Known Leadership Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Known Leadership. Here they are! All 100 of them:

I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.
Rosa Parks
If a man is known by the company he keeps, so also his character is reflected in the books he reads.
J. Oswald Sanders (Spiritual Leadership: Principles of Excellence for Every Believer)
Self-leaders are still true leaders even if they have no known followers. True leaders inspire by the influence of their characters and general self-made brands. Leadership is defined by the virtues of one's behaviour.
Israelmore Ayivor
Don't just float through life; don't just agree to anything and everything, have a course you are known for at all times.
Jaachynma N.E. Agu
To leaders, one trusted friend is better than ten well known betrayers
Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Ladder)
When you practice leadership,The evidence of quality of your leadership, Is known from the type of leaders that emerge out of your leadership
Sujit Lalwani (Life Simplified!)
The only enemy which stands between the talent you posses and success you achieve is known as "EGO" in our Society
Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
THE Biggest enemy of Truth is known as Facts in our Society
Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
No matter what goals you set to accomplish always remember there is a thing known as Life which you should never forget to live and enjoy
Abhysheq Shukla (KISS Life "Life is what you make it")
Words alone can effect great good as well as evil. A few apt words have swept candidates into office, ended as well as started wars, paved the way for peace and carried with them both hope as well as despair. Words alone have ruined lives, but have also brought forth healing. It is well known the harm words can cause, but the good they can bring is equally impressive.
Steve Goodier
I have found that there are three key steps to identifying your own core personal projects. First, think back to what you loved to do when you were a child. How did you answer the question of what you wanted to be when you grew up? The specific answer you gave may have been off the mark, but the underlying impulse was not. If you wanted to be a fireman, what did a fireman mean to you? A good man who rescued people in distress? A daredevil? Or the simple pleasure of operating a truck? If you wanted to be a dancer, was it because you got to wear a costume, or because you craved applause, or was it the pure joy of twirling around at lightning speed? You may have known more about who you were then than you do now. Second, pay attention to the work you gravitate to. At my law firm I never once volunteered to take on an extra corporate legal assignment, but I did spend a lot of time doing pro bono work for a nonprofit women’s leadership organization. I also sat on several law firm committees dedicated to mentoring, training, and personal development for young lawyers in the firm. Now, as you can probably tell from this book, I am not the committee type. But the goals of those committees lit me up, so that’s what I did. Finally, pay attention to what you envy. Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it tells the truth. You mostly envy those who have what you desire.
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
Leaders are not known by their positions; they are known by their roles in those position. You have many gifts as a leader, but your dominant gift is what you will use to lead.
Israelmore Ayivor
Knowing God is not enough; you must make Him known to others. Through your living character, you tell more about the living God!
Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Watchwords)
The Sun Tzu School (which wrote the Art of War) surely never imagined that their antiwar, pro-empire treatise would become known and accepted after the fall of the first empire as a text on military tactics. Likewise, they would have been surprised to see the Ping-fa military metaphor—an inspired teaching device—come to be seen as the message and not the medium.
David G. Jones
There are many leaders, and I’ve known a few in my life, who would have lost it, hurling expletives and accusations at a stupid kid. As Harry looked down at the plastic parts now spread around his wing-tip shoes, he said only, “Clean it up,” and walked away.
James Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
I strongly believe that leadership is an art, not a science. I've learned that leadership can be innate or it can be learned. However, I don't believe anyone was truly born to be a great leader. Great leaders are formed over a long period of time through a series of opportunities and experiences. Without opportunities, even the greatest natural leader among us may never become known for great leadership.
Scott H. Dearduff (A Cup of My Coffee: Leadership Lessons from the Battlefield to the Boardroom)
A little known area often defines the fortunes of leaders -- management skills.
Suskind (Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President)
The Sodomy sea shall cast out fish, and make a noise in the night, which many have not known: but they shall all hear the voice thereof.
COMPTON GAGE
You can lead and motivate people without a certificate or title, what you need to do is to tell people a compelling secret that was only known to you.
Michael Bassey Johnson
I NEVER KNEW YOU. Only those who do not practice sin can stand in the presence of the holy God. 1 John 3:6 No one who remains in Him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has seen Him or known Him.
Mac Canoza
During the periods of stay-at-home orders, more people of color were going to work riding the train and working in places with more and longer exposure to the virus. Yes, this is known as structural racism.
Andy Slavitt (Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response)
With this life I give you love. You have known so much, but still have much to give. Leadership without love will never be enough to draw your Clan from the shadows. Let your heart lead when your head does not know the way.
Erin Hunter (Tigerheart's Shadow (Warriors Super Edition, #10))
I saw exactly one picture of Marx and one of Lenin in my whole stay, but it's been a long time since ideology had anything to do with it. Not without cunning, Fat Man and Little Boy gradually mutated the whole state belief system into a debased form of Confucianism, in which traditional ancestor worship and respect for order become blended with extreme nationalism and xenophobia. Near the southernmost city of Kaesong, captured by the North in 1951, I was taken to see the beautifully preserved tombs of King and Queen Kongmin. Their significance in F.M.-L.B. cosmology is that they reigned over a then unified Korea in the 14th century, and that they were Confucian and dynastic and left many lavish memorials to themselves. The tombs are built on one hillside, and legend has it that the king sent one of his courtiers to pick the site. Second-guessing his underling, he then climbed the opposite hill. He gave instructions that if the chosen site did not please him he would wave his white handkerchief. On this signal, the courtier was to be slain. The king actually found that the site was ideal. But it was a warm day and he forgetfully mopped his brow with the white handkerchief. On coming downhill he was confronted with the courtier's fresh cadaver and exclaimed, 'Oh dear.' And ever since, my escorts told me, the opposite peak has been known as 'Oh Dear Hill.' I thought this was a perfect illustration of the caprice and cruelty of absolute leadership, and began to phrase a little pun about Kim Jong Il being the 'Oh Dear Leader,' but it died on my lips.
Christopher Hitchens (Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays)
I can’t help but wonder why leaders are so often hesitant to lead. I guess it takes a lot of conviction and trusting your gut to get ahead of your peers, your staff and your employees while they are still squabbling about which path to take, and set an unhesitating, unequivocal course whose rightness or wrongness will not be known for years. Such a decision really tests the mettle of the leader. By contrast, it doesn’t take much self-confidence to downsize a company—after all, how can you go wrong by shuttering factories and laying people off if the benefits of such actions are going to show up in tomorrow’s bottom line and will be applauded by the financial community?
Andrew S. Grove (Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career)
Liberality exercised in a way that does not bring you the reputation for it, injures you; for if one exercises it honestly and as it should be exercised, it may not become known, and you will not avoid the reproach of its opposite.
Niccolò Machiavelli (The Prince)
In what is known as the 70/20/10 learning concept, Robert Eichinger and Michael Lombardo, in collaboration with Morgan McCall of the Center for Creative Leadership, explain that 70 percent of learning and development takes place from real-life and on-the-job experiences, tasks, and problem solving; 20 percent of the time development comes from other people through informal or formal feedback, mentoring, or coaching; and 10 percent of learning and development comes from formal training.
Marcia Conner (The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media)
As this book shows, there were failures and mistakes. The full story is, of course, not yet known. But based on the evidence available now, I believe President Biden and this team will be largely studied in history as an example of steady and purposeful leadership.
Bob Woodward (War)
No matter how great you are at what you do, as long as you remain known only within your own family circles, then you and your talent will die in obscurity and irrelevance. Position yourself to influence the masses by having a media, marketing and communication strategy.
Archibald Marwizi (Making Success Deliberate)
A definite pessimist believes the future can be known, but since it will be bleak, he must prepare for it. Perhaps surprisingly, China is probably the most definitely pessimistic place in the world today. When Americans see the Chinese economy grow ferociously fast (10% per year since 2000), we imagine a confident country mastering its future. But that’s because Americans are still optimists, and we project our optimism onto China. From China’s viewpoint, economic growth cannot come fast enough. Every other country is afraid that China is going to take over the world; China is the only country afraid that it won’t. China can grow so fast only because its starting base is so low. The easiest way for China to grow is to relentlessly copy what has already worked in the West. And that’s exactly what it’s doing: executing definite plans by burning ever more coal to build ever more factories and skyscrapers. But with a huge population pushing resource prices higher, there’s no way Chinese living standards can ever actually catch up to those of the richest countries, and the Chinese know it. This is why the Chinese leadership is obsessed with the way in which things threaten to get worse. Every senior Chinese leader experienced famine as a child, so when the Politburo looks to the future, disaster is not an abstraction. The Chinese public, too, knows that winter is coming. Outsiders are fascinated by the great fortunes being made inside China, but they pay less attention to the wealthy Chinese trying hard to get their money out of the country. Poorer Chinese just save everything they can and hope it will be enough. Every class of people in China takes the future deadly seriously.
Peter Thiel (Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future)
Nobody back then had ever heard of the counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) set up by the FBI. Nobody could possibly have known that the FBI had sent a phony letter to Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers, “signed” by the Panther 21, criticizing Huey Newton’s leadership. No one could have known that the FBI had sent a letter to Huey’s brother saying the New York Panthers were plotting to kill him. No one could have known that the FBI’s COINTELPRO was attempting to destroy the Black Panther Party in particular and the Black Liberation Movement in general, using divide-and-conquer tactics.
Assata Shakur (Assata: An Autobiography)
Trollbella said. “Welcome to tonight’s performance. As you probably know, I am Queen Trollbella of the Troblin Kingdom. If you don’t know, please ask the person beside you to slap you. I am known for many things in my kingdom: beauty, intelligence, charisma, elegance, passion – but I’m best known for bringing my nation together. Thanks to my brilliant leadership, what was once a territory of greedy trolls and obnoxious goblins is now a kingdom of respectable and sophisticated Troblins. Tonight you will see that transformation before your symmetrical human eyes in ‘The Life and Times of Queen Trollbella’!
Chris Colfer (An Author's Odyssey (The Land of Stories #5))
... according to a famous study by the influential management theorist Jim Collins, many of the best performing companies of the late twentieth century were run by what he calls "Level 5 Leaders." These exceptional CEOs were known not for their flash or charisma but for extreme humility coupled with intense professional will.
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
All great leaders are known to have faith. They first develop faith in themselves, which means they connect their body, mind and intellect with their soul. They also connect their soul with the Universal Soul where all souls of the world are connected with each other. Leadership is thus a spiritual quality that comes from faith and trust.
Awdhesh Singh (Practising Spiritual Intelligence: For Innovation, Leadership and Happiness)
Nobody could have possibly known that the FBI had sent a phony letter to Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers, 'signed' by the Panther 21, criticizing Huey Newton's leadership... no one could have known that the FBI's cointelpro was attempting to destroy the Black Panther Party in particular, and the Black Liberation movement in general, using divide-and-conquer tactics.
Assata Shakur (Assata: An Autobiography)
It is not loyalty or internal motivation that drives us programmers forward. We must write our code when the road to our personal success is absolutely clear for us and writing high quality code obviously helps us move forward on this road. To make this happen, the management has to define the rules of the game, also known as "process", and make sure they are strictly enforced, which is much more difficult than "being agile".
Yegor Bugayenko (Code Ahead)
We know that psychology is tremendously important in war. It is a field unlimited in extent, to which every conscientious soldier should give much time and study. Yet it cannot be learned as one learns mathematics. It must be sensed. Unfortunately we cannot formulate a set of psychological rules; human reactions can never be reduced to an exact science. War is governed by the uncertain and the unknown and the least known factor of all is the human element.
Adolf Von Schell (Battle Leadership)
on November 1 he issued a statement that stopped just short of an endorsement. “I want to make it palpably clear,” King said, “that I am deeply grateful to Senator Kennedy for the genuine concern he expressed.… [He] exhibited moral courage of a high order.” In private, he added that the contrast between Kennedy’s call and Nixon’s inaction was very real to him. Even though Nixon had known him longer, he had done nothing. “I really considered him a moral coward,” King remarked.
David J. Garrow (Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference)
In a company known for its inventiveness, separable, single-threaded leadership has been one of Amazon’s most useful inventions. We discuss it in chapter three. This is the organizational strategy that minimizes the drag on efficiency created by intra-organizational dependencies. The basic premise is, for each initiative or project, there is a single leader whose focus is that project and that project alone, and that leader oversees teams of people whose attention is similarly focused on that one project.
Colin Bryar (Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon)
Everything comes down to how work is outsourced. There are more options out there than the subpar you-get-what-you-pay-for. The saying "Every man to his trade" is true in the same way as the Ricardian formulation of comparative advantage*. Tanya's quiet voice is a good excuse to delegate this job. Ricardian formulation of comparative advantage - Also known as the comparative cost theory. The basis of commerce theory. To put it in extremely simple terms, it says that everyone should make what they are good at and trade it.
Carlo Zen (幼女戦記 4 Dabit deus his quoque finem.)
The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former (as built by King Solomon, I Kings 8)), says the Lord of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the Lord of hosts. (Haggai 2: 9) The second temple (as-built under the leadership of Zerubabbel and Joshua) refurbished to be known as, Herod’s temple which received, Lord Jesus Christ (Luke 2: 22 to 24), the indestructible temple (John 2: 19 to 22) who in turn resides in us, the believers, making, You and I, the temple of the Living God (I Corinthians 6: 19)!
Royal Raj S
The genius of Peterson and Seligman’s classification is to get the conversation going, to propose a specific list of strengths and virtues, and then let the scientific and therapeutic communities work out the details. Just as the DSM is thoroughly revised every ten or fifteen years, the classification of strengths and virtues (known among positive psychologists as the “un-DSM”) is sure to be revised and improved in a few years. In daring to be specific, in daring to be wrong, Peterson and Seligman have demonstrated ingenuity, leadership, and hope.
Jonathan Haidt (The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom)
Even Europe joined in. With the most modest friendliness, explaining that they wished not to intrude on American domestic politics but only to express personal admiration for that great Western advocate of peace and prosperity, Berzelius Windrip, there came representatives of certain foreign powers, lecturing throughout the land: General Balbo, so popular here because of his leadership of the flight from Italy to Chicago in 1933; a scholar who, though he now lived in Germany and was an inspiration to all patriotic leaders of German Recovery, yet had graduated from Harvard University and had been the most popular piano-player in his class—namely, Dr. Ernst (Putzi) Hanfstängl; and Great Britain's lion of diplomacy, the Gladstone of the 1930's, the handsome and gracious Lord Lossiemouth who, as Prime Minister, had been known as the Rt. Hon. Ramsay MacDonald, P.C. All three of them were expensively entertained by the wives of manufacturers, and they persuaded many millionaires who, in the refinement of wealth, had considered Buzz vulgar, that actually he was the world's one hope of efficient international commerce.
Sinclair Lewis (It Can't Happen Here)
One of those heroes I have been fortunate enough to learn from and, I hope, help is China’s Wang Qishan, who has been a remarkable force for good for decades. To explain what he is like and the journey that took him to the top of China’s leadership would take more of this book than I can spare. In brief, Wang is a historian, a very high-level thinker, and a very practical man. I have rarely known a person to be both extremely wise and extremely practical. A leading shaper of the Chinese economy for decades who is also responsible for eliminating corruption, he is known to be a no-nonsense man who can be trusted to get stuff done.
Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
Whatever the motives out of which they were established, the old WASP admissions criteria actually meant something. Athletics were thought to build character - courage and selflessness and team spirit. The arts embodied an ideal of culture. Service was designed to foster a public-minded ethos in our future leaders. Leadership itself was understood to be a form of duty. Now it's all become a kind of rain dance that is handed down from generation to generation, an empty set of rituals known only to propitiate the gods. Kids do them because they know that they're supposed to, not because they, or anybody else, actually believes in them.
William Deresiewicz (Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life)
It is too soon to say when or how this era will end or what will succeed it. But what is clear is that a good many of the trends are worrisome. If, for example, a Sino-American cold war materializes, it is quite possible this era may come to be known as the inter–Cold War era, one bookended by the U.S.-Soviet Cold War and one between the United States and China. Such an outcome would result in lower rates of economic growth for both because trade and investment would inevitably be curtailed. It would also reduce the potential for cooperation on regional and global issues. If the liberal world order is sustained and strengthened with the United States resuming a leading role, this could continue to be an era largely characterized by stability, prosperity, and freedom. It is possible, though, that the United States will choose to largely abandon its leading role in the world. In this case, we could in principle see an era of Chinese primacy, but given China’s character, internal constraints, and the nature and scale of the domestic challenges it faces, this is improbable. More likely is that this will turn out to be an era of deterioration, one in which no country or group of countries exercises effective global leadership. In that case, the future would be one of accelerating global disorder.
Richard N. Haass (The World: A Brief Introduction)
Bin Laden practiced intensive operational security. He was wary of telephones. He allowed no Afghans into his personal bodyguard, only Arabs he had known and trusted for many years. He varied his routes, did not stay in any one place for long, and never told anyone but his Arab inner circle about his plans. These practices limited the effectiveness of the CIA’s recruitments because the agency’s sources and paid agents were mainly Afghans who were kept at bay by bin Laden’s core bodyguard and leadership group. The CIA was unable to penetrate the inner circle, but bin Laden did have one security weakness, as agency operatives saw it: his several wives.
Steve Coll (Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan & Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001)
The First Intifada, as it became known, erupted spontaneously all over the Occupied Territories, ignited when an Israeli army vehicle struck a truck in the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, killing four Palestinians. The uprising spread very quickly, although Gaza was the crucible and remained the most difficult area for Israel to bring under control. The intifada generated extensive local organization in the villages, towns, cities, and refugee camps, and came to be led by a secret Unified National Leadership. The flexible and clandestine grassroots networks formed during the intifada proved impossible for the military occupation authorities to suppress.
Rashid Khalidi (The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017)
Common sense was exactly what kingship, almost by definition, lacked: when the king's orders were executed no one dared to tell him honestly how they had turned out. With the absolute powers bestowed by kingship came an arrogance, a ruthlessness, an inflexibility, a habit of compulsion, an unwillingness to listen to reason, that no small community would have endured from any of its members-though the aggressive and humanly disagreeable qualities that make for such ambitious leadership might be found anywhere-as Margaret Mead discovered among the Mundugumor, whose leaders were known to the community as "really bad men," aggressive, gluttonous for power and prestige.
Lewis Mumford (Technics and Human Development (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 1))
While no known record exists of the first entreaty to the Greenbrier, resort historian Robert Conte believes it came during the property’s 1956 North American summit, which brought Eisenhower together with the leaders of Canada and Mexico. While historic details are sketchy, Eisenhower appears to have met privately with railway president Walter Tuohy during the three-day summit to discuss the bunker. Then, the day after Eisenhower departed, the congressional leadership wrote him an opaque letter on March 28, 1956: “This is to introduce Mr. J. George Stewart, Architect of the Capitol, who is calling upon you on matters of vital importance to the Congress of the United States.
Garrett M. Graff (Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die)
The prophet died in the year 632 of our own approximate calendar. The first account of his life was set down a full hundred and twenty years later by Ibn Ishaq, whose original was lost and can only be consulted through its reworked form, authored by Ibn Hisham, who died in 834. Adding to this hearsay and obscurity, there is no agreed-upon account of how the Prophet’s followers assembled the Koran, or of how his various sayings (some of them written down by secretaries) became codified. And this familiar problem is further complicated—even more than in the Christian case—by the matter of succession. Unlike Jesus, who apparently undertook to return to earth very soon and who (pace the absurd Dan Brown) left no known descendants, Muhammad was a general and a politician and—though unlike Alexander of Macedonia a prolific father—left no instruction as to who was to take up his mantle. Quarrels over the leadership began almost as soon as he died, and so Islam had its first major schism—between the Sunni and the Shia—before it had even established itself as a system. We need take no side in the schism, except to point out that one at least of the schools of interpretation must be quite mistaken. And the initial identification of Islam with an earthly caliphate, made up of disputatious contenders for the said mantle, marked it from the very beginning as man-made.
Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything)
It has become fashionable for modern workplaces to relax what are often seen as outmoded relics of a less egalitarian age: out with stuffy hierarchies, in with flat organisational structures. But the problem with the absence of a formal hierarchy is that it doesn’t actually result in an absence of a hierarchy altogether. It just means that the unspoken, implicit, profoundly non-egalitarian structure reasserts itself, with white men at the top and the rest of us fighting for a piece of the small space left for everyone else. Group-discussion approaches like brainstorming, explains female leadership trainer Gayna Williams, are ‘well known to be loaded with challenges for diverse representation’, because already-dominant voices dominate.
Caroline Criado Pérez (Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men)
POLLARD had known better, but instead of pulling rank and insisting that his officers carry out his proposal to sail for the Society Islands, he embraced a more democratic style of command. Modern survival psychologists have determined that this “social”—as opposed to “authoritarian”—form of leadership is ill suited to the early stages of a disaster, when decisions must be made quickly and firmly. Only later, as the ordeal drags on and it is necessary to maintain morale, do social leadership skills become important. Whalemen in the nineteenth century had a clear understanding of these two approaches. The captain was expected to be the authoritarian, what Nantucketers called a fishy man. A fishy man loved to kill whales and lacked the tendency toward self-doubt and self-examination that could get in the way of making a quick decision. To be called “fishy to the backbone” was the ultimate compliment a Nantucketer could receive and meant that he was destined to become, if he wasn’t already, a captain. Mates, however, were expected to temper their fishiness with a more personal, even outgoing, approach. After breaking in the green hands at the onset of the voyage—when they gained their well-deserved reputations as “spit-fires”—mates worked to instill a sense of cooperation among the men. This required them to remain sensitive to the crew’s changeable moods and to keep the lines of communication open. Nantucketers recognized that the positions of captain and first mate required contrasting personalities. Not all mates had the necessary edge to become captains, and there were many future captains who did not have the patience to be successful mates. There was a saying on the island: “[I]t is a pity to spoil a good mate by making him a master.” Pollard’s behavior, after both the knockdown and the whale attack, indicates that he lacked the resolve to overrule his two younger and less experienced officers. In his deference to others, Pollard was conducting himself less like a captain and more like the veteran mate described by the Nantucketer William H. Macy: “[H]e had no lungs to blow his own trumpet, and sometimes distrusted his own powers, though generally found equal to any emergency after it arose. This want of confidence sometimes led him to hesitate, where a more impulsive or less thoughtful man would act at once. In the course of his career he had seen many ‘fishy’ young men lifted over his head.” Shipowners hoped to combine a fishy, hard-driving captain with an approachable and steady mate. But in the labor-starved frenzy of Nantucket in 1819, the Essex had ended up with a captain who had the instincts and soul of a mate, and a mate who had the ambition and fire of a captain. Instead of giving an order and sticking with it, Pollard indulged his matelike tendency to listen to others. This provided Chase—who had no qualms about speaking up—with the opportunity to impose his own will. For better or worse, the men of the Essex were sailing toward a destiny that would be determined, in large part, not by their unassertive captain but by their forceful and fishy mate.
Nathaniel Philbrick (In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex (National Book Award Winner))
The blitzkrieg is one of the best-known examples of a “military technical revolution”—and one of the most misunderstood by the general public. It is commonly assumed, based on the ease with which German armies overran Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, and France, that they possessed a big technological and numerical edge over their adversaries. Nothing could be further from the truth; Hitler actually fielded fewer tanks and aircraft than the British and French, and the quality of the Allied weapons was in many cases higher than the Germans’. The German edge lay in their superior ability to coordinate their forces, and in their high quality of leadership, training, and morale. They figured out how to make the best use of the technology of the day; the Allies did not.
Max Boot (War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today)
returned to his seat. ‘Did it hurt?’ Percy whispered. Frank looked at his forearm, which was still steaming. ‘Yeah. A lot.’ He seemed mystified by the badges in his hand – the centurion’s mark and the Mural Crown – like he wasn’t sure what to do with them. ‘Here.’ Hazel’s eyes shone with pride. ‘Let me.’ She pinned the medals to Frank’s shirt. Percy smiled. He’d only known Frank for a day, but he felt proud of him, too. ‘You deserve it, man,’ he said. ‘What you did last night? Natural leadership.’ Frank scowled. ‘But centurion –’ ‘Centurion Zhang,’ called Octavian. ‘Did you hear the question?’ Frank blinked. ‘Um … sorry. What?’ Octavian turned to the senate and smirked, like, What did I tell you? ‘I was asking,’ Octavian said like he was talking to a three-year-old, ‘if you have a plan for the quest.
Rick Riordan (The Son of Neptune (Heroes of Olympus, #2))
During his first week on the job, McNamara sat down with the Pentagon’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG), which had just completed an intensive study, known as WSEG Report #50, that found that a Soviet surprise attack on only five locations—the White House, the Pentagon, Camp David, Raven Rock, and Mount Weather—would likely destroy all of the nation’s command structure. Even simply hitting the first two would likely wipe out the military command structure, since Raven Rock and Mount Weather weren’t normally manned with senior personnel. “Both the Presidential and the SecDef-JCS levels of command are presently subject to operational incapacitation by the same events,” the report explained. Hitting all the nation’s major military commands and leadership sites would involve attacking just fourteen installations—a
Garrett M. Graff (Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die)
A leader who fails to live amongst his folk will be like a blind man that does not know the light from darkness. Yet a leader who fails to serve but waits to be served will toil endlessly in his rule and he will find no meaning in his leadership. Yet a leader who aspires for glory and fame will be like a cub that can't learn the tricks of hunting. Yet a leader that seeks wars and warmongers will cause depression among his countrymen. A leader that seeks wealth rather leading will make his countrymen corrupt. A corrupt leader will make the country poorer and corrupt because it is his law to be corrupt. A leader must live like his people. A leader will be known by his deeds and not by his name and a great leader will not govern. A leader is an example for all his subjects. A great leader will not serve while the country is getting hungrier and starving but a leader will become hungry like his hungry citizens.
David Ssembajjo (Servants of the Underground)
It has been noted in various quarters that the half-illiterate Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari never recorded the exact plans or dimensions for how to make one of his famous instruments. This might have been a commercial decision (during the earliest years of the 1700s, Stradivari’s violins were in high demand and open to being copied by other luthiers). But it might also have been because, well, Stradivari didn’t know exactly how to record its dimensions, its weight, and its balance. I mean, he knew how to create a violin with his hands and his fingers but maybe not in figures he kept in his head. Today, those violins, named after the Latinized form of his name, Stradivarius, are considered priceless. It is believed there are only around five hundred of them still in existence, some of which have been submitted to the most intense scientific examination in an attempt to reproduce their extraordinary sound quality. But no one has been able to replicate Stradivari’s craftsmanship. They’ve worked out that he used spruce for the top, willow for the internal blocks and linings, and maple for the back, ribs, and neck. They’ve figured out that he also treated the wood with several types of minerals, including potassium borate, sodium and potassium silicate, as well as a handmade varnish that appears to have been composed of gum arabic, honey, and egg white. But they still can’t replicate a Stradivarius. The genius craftsman never once recorded his technique for posterity. Instead, he passed on his knowledge to a number of his apprentices through what the philosopher Michael Polyani called “elbow learning.” This is the process where a protégé is trained in a new art or skill by sitting at the elbow of a master and by learning the craft through doing it, copying it, not simply by reading about it. The apprentices of the great Stradivari didn’t learn their craft from books or manuals but by sitting at his elbow and feeling the wood as he felt it to assess its length, its balance, and its timbre right there in their fingertips. All the learning happened at his elbow, and all the knowledge was contained in his fingers. In his book Personal Knowledge, Polyani wrote, “Practical wisdom is more truly embodied in action than expressed in rules of action.”1 By that he meant that we learn as Stradivari’s protégés did, by feeling the weight of a piece of wood, not by reading the prescribed measurements in a manual. Polyani continues, To learn by example is to submit to authority. You follow your master because you trust his manner of doing things even when you cannot analyze and account in detail for its effectiveness. By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. These hidden rules can be assimilated only by a person who surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to the imitation of another.
Lance Ford (UnLeader: Reimagining Leadership…and Why We Must)
This point is underlined in the well-known parable which Jotham told the men of Shechem: ‘Once upon a time the trees went out to anoint a king over them; and they said … to the vine, “Come and reign over us.” And the vine said to them: “Should I leave my wine, which cheers God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?”’ Similarly, the fig-tree declined because of its sweetness, and the olive because of its own good qualitites. Then a bramble, a barren plant full of thorns, accepted the sovereignty which they offered, though it possessed neither a special good quality of its own, nor those of the trees that were to be subject to it (cf. Judg. 9 : 7–15). Now in this parable the trees which sought a ruler were not cultivated but wild. The vine, the fig-tree and the olive refused to rule over the wild trees, preferring to bear their own fruits rather than to occupy a position of authority. Likewise, those who perceive in themselves some fruit of virtue and feel its benefit, refuse to assume leadership even when pressed by others, because they prefer this benefit to receiving honour from men.
Kallistos Ware (The Philokalia Vol 1)
Hoover was deeply respected by both parties. In 1928, the Republicans nominated him for president. In his acceptance speech, delivered at the height of prosperity, Hoover proclaimed that Americans were “nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.” His profound belief in individualism, voluntarism, and the fundamental strength of the American economy blinded him from realizing, until too late, that government had to exert a primary role in helping people through what was fast becoming the worst Depression the country had ever known. At the slightest uptick in the stock market, Hoover believed and summarily proclaimed that the worst was over. When the economy continued to flounder, he came under blistering assault. Still, he would not admit that voluntary activities had failed. He adopted a bunker mentality, refusing to countenance the worsening situation. By contrast, Roosevelt had adapted all his life to changing circumstances. The routine of his placid childhood had been disrupted forever by his father’s heart attack and eventual death. Told he would never walk again, he had experimented with one method after another to improve his mobility. So now, as Roosevelt campaigned for the presidency, he built on his own long encounter with adversity: “The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
In actual fact our Russian experience—when I use the word "Russian" I always differentiate it from the word "Soviet"—I have in mind even pre-Soviet, pre-revolutinoary experience—in actual fact it is vitally important for the West, because by some chance of history we have trodden the same path seventy or eighty years before the West. And now it is with a strange sensation that we look at what is happening to you; many social phenomena that happened in Russia before its collapse are being repeated. Our experience of life is of vital importance to the West, but I am not convinced that you are capable of assimilating it without having gone through it to the end yourselves. You know, one could quote here many examples: for one, a certain retreat by the older generation, yielding their intellectual leadership to the younger generation. It is against the natural order of things for those who are youngest, with the least experience of life, to have the greatest influence in directing the life of society. One can say then that this is what forms the spirit of the age, the current of public opinion, when people in authority, well known professors and scientists, are reluctant to enter into an argument even when they hold a different opinion. It is considered embarrassing to put forward one's counterarguments, lest one become involved. And so there is a certain abdication of responsibility, which is typical here where there is complete freedom....There is now a universal adulation of revolutionaries, the more so the more extreme they are! Similarly, before the revolution, we had in Russia, if not a cult of terror, then a fierce defense of terrorists. People in good positions—intellectuals, professors, liberals—spent a great deal of effort, anger, and indignation in defending terrorists.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Warning to the West)
I am passionate about... Doing the impossible, taking on big challenges Creating new structures to achieve big results Solving problems, removing obstacles Getting the best out of people I really like ... Working with very bright people who have good values Working with companies that are respected or where respect can be created Building a culture that will succeed and be a place where people can grow and enjoy work My greatest contribution is ... Being able to do many different things well Accomplishing the mission, exceeding expectations Building an organization from scratch Saving the day—taking dire situations, fixing them, and turning them into winners I am particularly good at... Taking things that look like failures and making them into exceptional successes Developing people—getting them to be creative, committed, and accountable Getting the job done quickly with practical, interesting solutions I am known for ... Creative leadership Overcoming challenging obstacles Rising to the occasion Seeing the core issues, problems, solutions Getting to the heart of the matter quickly, and intuitively analyzing the situation I have exceptional ability to ... Devise straightforward solutions that are efficient and practical Take complex problems and quickly develop elegant solutions Create solutions that get the job done Exercise: Passions and Gifts (Downloadable) Now it �s your turn. Complete the following sentences. You may list multiple answers for each of the items below. Keep your responses focused on the career and work aspects of your life. I feel passionate about ... What I really like is... My greatest contribution is... I am particularly good at... I am known for... I have an exceptional ability to... Colleagues often ask for my help with... What motivates me most is... I would feel disappointed, frustrated, or sad if I couldn�t do...
Anonymous
He made a costly error in judgement and sent an entire regiment into a virtual slaughterhouse. It happens frequently. Officers risk their troops' lives for the sake of a promotion. Not my father. He valued the life of every man under his command, from his officers to the humblest fresh recruit. When he realized what had happened, he was devastated. He couldn't ever forget that his error had cost the lives of so many men, created so many widows and orphans..." "But, Lyon, measured against his valor, one mistake is forgivable." "To us, yes. Not to him. He was sickened that the battle was hailed as one of the turning points of the war. He was decorated for it. It was considered a great victory, but it defeated him as a soldier, as a man. When he came home and was hailed a hero, he couldn't stand the conflict within himself. He didn't feel like a hero. He felt like a traitor." "That can't be!" "Not a traitor to his country, but to the men who had trusted his judgement and leadership. It was a conflict he never could reconcile, so he retired from the Army and came here and shut out the world and all reminders of the lie he was living." They were quiet for a moment before she said,"No one would have thrown stones at him, Lyon. he was a respected man, a hero, a leader at a time in history when America needed heroes and leaders. It was a battleground that spread out for miles. Admist all the chaos he may have thought he made a mistake when he actually didn't." "I know that, Andy, and you know that, but since the time I was old enough to understand his reclusiveness, I was never able to convince him of it. He died still regretting that one day in his life as though he had live no other. It didn't matter what the public would have thought if they had known. He judged himself more severely than anyone else could have." "How tragic for him. He was such a lovely man, Lyon. Such a lovely man.
Sandra Brown (Prime Time)
The climate for relationships within an innovation group is shaped by the climate outside it. Having a negative instead of a positive culture can cost a company real money. During Seagate Technology’s troubled period in the mid-to-late 1990s, the company, a large manufacturer of disk drives for personal computers, had seven different design centers working on innovation, yet it had the lowest R&D productivity in the industry because the centers competed rather than cooperated. Attempts to bring them together merely led people to advocate for their own groups rather than find common ground. Not only did Seagate’s engineers and managers lack positive norms for group interaction, but they had the opposite in place: People who yelled in executive meetings received “Dog’s Head” awards for the worst conduct. Lack of product and process innovation was reflected in loss of market share, disgruntled customers, and declining sales. Seagate, with its dwindling PC sales and fading customer base, was threatening to become a commodity producer in a changing technology environment. Under a new CEO and COO, Steve Luczo and Bill Watkins, who operated as partners, Seagate developed new norms for how people should treat one another, starting with the executive group. Their raised consciousness led to a systemic process for forming and running “core teams” (cross-functional innovation groups), and Seagate employees were trained in common methodologies for team building, both in conventional training programs and through participation in difficult outdoor activities in New Zealand and other remote locations. To lead core teams, Seagate promoted people who were known for strong relationship skills above others with greater technical skills. Unlike the antagonistic committees convened during the years of decline, the core teams created dramatic process and product innovations that brought the company back to market leadership. The new Seagate was able to create innovations embedded in a wide range of new electronic devices, such as iPods and cell phones.
Harvard Business Publishing (HBR's 10 Must Reads on Innovation (with featured article "The Discipline of Innovation," by Peter F. Drucker))
Performance measure. Throughout this book, the term performance measure refers to an indicator used by management to measure, report, and improve performance. Performance measures are classed as key result indicators, result indicators, performance indicators, or key performance indicators. Critical success factors (CSFs). CSFs are the list of issues or aspects of organizational performance that determine ongoing health, vitality, and wellbeing. Normally there are between five and eight CSFs in any organization. Success factors. A list of 30 or so issues or aspects of organizational performance that management knows are important in order to perform well in any given sector/ industry. Some of these success factors are much more important; these are known as critical success factors. Balanced scorecard. A term first introduced by Kaplan and Norton describing how you need to measure performance in a more holistic way. You need to see an organization’s performance in a number of different perspectives. For the purposes of this book, there are six perspectives in a balanced scorecard (see Exhibit 1.7). Oracles and young guns. In an organization, oracles are those gray-haired individuals who have seen it all before. They are often considered to be slow, ponderous, and, quite frankly, a nuisance by the new management. Often they are retired early or made redundant only to be rehired as contractors at twice their previous salary when management realizes they have lost too much institutional knowledge. Their considered pace is often a reflection that they can see that an exercise is futile because it has failed twice before. The young guns are fearless and precocious leaders of the future who are not afraid to go where angels fear to tread. These staff members have not yet achieved management positions. The mixing of the oracles and young guns during a KPI project benefits both parties and the organization. The young guns learn much and the oracles rediscover their energy being around these live wires. Empowerment. For the purposes of this book, empowerment is an outcome of a process that matches competencies, skills, and motivations with the required level of autonomy and responsibility in the workplace. Senior management team (SMT). The team comprised of the CEO and all direct reports. Better practice. The efficient and effective way management and staff undertake business activities in all key processes: leadership, planning, customers, suppliers, community relations, production and supply of products and services, employee wellbeing, and so forth. Best practice. A commonly misused term, especially because what is best practice for one organization may not be best practice for another, albeit they are in the same sector. Best practice is where better practices, when effectively linked together, lead to sustainable world-class outcomes in quality, customer service, flexibility, timeliness, innovation, cost, and competitiveness. Best-practice organizations commonly use the latest time-saving technologies, always focus on the 80/20, are members of quality management and continuous improvement professional bodies, and utilize benchmarking. Exhibit 1.10 shows the contents of the toolkit used by best-practice organizations to achieve world-class performance. EXHIBIT 1.10 Best-Practice Toolkit Benchmarking. An ongoing, systematic process to search for international better practices, compare against them, and then introduce them, modified where necessary, into your organization. Benchmarking may be focused on products, services, business practices, and processes of recognized leading organizations.
Douglas W. Hubbard (Business Intelligence Sampler: Book Excerpts by Douglas Hubbard, David Parmenter, Wayne Eckerson, Dalton Cervo and Mark Allen, Ed Barrows and Andy Neely)
It’s not always so easy, it turns out, to identify your core personal projects. And it can be especially tough for introverts, who have spent so much of their lives conforming to extroverted norms that by the time they choose a career, or a calling, it feels perfectly normal to ignore their own preferences. They may be uncomfortable in law school or nursing school or in the marketing department, but no more so than they were back in middle school or summer camp. I, too, was once in this position. I enjoyed practicing corporate law, and for a while I convinced myself that I was an attorney at heart. I badly wanted to believe it, since I had already invested years in law school and on-the-job training, and much about Wall Street law was alluring. My colleagues were intellectual, kind, and considerate (mostly). I made a good living. I had an office on the forty-second floor of a skyscraper with views of the Statue of Liberty. I enjoyed the idea that I could flourish in such a high-powered environment. And I was pretty good at asking the “but” and “what if” questions that are central to the thought processes of most lawyers. It took me almost a decade to understand that the law was never my personal project, not even close. Today I can tell you unhesitatingly what is: my husband and sons; writing; promoting the values of this book. Once I realized this, I had to make a change. I look back on my years as a Wall Street lawyer as time spent in a foreign country. It was absorbing, it was exciting, and I got to meet a lot of interesting people whom I never would have known otherwise. But I was always an expatriate. Having spent so much time navigating my own career transition and counseling others through theirs, I have found that there are three key steps to identifying your own core personal projects. First, think back to what you loved to do when you were a child. How did you answer the question of what you wanted to be when you grew up? The specific answer you gave may have been off the mark, but the underlying impulse was not. If you wanted to be a fireman, what did a fireman mean to you? A good man who rescued people in distress? A daredevil? Or the simple pleasure of operating a truck? If you wanted to be a dancer, was it because you got to wear a costume, or because you craved applause, or was it the pure joy of twirling around at lightning speed? You may have known more about who you were then than you do now. Second, pay attention to the work you gravitate to. At my law firm I never once volunteered to take on an extra corporate legal assignment, but I did spend a lot of time doing pro bono work for a nonprofit women’s leadership organization. I also sat on several law firm committees dedicated to mentoring, training, and personal development for young lawyers in the firm. Now, as you can probably tell from this book, I am not the committee type. But the goals of those committees lit me up, so that’s what I did. Finally, pay attention to what you envy. Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it tells the truth. You mostly envy those who have what you desire. I met my own envy after some of my former law school classmates got together and compared notes on alumni career tracks. They spoke with admiration and, yes, jealousy, of a classmate who argued regularly before the Supreme Court. At first I felt critical. More power to that classmate! I thought, congratulating myself on my magnanimity. Then I realized that my largesse came cheap, because I didn’t aspire to argue a case before the Supreme Court, or to any of the other accolades of lawyering. When I asked myself whom I did envy, the answer came back instantly. My college classmates who’d grown up to be writers or psychologists. Today I’m pursuing my own version of both those roles.
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
This has become known as the Losada line: a line that marks a tipping point at which the ratio of positive to negative feedback triggers higher performance on a team.
Ronald Warren (Personality at Work: The Drivers and Derailers of Leadership)
In Secretary Clinton’s case, the answer to the first question—was classified information mishandled?—was obviously “yes.” In all, there were thirty-six email chains that discussed topics that were classified as “Secret” at the time. Eight times in those thousands of email exchanges across four years, Clinton and her team talked about topics designated as “Top Secret,” sometimes cryptically, sometimes obviously. They didn’t send each other classified documents, but that didn’t matter. Even though the people involved in the emails all had appropriate clearances and a need to know, anyone who had ever been granted a security clearance should have known that talking about top-secret information on an unclassified system was a breach of rules governing classified materials.
James Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
Many people believed that it was Julio Antonio Mella’s oversized ego that motivated him, but others said that he really was sincere and believed that he could bring about significant changes by his demands. There were also a number of female students known for being political radicals, who played an important part in shaping Julio’s life at that time. Rosario Guillauma (Charito) and Sarah Pascual were both close friends of Julio, as well as being fellow travelers. The overt communist cell at the University of Havana continued to grow dramatically under his leadership and many of the university students became active members of the party. Although, during the time he was at the university he was linked to women radicals and was married to Oliva Zaldivar Freyre. However, following his marriage, it was Tina Modotti, a movie star, model, notorious spy and renowned photographer who became the love of his life!
Hank Bracker
Rumsfeldian logic boxes: the known knowns, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns.
Adam Steltzner (The Right Kind of Crazy: A True Story of Teamwork, Leadership, and High-Stakes Innovation)
• Know the values, current projects, and aspirations of each person in your tribe. • Use Reid Hoffman’s “theory of small gifts” to build your relationship with people in your tribe as preparation for triading. • Form a triad by introducing two people to each other on the basis of current projects and shared values. • There’s no substitute for going through Stage Three, so that you’re known for some area of expertise. Doing so will give you the credibility to triad with others.
Dave Logan (Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization)
Be known for taking the high road.
Michelle Kinsman (Real-World Feminist Handbook: Practical Advice on How to Find, Win & Kick Ass at Your First Job)
I've known businesspeople who were not realistic thinkers. Here's the good news: they were very positive and had a high degree of hope for their business. Here's the bad news: hope is not a strategy.
John C. Maxwell (Thinking for a Change: 11 Ways Highly Successful People Approach Life and Work [Paperback] [Oct 05, 2014] JOHN C. MAXWELL)
awkward televised hug from the new president of the United States. My curtain call worked. Until it didn’t. Still speaking in his usual stream-of-consciousness and free-association cadence, the president moved his eyes again, sweeping from left to right, toward me and my protective curtain. This time, I was not so lucky. The small eyes with the white shadows stopped on me. “Jim!” Trump exclaimed. The president called me forward. “He’s more famous than me.” Awesome. My wife Patrice has known me since I was nineteen. In the endless TV coverage of what felt to me like a thousand-yard walk across the Blue Room, back at our home she was watching TV and pointing at the screen: “That’s Jim’s ‘oh shit’ face.” Yes, it was. My inner voice was screaming: “How could he think this is a good idea? Isn’t he supposed to be the master of television? This is a complete disaster. And there is no fricking way I’m going to hug him.” The FBI and its director are not on anyone’s political team. The entire nightmare of the Clinton email investigation had been about protecting the integrity and independence of the FBI and the Department of Justice, about safeguarding the reservoir of trust and credibility. That Trump would appear to publicly thank me on his second day in office was a threat to the reservoir. Near the end of my thousand-yard walk, I extended my right hand to President Trump. This was going to be a handshake, nothing more. The president gripped my hand. Then he pulled it forward and down. There it was. He was going for the hug on national TV. I tightened the right side of my body, calling on years of side planks and dumbbell rows. He was not going to get a hug without being a whole lot stronger than he looked. He wasn’t. I thwarted the hug, but I got something worse in exchange. The president leaned in and put his mouth near my right ear. “I’m really looking forward to working with you,” he said. Unfortunately, because of the vantage point of the TV cameras, what many in the world, including my children, thought they saw was a kiss. The whole world “saw” Donald Trump kiss the man who some believed got him elected. Surely this couldn’t get any worse. President Trump made a motion as if to invite me to stand with him and the vice president and Joe Clancy. Backing away, I waved it off with a smile. “I’m not worthy,” my expression tried to say. “I’m not suicidal,” my inner voice said. Defeated and depressed, I retreated back to the far side of the room. The press was excused, and the police chiefs and directors started lining up for pictures with the president. They were very quiet. I made like I was getting in the back of the line and slipped out the side door, through the Green Room, into the hall, and down the stairs. On the way, I heard someone say the score from the Packers-Falcons game. Perfect. It is possible that I was reading too much into the usual Trump theatrics, but the episode left me worried. It was no surprise that President Trump behaved in a manner that was completely different from his predecessors—I couldn’t imagine Barack Obama or George W. Bush asking someone to come onstage like a contestant on The Price Is Right. What was distressing was what Trump symbolically seemed to be asking leaders of the law enforcement and national security agencies to do—to come forward and kiss the great man’s ring. To show their deference and loyalty. It was tremendously important that these leaders not do that—or be seen to even look like they were doing that. Trump either didn’t know that or didn’t care, though I’d spend the next several weeks quite memorably, and disastrously, trying to make this point to him and his staff.
James Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
The biggest change happens when you move away from what is known to the unknown. Stepping out of your comfort zone can be scary, but when you are being true to you and your vision, it is worth it. You’ve got this! Take the first step!
Jennifer Milius
Bush could be impatient, and it drove me nuts that he started things early, but I was struck by his strong, and occasionally devilish, sense of humor. That year, 2004, he was in the thick of his reelection battle against Democrat John Kerry, who was hammering him for presiding over what Kerry called a “jobless” economic recovery. In one of our daily morning terrorism meetings with the president, FBI director Bob Mueller told him that a suspected Al Qaeda operative named Babar, whom we were closely monitoring, had just gotten a second job in New York. Mueller, not known as a comedian, then paused, turned his head toward me and added, “And then Jim said…” Bush looked at me, and so did Vice President Cheney. I froze. Before our meeting, Mueller and I had discussed Babar’s second job and I’d made a private joke to the FBI director that I hadn’t expected to repeat to the president, who could occasionally display a temper. Time slowed down, way down. I didn’t reply. The president prompted me. “What’d you say, Jim?” I paused and then, horrified, plunged in. “Who says you haven’t created any jobs; this guy’s got two.
James B. Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
England acted to maintain the “Pax Britannica” in British colonies, and global stability in British areas of influence. Under the leadership of Conservative leaders such as Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Salisbury, the British Empire adopted a foreign policy known as the “Splendid Isolation.” This policy sought to maintain the global balance of power while limiting the need for any sort of British intervention in other powers’ internal affairs along with any alliance that would demand a British intervention.
Charles River Editors (The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire: The History and Legacy of the Ottoman Turks’ Decline and the Creation of the Modern Middle East)
We focus on a very specific kind of talent in this book—namely, talent with a creative spark—and that is where the bureaucratic approach is most deadly. In referring to the creative spark, we mean people who generate new ideas, start new institutions, develop new methods for executing on known products, lead intellectual or charitable movements, or inspire others by their very presence, leadership, and charisma, regardless of the context.
Tyler Cowen (Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World)
The closer someone lived to someone who was lonely, the lonelier the second individual felt. The same was true for depression, but the blockbuster was about happiness. Happiness was even more contagious than loneliness or depression, and it worked across time. If person A’s happiness went up at time 1, person B’s—living next door—went up at time 2. And so did person C’s, two doors away, by somewhat less. Even person D, three doors away, enjoyed more happiness. This has significant implications for morale among groups of soldiers and for leadership. On the negative side, it suggests that a few sad or lonely or angry apples can spoil the morale of the entire unit. Commanders have known this forever. But the news is that positive morale is even more powerful and can boost the well-being and the performance of the entire unit. This makes the cultivation of happiness—a badly neglected side of leadership—important, perhaps crucial.
Martin E.P. Seligman (Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness and Wellbeing: The practical guide to using positive psychology to make you happier and healthier)
The British response to the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising between 1936 and 1939 was devastating. Britain stormed all of Palestine once more, killing more than five thousand Palestinians and wounding more than fifteen thousand others. It exiled and executed the Palestinian leadership. In addition, it organized death squads made up of British soldiers and Zionist forces known as ‘special night forces,’ which attacked Palestinian villages by night and killed many Palestinians.
Ibrahim Nasrallah (Time of White Horses)
Definite Pessimism A definite pessimist believes the future can be known, but since it will be bleak, he must prepare for it. Perhaps surprisingly, China is probably the most definitely pessimistic place in the world today. When Americans see the Chinese economy grow ferociously fast (10% per year since 2000), we imagine a confident country mastering its future. But that’s because Americans are still optimists, and we project our optimism onto China. From China’s viewpoint, economic growth cannot come fast enough. Every other country is afraid that China is going to take over the world; China is the only country afraid that it won’t. China can grow so fast only because its starting base is so low. The easiest way for China to grow is to relentlessly copy what has already worked in the West. And that’s exactly what it’s doing: executing definite plans by burning ever more coal to build ever more factories and skyscrapers. But with a huge population pushing resource prices higher, there’s no way Chinese living standards can ever actually catch up to those of the richest countries, and the Chinese know it. This is why the Chinese leadership is obsessed with the way in which things threaten to get worse. Every senior Chinese leader experienced famine as a child, so when the Politburo looks to the future, disaster is not an abstraction. The Chinese public, too, knows that winter is coming. Outsiders are fascinated by the great fortunes being made inside China, but they pay less attention to the wealthy Chinese trying hard to get their money out of the country. Poorer Chinese just save everything they can and hope it will be enough. Every class of people in China takes the future deadly seriously.
Peter Thiel (Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future)
Upon assuming this role, Sunstein learned a valuable lesson in group leadership: if he began a meeting by stating his own views, he discovered, the ensuing discussion was far less expansive and open than if he started out by saying, “What do you all think? This is a tough one.” As soon as a leader makes his preferences known, says Sunstein, many who work for him will choose to engage in “self-silencing” rather than rock the boat with a dissenting view. And, he notes, “some people are more likely to silence themselves than others”; these may include women and members of minority groups, as well as individuals with less status, less experience, or less education. Yet it’s just this range of voices that must be heard if the group mind is to exert its unique power. One solution, says Sunstein, is for leaders to silence themselves; the manager or administrator who adopts an “inquisitive and self-silencing” stance, he maintains, has the best chance of hearing more than his own views reflected back to him.
Annie Murphy Paul (The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain)
There are several plausible reasons I’ve been able to ascertain over the years as to why I wasn’t taught about dinosaurs from a biblical viewpoint — and how to defend it. Here are the top three: 1. My parents were unaware that I was being brainwashed with the secular humanistic view about dinosaurs, so they never even bothered to look into the subject to help me. My parents (like many parents) were under the impression that schools were “neutral” (neutrality is a myth by the way, Matthew 12:3010), and they figured schools wouldn’t teach something contrary to Christianity in schools. 2. The church leadership (e.g., Sunday School teachers, elders, deacons, and pastors) didn’t know we were being taught a secular religion at school — ideas like the big bang, millions of years, and evolution, which are subsets of the religion of secular humanism and naturalism. 3. Even if the church leadership knew about the secular indoctrination happening at school, I doubt some of them would have known how to respond themselves, mainly due to their own lack of knowledge about dinosaurs from a biblical viewpoint.
Bodie Hodge (Dinosaurs, Dragons, and the Bible)
Headed by Roger Conant, a man still clear to us as possessed of leadership and force, these four went southward and westward from Cape Ann and settled at a place called Naumkeag, to be better known in future as Salem.
Henry Cabot Lodge (Boston)
It’s a beautiful thing to see a company become a well-known, trusted brand in the most distant locations and in languages the founders and executives themselves do not speak.
Nataly Kelly (Take Your Company Global: The New Rules of International Expansion)
Christianity is possible as the most private form of life; it presupposes the existence of a narrow, isolated, and absolutely unpolitical society — it belongs to the conventicle. On the other hand, a "Christian State", "Christian politics," are pieces of downright impudence; they are lies, like, for instance, a Christian leadership of an army, which in the end regards "the God of hosts" as chief of the staff. Even the Papacy has never been able to carry on politics in a Christian way; and when Reformers indulge in politics, as Luther did, it is well known that they are just as ardent followers of Machiavelli as any other immoralists or tyrants.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The key to market leadership is consistent high performance over the long haul. The Boeing Company survived as an industry leader for over a century in the exact same manner--by designing and building the finest and most-advanced aerospace products known to mankind.
John Andrew (Boeing Metamorphosis: Launching the 737 and 747, 1965–1969)
BUYING AND SELLING SERVICE IS MY BEST KNOWN BUSINESS.
P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar
Thus conservatives seek to undertake repairs in such a way as to increase the weightiness and importance of the edifice of traditional institutions in the eyes of the public, thereby strengthening it even as alterations are introduced. The techniques for doing this are well known. Conservative leadership tends to introduce repairs, wherever possible, by means of limited shifts in the extent to which the respective elements of the tradition are honored.
Yoram Hazony (Conservatism: A Rediscovery)
A star business is the leader in its market niche To be the leader simply means that it is bigger intheniche than any other firm. We measure size by sales value (also known as revenues or turnover). If the venture has sales of $1 million and there is nobody whose sales in the same niche reach $1 million, then it is the leader. Note that ‘leadership’ is objectively defined by sales, and has nothing to do with competing claims about ‘being the best’ or being most highly rated by customers, which are difficult to judge and not as important anyway. The thing that matters most is how customers in the niche vote with their money. Has a question just popped up in your mind? ‘Ah,’ you may say, ‘but how do you define what the market niche is?’ That is indeed a profound question, and I will answer it with several examples throughout the book. It is possible to get the definition of the niche wrong - as I sometimes have. But the basic idea is very simple. For a niche to be a separate market, it must have different customers, different products or services and a different way of doing business from the main market or other market niches. Finally, the ranking of competitors is different in a valid market niche - the leader in the niche is different from the leader in the main market. If there is no difference in how competitors fare in the niche versus the main market, the niche is not really different.
Richard Koch (The Star Principle: How it can make you rich)
Leaders routinely pay too much attention to outcomes while neglecting information about individuals’ decision-making processes and the uncertainty that surrounds their decisions, a phenomenon known as the outcome bias.
Don A. Moore (Decision Leadership: Empowering Others to Make Better Choices)
Key Apache Warriors Cochise—one of the great Chiricahua (Chokonen) chiefs. Born c. 1805. No known pictures exist but he was said to be very tall and imposing, over six feet and very muscular. Son-in-law to Mangas Coloradas. Died in 1874, probably from stomach cancer. Chihuahua—chief of the Warm Springs band (Red Paint people) of the Chiricahua. Fought alongside Geronimo in the resistance. Died in 1901. Fun—probably a cousin to Geronimo and among his best, most trusted warriors. Fun committed suicide in captivity in 1892, after becoming jealous over his young wife, whom he also shot. Only slightly wounded, she recovered. Juh—pronounced “Whoa,” “Ho,” or sometimes “Who.” Chief of the Nedhni band of the Apache, he married Ishton, Geronimo’s “favorite” sister. Juh and Geronimo were lifelong friends and battle brothers. Juh died in 1883. Loco—chief of the Warm Springs band. Born in 1823, the same year as Geronimo. Once was mauled by a bear and killed it single-handedly with a knife, but his face was clawed and his left eye was blinded and disfigured. Known as the “Apache Peacemaker,” he preferred peace to war and tried to live under reservation rules. Died as a prisoner of war from “causes unknown” in 1905, at age eighty-two. Lozen—warrior woman and Chief Victorio’s sister. She was a medicine woman and frequent messenger for Geronimo. She fought alongside Geronimo in his long resistance. Mangas Coloradas—Born in 1790, he was the most noted chief of the Bedonkohe Apache. A massive man for his era, at 6'6” and 250 pounds, he was Geronimo’s central mentor and influence. He was betrayed and murdered by the U.S. military in 1863. Geronimo called his murder “the greatest wrong ever done to the Indians.” Mangas—son of the great chief Mangas Coloradas, but did not succeed his father as chief because of his youth and lack of leadership. Died as a prisoner of war in 1901. Naiche—Cochise’s youngest son. Succeeded older brother Taza after he died, becoming the last chief of the free Chiricahua Apache. Nana—brother-in-law to Geronimo and chief of the Warm Springs band. Sometimes referred to as “Old Nana.” Died as a prisoner of war in 1896. Victorio—chief of the Warm Springs band. Noted and courageous leader and a brilliant military strategist. Brother and mentor to warrior woman Lozen. Slain by Mexicans in the massacre of Tres Castillos in 1880.
Mike Leach (Geronimo: Leadership Strategies of an American Warrior)
Key Apache Adversaries—U.S. Military Figures and Civilian Apache Agents Clum, John P.—born 1851. Civilian Apache agent at the San Carlos and Fort Apache reservations. Nicknamed “Turkey Gobbler” by the Apache for his strutting nature. Later became mayor of Tombstone, Arizona. His claim to fame was being the only person to successfully “capture” Geronimo. Died in 1932. Crook, General George—born 1828. Called America’s “greatest Indian fighter.” He was the first to use Indian scouts and was crucial in ending the Apache Wars. Called Nantan Lupan (“the Tan Wolf”) by the Apache, he advocated for Apache rights while at the same time becoming one of Geronimo’s greatest adversaries. Crook negotiated Geronimo’s “surrender” at the Cañon de los Embudos. He died in 1890. Gatewood, Lieutenant Charles B.—born 1853. A latecomer to the Apache Wars, Gatewood used scouts but failed to bring in Victorio. However, Gatewood would ultimately negotiate the terms of Geronimo’s final surrender to General Nelson A. Miles in 1886. He died in 1896. Miles, General Nelson A.—born in 1839. Civil War veteran best known for accepting Geronimo’s final surrender. Fought Sioux and Cheyenne Indians after the Battle of Little Big Horn. He died at the age of eighty-five in 1925 and was buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Sieber, Al—born 1843. A German-American, he served as the army’s chief of scouts during the Apache Wars. Died in 1907.
Mike Leach (Geronimo: Leadership Strategies of an American Warrior)
After Germany's collapse in 1918 Jewry became very powerful in Germany in all spheres of life, especially in the political, general intellectual and cultural, and, most particularly, the economic spheres. The men came back from the front, had nothing to look forward to, and found a large number of Jews who had come in during the war from Poland and the East, holding positions, particularly economic positions. It is known that, under the influence of the war and business concerned with it -- demobilization, which offered great possibilities for doing business, inflation, deflation -- enormous shifts and transfers took place in the propertied classes. There were many Jews who did not show the necessary restraint and who stood out more and more in public life, so that they actually invited certain comparisons because of their numbers and the position they controlled in contrast to the German people. In addition there was the fact that particularly those parties which were avoided by nationally minded people also had Jewish leadership out of proportion to the total number of Jews. That did not apply only to Germany, but also to Austria, which we have always considered a part of Germany. There the entire Social Democratic leadership was almost exclusively in Jewish hands. They played a very considerable part in politics, particularly in the left-wing parties, and they also became very prominent in the press in all political directions. (14 March 1946)
Hermann Göring (Trial of the Major war Criminals: before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946 (German Edition))
The perils of success: Leston Havens, a wise psychotherapist, once commented to me that he had known many people who had been improved by failure, and many ruined by success
S. Nassir Ghaemi (A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness)
POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER. PTSD is not uncommon in cases of spiritual abuse. After fearful, dangerous, or traumatic events, people often suffer for months (even years) with the aftereffects of those events, including upsetting memories, fear, sadness, nervousness, and bursts of anxiety.6 In short, “people who have PTSD may feel stressed or frightened even when they’re no longer in danger.”7 For spiritual abuse survivors, experiences that remind them of their abusive pastor or church situation usually trigger these effects. These triggers could be something as simple as going to church, hearing a sermon, or seeing individuals from their former church. A complicating factor in spiritual abuse cases is that the abuse is perpetrated by an institution or a person the victim knew and trusted, known as “institutional betrayal.”8 Studies have shown that abuse within a trusted relationship is significantly more traumatic than abuse by a stranger. And there is a natural trust that is fostered between a church member and their pastor (and the larger leadership body). Smith and Freyd show that such betrayal has a substantial emotional impact: “Betrayal trauma is associated with higher rates of a host of outcomes, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), dissociation, anxiety, [and] depression.
Michael J. Kruger (Bully Pulpit: Confronting the Problem of Spiritual Abuse in the Church)
In his book Out of the Crisis, W. Edwards Deming lays out the leadership principles that became known as TQL, or Total Quality Leadership. This had a big effect on me. It showed me how efforts to improve the process made the organization more efficient, while efforts to monitor the process made the organization less efficient.
L. David Marquet (Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders)
In any event, this rather unbelievable story is known as a “foundation myth,” commonly used in antiquity to describe and explain the rise of someone unexpected to the throne of a country or the leadership of a people. The
Eric H. Cline (The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction)
One of the main recruitment centers and organizing hubs for ISIS is prisons. Whether by accident or design, jailhouses in the Middle East have served for years as virtual terror academies, where known extremists can congregate, plot, organize, and hone their leadership skills “inside the wire,” and most ominously recruit a new generation of fighters. ISIS is a terrorist organization,
Michael Weiss (ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror)
Michael was the male partner in a dance, but he did not know how to lead. Or rather, he led by default, since Jill did not challenge his authority. He simply filled a vacuum. As a political man, he would have the same problem: he had a solid group of adherents, but he could not use that base to assert his authority. He was a sort of effigy of a great man and he seems to have known it, since he became leader of the Labour Party only after considerable prodding from Jill and others. It would have looked cowardly not to accept the leadership. But Michael was a sort of hollow man, as he acknowledged with self-deprecating humour during his 1983 campaign against Margaret Thatcher: “I’m here to impersonate the leader of the Labour Party. What have I been doing the rest of the week? You might well ask.
Carl Rollyson (A Private Life of Michael Foot)
By comparison, the Integrated Human model of human nature, in addition to the two elements of our previous model, includes: A conscious analytic system, known as the slow brain (where logic resides) A subconscious intuitive system, or fast brain The full range of motivational drives (of which the drive to acquire is only one) Basic ideas of moral behavior, or moral intuitions Distinguishing characteristics, or personality traits Together, these elements of our nature provide all of the fundamental functions necessary for living life as a complete, Integrated Human—and they are the springboard for the development of leadership character. As our research data has shown, the ability to leverage all of these areas influence leadership’s ability to achieve positive organizational outcomes.
Fred Kiel (Return on Character: The Real Reason Leaders and Their Companies Win)