situation is right now, how interested you are in acting, but I think you’d be perfect for the part. I’m lining up financing, though after Paramount basically killed my last movie with all their bullshit, I think I’ll be going the independent route again. So there won’t be much money, but I hope you’ll consider it. I’ve attached it so you can read it if you’d like, and I’d love to get your thoughts on it and I would love it even more if the two of us could team up again. I would like to get that same feeling of excitement that I had when I was doing Date Due, and you played a huge role in that happening. Write me if you can,
Kevin Wilson (The Family Fang)
Lucy was a genius when it came to finance. Her ability to see patterns and opportunities was unparalleled, which made her work critical to the team’s success.
Megan Goldin (The Escape Room)
Such exponential growth does not occur in the natural world, except maybe for cancer—and that growth ceases once the host has been consumed.
Douglas Rushkoff (Team Human)
Although baseball, basketball, football, and hockey teams are all privately held, they disclose limited information about their finances. From that data, one crucial fact can be distilled: while some teams are profitable, overall the sports-team industry does not earn any profit from the market. Industry profits all come from the taxpayers. In a market economy, the team owners would have to adjust or cover the losses out of their own deep pockets. Instead they rely on the kindness of taxpayers to enrich themselves at the expense of the vast majority who never attend these sporting events.
David Cay Johnston (Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill))
The crucial issue when a subsidy is proposed is the impact on the finances of the local government, known as fiscal impact. Unless the annual flows of tax revenues more than pay for the bonds being issued, then some other part of the municipal budget will suffer. Even then it will probably suffer because people’s budgets for recreation are limited. A dollar spent at the ballpark is a dollar not spent at a restaurant, bar, or other place of leisure time activity, thus transferring the jobs and economic effects from many businesses to a single sports team.
David Cay Johnston (Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill))
As an account manager, Yehoshua Leibowitz uses his personal and communication skills to handle collections for clients in the cash advance business. His charming and loyal personality has led to numerous promotions. In one of his first jobs, Yehoshua Leibowitz was selected to oversee a team of workers at four different dry cleaning locations.
Yehoshua s Leibowitz
Online College of Business and Finance is committed to providing affordable and globally recognized online education to students across the globe. Our team of talented educators have developed a suite of online courses to make quality education accessible to all. Students can avail our wide range of courses ranging from business and finance to IT and hospitality management, from the comfort of their own home.
Sandy Micheal
After earning a BS in Accounting and Finance from the University of Illinois, Brad Dean of Myrtle Beach commenced his career as one of the most sought-after turnaround architects in modern industry. In public and private sectors, he works to transform organizations, leading dynamic teams and teaching them how to develop and sustain profitable relationships with valuable partners.
Brad Dean Myrtle Beach
So our CORE PROPOSITION was: ‘This was an opportunity to acquire currently cutthroat competing businesses at distressed values where an immediate uplift in value would be derived from (a) the reduction in competition and (b) the synergies from joint purchasing, IT warehousing, and management.’ Seven warehouses would be reduced to three, two merchandising teams to one and two finance teams to one.
Bill Ferris (Inside Private Equity: Thrills, spills and lessons by the author of Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained)
Over the years, I’ve found that great ventures are set apart by a handful of factors: technical excellence, an outstanding team, reasonable financing, and laser focus—on either a large, existing market or a rapidly growing new one. Finally, a standout venture needs that paradoxical combination of persistence, patience, and urgency. Few young companies possess all of these qualities, especially at the start. The winners develop them over time.
John Doerr (Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now)
Just remember that a mix is good. Decider Who makes decisions for your team? Perhaps it’s the CEO, or maybe it’s just the “CEO” of this particular project. If she can’t join for the whole time, make sure she makes a couple of appearances and delegates a Decider (or two) who can be in the room at all times. Examples: CEO, founder, product manager, head of design Finance expert Who can explain where the money comes from (and where it goes)? Examples: CEO, CFO, business development manager Marketing expert Who crafts your company’s messages? Examples: CMO, marketer, PR, community manager Customer expert Who regularly talks to your customers one-on-one? Examples: researcher, sales, customer support Tech/logistics expert Who best understands what your company can build and deliver? Examples: CTO, engineer Design expert Who designs the products your company makes? Examples: designer, product manager
Jake Knapp (Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days)
What if we looked at the law as a piece of software, the operating system of the United States of America. After all, laws play the same role as software in providing instructions for a given system - if this, then that, and so on. If a team of software engineers was asked to analyze the entire body of federal law, they would see tens of thousand of pages of poorly documented code, with a multitude of complex, spaghetti-like interdependencies between the individual components. Could the principles of good software design be used to improve the way we write financial regulations? Li, William, Pablo Azar, David Larochelle, Phil Hill, and Andrew W. Lo. 2015. 'Law Is Code: A Software Engineering Approach to Analyzing the United States Code.' Journal of Business and Technology Law 10: 297. A useful feature of network graphs if the ability to model contagion. Like an epidemiologist studying the spread of a contagious disease from its point of origin, we should identify the potential linkages through which a financial crisis may travel. Billio, Monica, Mila Getmansky, Andrew W. Lo, and Loriana Pelizzon, 2012. 'Econometric Measures of Connectedness and Systemic Risk in the Finance and Insurance Sectors.' Journal of Financial Economics, 104: 535-559. This approach can also be used to measure the network of banks, insurance companies, and sovereign nations. The idea is to see how macroeconomic problems facing countries might get transmitted to the financial system and vice versa. Billio, Monica, Mila Getmansky, Dale Gray, Andrew W. Lo, Robert C. Merton, and Loriana Pelizzon. 2016. 'Granger-Causality Networks of Sovereign Risk.' Working Paper, MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering.
Andrew W. Lo (Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought)
Staying on top of operations data and delivering it in a timely way to the management is the most important job of the finance team.
Steve Cakebread (The IPO Playbook: An Insider's Perspective on Taking Your Company Public and How to Do It Right)
The elements of a true leader’s vision A true leader’s vision should target specific interests and answer important questions, such as: 1.  What is the country’s interest in this vision? What is the interest of its society and business community? Who will benefit from it and how? In what way will it promote development and enhance the achievements that have already resulted from previous visions? 2.  Is the vision based upon specific plans or is it going to be implemented randomly, without any link between its different phases? 3.  Is it realistic and feasible or is it a wild vision that no amount of financial and human resources are capable of realizing? For example, giant residential and tourist complexes such as The Palm29 and The World30 islands may require huge resources that many countries cannot afford. While they may be feasible in the UAE, it would be impossible to build them in a number of other places. 4.  What is the ideal time to propose the vision? 5.  What is the best way to implement it? 6.  Is the executive team ready? Who are its members and where will we acquire the high-calibre skills necessary? 7.  How will the implementation of the vision be financed? 8.  How will we convince investors to finance the project? 9.  How will we market the finished product and what is the target market? Where and when?
Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum (My Vision: Challenges in the Race for Excellence)
I asked [Nick Maounis]: “What’s the main goal of your career?” He thought about it deeply in silence and then answered: “To be a billionaire. And also to own a sports team.” Sadly, Maounis never achieved either goal because Amaranth famously imploded the following year.
Vivek Ramaswamy (Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam)
In better times, Salomon might have shunned me, but they were as desperate as I was, and after an intense round of interviews, they offered me a position as an associate on the East European investment-banking team in London.
Bill Browder (Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice)
In better times, Salomon might have shunned me, but they were as desperate as I was, and after an intense round of interviews, they offered me a position as an associate on the East European investment-banking team in London. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted. My dream was to be an investor—the person deciding what shares to buy—not an investment banker, the guy organizing the sale of shares.
Bill Browder (Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice)
QuickBooks Online Support +1-877-788-4840 QuickBooks Online Support is the chief reason which makes user to a habitual of this meaningful accounting software suite. It is expectation of many customers that problem cannot happen with this accounting and finance software. A great number of people hypotheses that no problem arise with the administration of forthcoming time. Nonetheless, no one has the power to stop the unexpected event in it. By the way, some series of technical problems has been outline in it. Generally, it is the common thing the normal QuickBooks pitch has resolved through self practice. If the existence of problem is out of capacity, then you would not forget to get the smooth interaction of QuickBooks online support. These experts are not adhering with specific time interval to give the valid assistance to their customers. In case you are willing to nullify is non-expected result, then you should not need to explore most update knowledge with the coverage of time. You must active with QuickBooks online support phone number if you dislike to stay connects with long durability of its frustrated outcome. Making worry against the technical issue does not provide the effective solution to decrease the problem stability. You must tell whatever issue to technical team so that they do their best for offering the customer friendly result. First of all, you must see the brief look of encountered QuickBooks conflictions.
XORIR
Art Ocain is a business leader, investor, writer, and DevOps advocate from Pennsylvania, the United States who specializes in the field of programming and cybersecurity. He focuses on using the theory of constraints and applying constraint management to all areas of business including sales, finance, planning, billing, and all areas of operations. Ocain has a Mathematics degree from the University of Maryland and a Business degree from the University of the People. And he is also certified by many renowned organizations like CISM from ISACA, CCNA from Cisco, MCSE from Microsoft, Security Administrator from Azure, Six Sigma, Scrum, and many more. Ocain is responsible for leading many teams toward revolutionary change through his DevOps principles, no matter the type of company or team. So far, he has worked in a lot of companies as a project manager, a President, a COO, a CTO, and an incident response coordinator. Along with this, Ocain is a blog writer and public speaker. He loves to write and share his knowledge and has given presentations at SBDC (Small Business Development Center) and Central PA Chamber of Commerce. Ocain shares his thoughts and information about his upcoming events on sites like MePush, LinkedIn, Slideshare, Quora, and Microsoft Tech Community. Throughout his career, Ocain has been a coach and a mentor to many people and has helped develop companies and build brands.
Art Ocain
When the next negotiation session came around on March 15, Nichols confidently pulled out a printed copy of the report and confronted U.S. Soccer’s representatives with it. U.S. Soccer responded that the jump in profitability for the women’s team was an aberration—not part of the larger pattern in the federation’s finances. “An aberration?” Nichols responded. “Aberrations don’t occur multiple years in a row. Aberrations aren’t projected. You guys have projected profitability. You projected the women to bring in more than the men.” What U.S. Soccer’s executives told him, and have maintained in the federation’s defense ever since, is that over the previous four-year cycle—which includes World Cups for both teams—the men brought in more revenue than the women. Both sides agree that is true. The gap in revenue between the national teams had historically been large—but the long-term trend showed the gap was shrinking. Since the 2015 World Cup, the gap had flipped and the women had been bringing in more money.
Caitlin Murray (The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women Who Changed Soccer)
Not surprisingly, his answer was his sales team. The answer I was hoping for, however, was his leadership peer group, meaning his counterparts in engineering, marketing, finance, services, and so on, because that's the team that really runs any company. The sales team by itself is a just one silo within the bigger organization.
Frank Slootman (Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity)
Farah collins is a Financial business adviser who provides information and advice to companies about doing business. she runs a comprehensive planning practice that delivers custom-tailored strategies to other business owners, investors, aspiring entrepreneurs, and the many other professionals and families that make it all possible. She works with the executive and management teams to help them identify new markets and old ones that might be tapped for future business and then facilitate a strategy plan with these teams to guide them in how to go forward.
Farah Collins
According to analysts, 666 Fifth Avenue had about a 30 percent vacancy rate and only generated about half of its annual mortgage. It was rumored that the largest tenant was planning to move out. A Canadian company named Brookfield Property Partners took a ninety-nine-year lease on 666 Fifth Avenue. Brookfield paid the rent for the entire century-long lease, upfront, which amounted to about $1.1 billion—removing Kushner’s biggest financial headache (a $1.4 billion mortgage on the office portion of the tower due in February 2019). Brookfield got its financing for this deal from a $750 million mortgage from ING Group, a Dutch multinational and financial services corporation, and a $300 million mezzanine loan from Apollo Global Management.9 However, the Qatar Investment Authority, the government-run agency that made decisions about the nations’ financial investments, bought a $1.8 billion stake in Brookfield Property Partners. As the second largest shareholder, they had a lot to say about what should be purchased; in this instance, they apparently used Brookfield to bail out 666 Fifth Ave. This investment was a godsend to Kushner, who was now out of debt just as Qatar was suddenly no longer blockaded by Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, crown prince of Saudi Arabia (known colloquially as MBS), and his allies.
Malcolm W. Nance (The Plot to Betray America: How Team Trump Embraced Our Enemies, Compromised Our Security, and How We Can Fix It)
The nature of the private markets is that if nine smart investors pass, it only takes one relatively dumber investor, and suddenly we’re valued at $16 billion,” the finance team member said
Reeves Wiedeman (Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork)
I recently recommended to Lea Endres, CEO of NationBuilder, which builds software for community leaders, that she follow Senghor’s lead. NationBuilder was operating close to the red and Endres was frustrated because, despite her reminding everyone that cash collection was a priority, she couldn’t get her team to care enough about it. Our conversation went like this: Lea: I’m really worried about cash collections. We use this outsourced finance firm and they don’t care. We have a low cash balance and we got surprised last month. A couple more surprises and we’re in deep trouble. Ben: Is there a team on it? How much do you need to collect this month? Lea: Yes. And $1.1 million at least. Ben: If you have a crisis situation and you need the team to execute, meet with them every day and even twice a day if necessary. That will show them this is a top priority. At the beginning of each meeting you say, “Where’s my money?” They will start making excuses like “Boo Boo was supposed to call me and didn’t,” or “The system didn’t tell me the right thing.” Those excuses are the key, because that’s the knowledge you’re missing. Once you know that the excuse is that “Fred didn’t answer my email,” you can tell Fred to answer the damned email and also tell the person making the excuse that you expect way more persistence. The meetings will start out running long, but two weeks later they’ll be short, because when you say, “Where’s my money?” they are going to want to say, “Right here, Lea!” Two weeks later: Lea: You wouldn’t believe some of the excuses. One was that we have an auto email that is one sentence long that tells customers they are late—but it doesn’t tell them what to do! I’m like, “Well, then, let’s fix the damned email!” We’re making progress and they know I want my money. End of quarter: Lea: We collected $1.6 million in September! And the team loves hearing me say “Where’s my money?!?!” To change a culture, you can’t just give lip service to what you want. Your people must feel the urgency of it.
Ben Horowitz (What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture)
We have a very blunt message from the finance team, and they state they will provide a financial demonstration.
Philip G. Henley (Sail Chains (Sailing Clear, #2))
Economics and P&L What are the per-unit economics of the device? That is, what is the expected gross profit and contribution profit per unit? What is the rationale for the price point you have chosen for the product? How much will we have to invest up front to build this product in terms of people, technology, inventory, warehouse space, and so on? For this section of the PR/FAQ, ideally one or more members of your finance team will work with you to understand and capture these costs so you can include a simplified table of the per-unit economics and a mini P&L in the document. A resourceful entrepreneur or product manager can do this work themselves if they do not have a finance manager or team. For new products, the up-front investment is a major consideration. In the case of Melinda, there is a requirement for 77 people to work on the hardware and software, for an annualized cost of roughly $15 million. This means that the product idea needs to have the potential to earn well in excess of $15 million per year in gross profit to be worth building. The consumer questions and economic analysis both have an effect on the product price point, and that price point, in turn, has an effect on the size of the total addressable market. Price is a key variable in the authoring of your PR/FAQ. There may be special assumptions or considerations that have informed your calculation of the price point—perhaps making it relatively low or unexpectedly high—that need to be called out and explained. Some of the best new product proposals set a not-to-exceed price point because it forces the team to innovate within that constraint and face the tough trade-offs early on. The problem(s) associated with achieving that price point should be fully explained and explored in the FAQ.
Colin Bryar (Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon)
Climate change is the biggest threat facing the world. And Erick Miller has a big idea to tackle it. Miller, a frenetic L.A.-based entrepreneur and venture investor, has worked in Hollywood, invested in early dot-coms, and had a vital role in developing Snapchat’s highly popular spectacles. Now he wants to “tokenize the world” through his investment fund CoinCircle. As part of that, he and his partners have come up with a term they call “crypto-impact-economics.” Out of this concept, Miller and a team that includes UCLA finance professor Bhagwan Chowdhry and World Economic Forum oceans conservationist Gregory Stone came up with two special value tokens: the Ocean Health Coin and the Climate Coin. Those tokens would be issued to key stakeholders in the global climate problem, a mix of companies, governments, consumers, NGOs, and charities, who could use them to pay for a range of functions having to do with managing carbon credits and achieving emission and pollution reductions. The idea includes a reserve of tokens controlled by the World Economic Forum to manage the value of the global float of coins. The meat of the proposal involves a plan to irrevocably destroy some of the coins in reserve whenever international scientific bodies confirm that improvements in pollution and carbon emission targets have occurred. That act of destroying tokens, through a cryptographic function, will increase the surviving tokens’ scarcity and thus their value. The point: holders are motivated to act in the interests of improving the planet now, not tomorrow.
Michael J. Casey (The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything)
When the retail, operations, and finance teams began to construct the initial Amazon WBR, they turned to a well-known Six Sigma process improvement method called DMAIC, an acronym for Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control.1 Should you decide to implement a Weekly Business Review for your business, we recommend following the DMAIC steps as well. The order of the steps matters. Progressing through this metrics life cycle in this order can prevent a lot of frustration and rework, allowing you to achieve your goals faster.
Colin Bryar (Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon)
Schumacher has no flaws. He has the best car, the best-financed team, the best tries, the most skill. Who can rejoice in his wins? The sun rises every day. What is to love? Lock the sun in a box. Force the sun to overcome adversity in order to rise. Then we will cheer! I will often admire a beautiful sunrise, but I will never consider the sun a champion for having risen. So. For me to relate the history of Denny, who is a true champion, without including his missteps and failings would be doing a disservice to all involved.
Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
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This means that finance, sales, or marketing shouldn’t tell the product teams what to do. Instead, these groups can supply intelligence on what customer problems need solving, and what opportunities they see.*20 They describe the market part of “product market fit.” Then they stand by, let the product teams work, and clear the way of things that might slow them down. As Bill often commented, “Why is marketing losing its clout? Because it forgot its first name: product.
Eric Schmidt (Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell)
Risks are tackled up front, rather than at the end. In modern teams, we tackle these risks prior to deciding to build anything. These risks include value risk (whether customers will buy it), usability risk (whether users can figure out how to use it), feasibility risk (whether our engineers can build what we need with the time, skills, and technology we have), and business viability risk (whether this solution also works for the various aspects of our business—sales, marketing, finance, legal, etc.). Products are defined and designed collaboratively, rather than sequentially. They have finally moved beyond the old model in which a product manager defines requirements, a designer designs a solution that delivers on those requirements, and then engineering implements those requirements, with each person living with the constraints and decisions of the ones that preceded. In strong teams, product, design, and engineering work side by side, in a give‐and‐take way, to come up with technology‐powered solutions that our customers love and that work for our business.
Marty Cagan (INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love (Silicon Valley Product Group))
At Netflix you don’t have to complete a purchase order and wait for approval to buy something. You just buy it, take a photo of the receipt, and submit it directly for reimbursement. But that doesn’t mean no one pays attention to what you spend. The finance team offers two routes for eradicating unwise expenditure. Managers can choose which route to take or can combine the two. The first method leans lightly toward an ethos of Freedom and Responsibility (or F&R, as we say at Netflix). The second choice jumps all in.
Reed Hastings (No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention)
One family described their core value of hospitality, lived out as they cleaned the house together each Friday for the express purpose of welcoming people over the weekend. They wanted to be able to spontaneously invite others over, knowing their space was ready to receive them. All this was explained to their kids by connecting the dots between the practice of keeping house and the immense welcome of God. They talked about their apartment as a gift and a refuge, and how important it was for it to feel inviting. Hosting people was not about living some Magnolia life; it was how they loved their neighbors. Thus, Friday night cleanup was a faith practice. One family used the tradition of a summer road trip to visit relatives as a means to support being who God uniquely made each of them to be. Each family member got to design the itinerary for one day of the trip. On that day, everyone else went along with that person’s choices for restaurants and an activity. They talked about the wonder of God’s image in each person and how this was a fun way to see each member of the family just as God made them to be. Thus, a family trip was a faith ritual. What about your family? What unique characteristics need to be accounted for as you craft a vision for faith? • Who makes up your family? List the members. You may share a living space with them or not, live in the same town or not, be relationally close or not. • Next to each person on the list, jot down a few distinguishing key traits of that person. What are they like? What are they interested in? • What are some of your family’s strengths and loves as a group? Do you love a good party? Cheer for a certain team? Love a particular place or meal? • What are some of your family’s unique challenges right now? Do you have a child who doesn’t “fit the mold,” for whatever reason? Are finances tight? Have any of the relationships been strained or broken? • List anything else that feels important to you about who your family is and what they are like. What other traits make you, you?
Meredith Miller (Woven: Nurturing a Faith Your Kid Doesn't Have to Heal From)
Finance teams struggle to understand and keep up with what teams are spending and to properly allocate cloud investments.
J.R. Storment (Cloud FinOps)
Today, violence against women is rightly abhorred. But we call violence against men entertainment. Think of football, boxing, wrestling; or ice hockey, rodeos, and auto racing. All are games used to sugarcoat violence against men, originally in need of sugarcoating so “our team”—or “our society”—could bribe its best protectors to sacrifice themselves. Yet even today the violence against men in sports is still financed by our public education system; and by public subsidies of the stadiums in which sports teams play. Violence against men is not just called entertainment, it is also called education. We all support it. Every day.
Warren Farrell (The Myth of Male Power)
During an interview with Diversity Inc.’s director of research and product development, she walked me through a typical presentation used to pitch the value of the company’s software to prospective clients. I learned that their products are especially valuable to those industries not allowed to collect ethno-racial data directly from individuals because of civil rights legislation that attempts to curb how these data are used to discriminate. But now those who work in finance, housing, and healthcare can use predictive software programs to ascertain information that they cannot request directly. The US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rule, for example, strictly monitors the collection, storage, and communication of individuals’ “protected health information,” among other features of the law. This means that pharmaceutical companies, which market to different groups, need indirect methods to create customer profiles, because they cannot collect racial-ethnic data directly. This is where Diversity Inc. comes in. Its software programs target customers not only on the basis of race and ethnicity, but also on the basis of socioeconomic status, gender, and a growing list of other attributes. However, the company does not refer to “race” anywhere in their product descriptions. Everything is based on individuals’ names, we are told. “A person’s name is data,” according to the director of research and product development. She explains that her clients typically supply Diversity Inc. with a database of client names and her team builds knowledge around it. The process, she says, has a 96 percent accuracy rate, because so many last names are not shared across racial–ethnic groups – a phenomenon sociologists call “cultural segregation.”18
Ruha Benjamin (Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code)
Anthony Cafaro has been a sports fan his whole life. His favorite teams include the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays. Anthony Cafaro played travel baseball and golf in high school and still remains active in recreational basketball. As a finance major, he looks forward to a lucrative career with a strong company.
Anthony Cafaro
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Acknowledgments You hold this book in your hands ◆ because Bonnie Nadell and Austen Rachlis, no matter how many bananas drafts they read (and boy were they bananas), saw what this book could be, and helped me to see it too. Because Naomi Gibbs saw it and brought it fully into itself, and was a joy to work with, like everyone at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: Larry Cooper, Chrissy Kurpeski, Liz Anderson, Michelle Triant, among others, who took my weird visions and made them manifest, and beautiful. And because Andrea Schulz, years ago, when she first heard about my day job, said, Oh, you should definitely write about that. Thank you, Kayla Rae Whitaker and Amber Sparks, for your words and your kindness. You hold this book because I lived in Boston for eleven years and worked in both fundraising and finance, and had a LOT to process. Thank you, MGH and the Prospect Research Team (2010–2014), especially Angie Morey. I loved the work, but I loved working with you all even more. You are an astounding group of human beings. Thank you, Michael and Deanna Sheridan, Wendy Price, Barry Abrams, Heather Heald, and Eddie Miller, for the years before MGH, the days of RFPs and BlackBerrys (those who know, know). I didn’t always love the work itself, but working with you was a gift, and it changed my life. Thank you, Grub Street, which I am thrilled to work for still; thank you to Michelle Hoover, Alison Murphy, and Chris Castellani, and to all the thoughtful, visionary, funny, and immensely talented writers and people in the Grub universe.
Kate Racculia (Tuesday Mooney Talks To Ghosts)
Schumacher has no flaws. He has the best car, the best-financed team, the best tires, the most skill. Who can rejoice in his wins? The sun rises every day. What is to love? Lock the sun in a box. Force the sun to overcome adversity in order to rise. Then we will cheer! I will often admire a beautiful sunrise, but I will never consider the sun a champion for having risen.
Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
On a trip to Korea, Thiel’s corporate credit card was declined as he tried to purchase a return ticket home. The investors he had met with were only too happy to furnish a first-class plane ticket—which they did on the spot. “They were excited beyond belief,” Thiel remembered. “The next day, they called up our law firm and asked, ‘What’s the bank account we need to send the money to?’ ” The crazed nature of it all confirmed Thiel’s suspicions about the market. “I remember thinking to myself that it felt like things couldn’t get much crazier, and that we really had to close the money quickly because the window might not last forever,” he said. The final $100 million figure actually disappointed some on the team. Confinity and X.com had secured verbal commitments for double that amount, and some on the team had wanted to hold out for the remaining funding or push for a billion-dollar valuation. Thiel disagreed, urging Selby and others on the financing team to turn handshakes into actual checks, to get term sheets signed, and have deposits confirmed. “Peter kicked everyone’s asses to get that funding round done,” David Sacks remembered. Many Confinity employees—who had seen Thiel at his toughest—rarely remember him this insistent. “If we don’t get this money raised,” Howery recalled Thiel saying, “the whole company could blow up.
Jimmy Soni (The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley)
In modern teams, we tackle these risks prior to deciding to build anything. These risks include value risk (whether customers will buy it), usability risk (whether users can figure out how to use it), feasibility risk (whether our engineers can build what we need with the time, skills, and technology we have), and business viability risk (whether this solution also works for the various aspects of our business—sales, marketing, finance, legal, etc.).
Marty Cagan (INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love (Silicon Valley Product Group))
Coates and his new colleagues examined a group of financial traders working on a London trading floor, asking each one to identify the successive moments when he felt his heart beat—a measure of the individual’s sensitivity to bodily signals. The traders, they found, were much better at this task than were an age- and gender-matched group of controls who did not work in finance. What’s more, among the traders themselves, those who were the most accurate in detecting the timing of their heartbeats made more money, and tended to have longer tenures in what was a notably volatile line of work. “Our results suggest that signals from the body—the gut feelings of financial lore—contribute to success in the markets,” the team concluded. Confirming Coates’s informal observations, those who thrived in this milieu were not necessarily people with greater education or intellect, but rather “people with greater sensitivity to interoceptive signals.
Annie Murphy Paul (The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain)
Dennis Tsui is a lifelong resident of Oakland. Dennis Tsui is an Oakland resident and loves to help out the community with donation and charity work. Dennis enjoys staying fit and can often be found in one of Oakland's many spacious parks, pushing himself to the limit. He is an avid runner and is always working to break his old records. Dennis works in finance and is an important team player. He wants to progress in this ever-changing industry.
Dennis Tsui Oakland
Everyone thought I was crazy—and many still do—but here’s what I did: I took several sheets of paper with me everywhere. They had all the top milestones in front of us for each of the disciplines—engineering, HR, finance, legal, marketing, facilities, etc.—and everything we needed to do to reach those milestones. Every top-level question that I had was on those papers. So when I was in a meeting or talking to someone, I could quickly scan it. What are my top issues? What issues do our customers have? What’s the current roadblock for this person’s team? What are the next major milestones? What date commitments did our teams make?
Tony Fadell (Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making)
He was constantly at odds with his forty-man team,
Liaquat Ahamed (Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World)
Wall Street that Enron was an aggressive user of structured finance devices such as special purpose entities (that’s the SPE in Hecker’s song), securitizations, and off-balance-sheet partnerships. “If there was a whiz-bang structure somebody had, the place to sell it was down there on Smith Street, because they were buying,” says one banker. Andy Fastow’s team, says another banker, were “black belts in structured finance.” “It started out as pure, clear, legitimate deals,” says a former senior Enron executive. “And each deal gets a little bit messier and messier. We started out just taking one hit of cocaine, and the next thing you know, we’re importing the stuff from Colombia.
Bethany McLean (The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron)
Josh Miller, 22 years old. He is co-founder of Branch, a “platform for chatting online as if you were sitting around the table after dinner.” Miller works at Betaworks, a hybrid company encapsulating a co-working space, an incubator and a venture capital fund, headquartered on 13th Street in the heart of the Meatpacking District. This kid in T-shirt and Bermuda shorts, and a potential star of the 2.0 version of Sex and the City, is super-excited by his new life as a digital neo-entrepreneur. He dropped out of Princeton in the summer of 2011 a year before getting his degree—heresy for the almost 30,000 students who annually apply to the prestigious Ivy League school in the hope of being among the 9% of applicants accepted. What made him decide to take such a big step? An internship in the summer of 2011 at Meetup, the community site for those who organize meetings in the flesh for like-minded people. His leader, Scott Heiferman, took him to one of the monthly meetings of New York Tech Meetup and it was there that Miller saw the light. “It was the coolest thing that ever happened to me,” he remembers. “All those people with such incredible energy. It was nothing like the sheltered atmosphere of Princeton.” The next step was to take part in a seminar on startups where the idea for Branch came to him. He found two partners –students at NYU who could design a website. Heartened by having won a contest for Internet projects, Miller dropped out of Princeton. “My parents told me I was crazy but I think they understood because they had also made unconventional choices when they were kids,” says Miller. “My father, who is now a lawyer, played drums when he was at college, and he and my mother, who left home at 16, traveled around Europe for a year. I want to be a part of the new creative class that is pushing the boundaries farther. I want to contribute to making online discussion important again. Today there is nothing but the soliloquy of bloggers or rude anonymous comments.” The idea, something like a public group email exchange where one can contribute by invitation only, interested Twitter cofounder Biz Stone and other California investors who invited Miller and his team to move to San Francisco, financing them with a two million dollar investment. After only four months in California, Branch returned to New York, where it now employs a dozen or so people. “San Francisco was beautiful and I learned a lot from Biz and my other mentors, but there’s much more adrenaline here,” explains Miller, who is from California, born and raised in Santa Monica. “Life is more varied here and creating a technological startup is something new, unlike in San Francisco or Silicon Valley where everyone’s doing it: it grabs you like a drug. Besides New York is the media capital and we’re an online publishing organization so it’s only right to be here.”[52]
Maria Teresa Cometto (Tech and the City: The Making of New York's Startup Community)
The agency had set up fake local internet cafes equipped with key-logging software. This allowed GCHQ to hack delegates’ passwords, which could be exploited later. GCHQ also penetrated their BlackBerrys to monitor email messages and phone calls. A team of 45 analysts kept a real-time log of who phoned whom during the summit. Turkey’s finance minister and 15 other members of his delegation were among the targets. This had, of course, nothing whatever to do with terrorism. The
Luke Harding (The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man)
At the most senior level, the people with the greatest impact—the ones who are running the company—should be product people. When a CEO looks around her staff meeting, a good rule of thumb is that at least 50 percent of the people at the table should be experts in the company’s products and services and responsible for product development. This will help ensure that the leadership team maintains focus on product excellence. Operational components like finance, sales, and legal are obviously critical to a company’s success, but they should not dominate the conversation.
Eric Schmidt (How Google Works)
Let me ask you: When you spend money, do you write your name on it before you do? When you're paid money, do you write your name on it? No, you don't. You wouldn't do that, because you are going to use it for something, and if you're going to use it for something, it would be a bit weird if you tried to label it. After all what is the plumber going to do with a bunch of bills with your monogram emblazoned on them? We are not the owners of money, but we are the facilitators of money. We are all responsible for creating whatever amount of money we are currently creating. We are all responsible for circulating money in whatever way we are currently circulating it. And this flow of money is different for everyone. This is freeing for me. How about you? The thought, belief, and knowing that money is not mine or yours to attach to and own. It's entrusted to me on a loan from Source. I have it to play with and to create the life that brings me the most joy, the most health, the most freedom and choice. I have it for my time here on Earth and can use it as a valuable member of my team to create the change I wish to see while I'm here.
Peta Kelly (Earth is Hiring: The New way to live, lead, earn and give for millennials and anyone who gives a sh*t)
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Where should we be if every one had his rights? Fancy every one's having a hand in the government? Can you imagine a city ruled by its citizens? Why, the citizens are the team, and the team cannot be driver. To put to the vote is to throw to the winds. Would you have states driven like clouds? Disorder cannot build up order. With chaos for an architect, the edifice would be a Babel. And, besides, what tyranny is this pretended liberty! As for me, I wish to enjoy myself; not to govern. It is a bore to have to vote; I want to dance. A prince is a providence, and takes care of us all. Truly the king is generous to take so much trouble for our sakes. Besides, he is to the manner born. He knows what it is. It's his business. Peace, War, Legislation, Finance--what have the people to do with such things? Of course the people have to pay; of course the people have to serve; but that should suffice them. They have a place in policy; from them come two essential things, the army and the budget. To be liable to contribute, and to be liable to serve; is not that enough? What more should they want? They are the military and the financial arm. A magnificent rôle. The king reigns for them, and they must reward him accordingly. Taxation and the civil list are the salaries paid by the peoples and earned by the prince. The people give their blood and their money, in return for which they are led. To wish to lead themselves! what an absurd idea! They require a guide; being ignorant, they are blind. Has not the blind man his dog? Only the people have a lion, the king, who consents to act the dog. How kind of him! But why are the people ignorant? because it is good for them. Ignorance is the guardian of Virtue. Where there is no perspective there is no ambition. The ignorant man is in useful darkness, which, suppressing sight, suppresses covetousness: whence innocence. He who reads, thinks; who thinks, reasons. But not to reason is duty; and happiness as well. These truths are incontestable; society is based on them.
Viktor Hugo
In our view, the specific framework a company uses to ground its strategic plans isn’t all that important. What is critical is that the framework establish a common language for the dialogue between the corporate center and the units—one that the strategy, marketing, and finance teams all understand and use.
Michael C. Mankins (HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy)
Sample UFS Feedback Questionnaire My manager gives me actionable feedback that helps me improve my performance. My manager does not “micromanage” (i.e., get involved in details that should be handled at other levels). My manager shows consideration for me as a person. My manager keeps the team focused on our priority results/deliverables. My manager regularly shares relevant information from his/her manager and senior leadership. My manager has had a meaningful discussion with me about my career development in the past six months. My manager communicates clear goals for our team. My manager has the technical expertise (e.g., coding in Tech, accounting in Finance) required to effectively manage me. I would recommend my manager to other Googlers.
Laszlo Bock (Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead)
Decider Who makes decisions for your team? Perhaps it’s the CEO, or maybe it’s just the “CEO” of this particular project. If she can’t join for the whole time, make sure she makes a couple of appearances and delegates a Decider (or two) who can be in the room at all times. Examples: CEO, founder, product manager, head of design Finance expert Who can explain where the money comes from (and where it goes)? Examples: CEO, CFO, business development manager Marketing expert Who crafts your company’s messages? Examples: CMO, marketer, PR, community manager Customer expert Who regularly talks to your customers one-on-one? Examples: researcher, sales, customer support Tech/logistics expert Who best understands what your company can build and deliver? Examples: CTO, engineer Design expert Who designs the products your company makes? Examples: designer, product manager
Jake Knapp (Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days)
The next billion-dollar startup will only have three employees.” The culture of that startup would be “AI first,” and it would use autonomous AI agents to get work done. All marketing and sales would be automated via AI bots, and the three employees would be: The CEO, who would handle vision and purpose and lead public-facing marketing. She would also code and be involved in engineering. The Product Lead, who would interface with customers and team to manage the product roadmap and drive development The Operations Lead, who would be responsible for the outcome of the AI bots and handle finance and legal and smooth operations. We
Salim Ismail (Exponential Organizations 2.0: The New Playbook for 10x Growth and Impact)
The theory of second systems was formulated by an IBM executive named Frederick Brooks, whose career supervising large-scale software teams taught him that designers of computer systems tend to build into their second projects all the pet features that tight finances or short deadlines forced them to leave out of their first. The result is an overgrown, inefficient monstrosity that rarely works as expected. As he put it in his pithy masterpiece, The Mythical Man-Month: “The second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs.
Michael A. Hiltzik (Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age)
Although earning money has never been difficult, investing and saving money are never simple tasks. Scammers conned me in my case out of shares I received from a company I had long-term investments. Years passed before I could claim it, and when I did, these cybercriminals took it from me. My abrupt loss had left me broke, devoid of hope, sad, and barely able to make ends meet. When they ruin our finances and lead us to lose everything, these cybercriminals have no concept of how terrible their schemes may make our lives. Because they're never good circumstances to be in, I hate cruelty and those who deceive people. It was as if all I had was taken from me by this financial con artist. Occasionally, they would conceal their evil plans until they were about to surprise us. In addition to stating that his employer was covertly working with Daniel Meuli Web Recovery on several cyber risks, my son provided validation for the legitimacy of Daniel Meuli Web Recovery. They'll stop that, just like they stopped mine, with Daniel Meuli Web Recovery and its RECOVERY TEAM. Thanks to WhatsApp +39 351 201 3528  visit on Telegram AT Danielmeuli, with whom I had previously dealt, my money was returned. I have worked with this team, and I felt compelled to use my personal experience to warn as many people as possible and save as many of them. Contact Daniel Meuli Web Recovery right now to speak with hackers who can help you get out of that difficult situation.
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The way to get the best idea, he believed, was to get all of the opinions and ideas out in the open, on the table for the group to discuss. Air the problem honestly, and make sure people have the opportunity to provide their authentic opinions, especially if they are dissenting. If the problem or decision at hand is more functional in nature (for example, primarily a marketing or finance decision), then the discussion should be led by the person with that functional expertise. When it is a broader decision cutting across multiple functional areas, then the team leader owns the discussion. Regardless, it should involve everyone’s point of view.
Eric Schmidt (Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell)