Leadership Geeks Quotes

Social standing does not necessarily translate to social acceptance.

Neoteny is more than retaining a youthful appearance, although that is often part of it. Neoteny is the retention of all those wonderful qualities that we associate with youth: curiosity, playfulness, eagerness, fearlessness, warmth, energy. Unlike those defeated by time and age, our geezers have remained much like our geeks – open, willing to take risks, hungry for knowledge and experience, courageous, eager to see what the new day brings. Time and lost steal the zest from the unlucky, and leave them looking longingly at the past. Neoteny is a metaphor for the quality – and the gift – that keeps the fortunate of whatever age focused on all marvelous undiscovered things to come.

I always have my own opinion before my boss says his.

One useful leadership talent is knowing when to push ahead against doubters and when to heed them.

A code is like love, it has created with clear intentions at the beginning, but it can get complicated.

To give an estimate is to say something you don’t know absolutely to be true, and therefore it is to tell a lie, something geeks find deeply painful.

Even though the Internet provided a tool for virtual and distant collaborations, another lesson of digital-age innovation is that, now as in the past, physical proximity is beneficial. There is something special, as evidenced at Bell Labs, about meetings in the flesh, which cannot be replicated digitally. The founders of Intel created a sprawling, team-oriented open workspace where employees from Noyce on down all rubbed against one another. It was a model that became common in Silicon Valley. Predictions that digital tools would allow workers to telecommute were never fully realized. One of Marissa Mayer’s first acts as CEO of Yahoo! was to discourage the practice of working from home, rightly pointing out that “people are more collaborative and innovative when they’re together.” When Steve Jobs designed a new headquarters for Pixar, he obsessed over ways to structure the atrium, and even where to locate the bathrooms, so that serendipitous personal encounters would occur. Among his last creations was the plan for Apple’s new signature headquarters, a circle with rings of open workspaces surrounding a central courtyard. Throughout history the best leadership has come from teams that combined people with complementary styles. That was the case with the founding of the United States. The leaders included an icon of rectitude, George Washington; brilliant thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison; men of vision and passion, including Samuel and John Adams; and a sage conciliator, Benjamin Franklin. Likewise, the founders of the ARPANET included visionaries such as Licklider, crisp decision-making engineers such as Larry Roberts, politically adroit people handlers such as Bob Taylor, and collaborative oarsmen such as Steve Crocker and Vint Cerf. Another key to fielding a great team is pairing visionaries, who can generate ideas, with operating managers, who can execute them. Visions without execution are hallucinations.31 Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore were both visionaries, which is why it was important that their first hire at Intel was Andy Grove, who knew how to impose crisp management procedures, force people to focus, and get things done. Visionaries who lack such teams around them often go down in history as merely footnotes.

Any idiot can point out a problem. So, bosses do.

It doesn't matter what your boss thinks as long as he doesn't cry.

Jason (Elam, a Christian) is the kid in high school who gets along equally well with the jocks, the brains, the geeks, and the slackers, and influences their behavior.

Manager! Have brain - use it!

Here are some indicators of successful management: Things get done well. Problems are not big surprises. Issues get resolved. Progress continues even when managers aren’t there. People are engaged with their work and each other. Conflict is productive rather than territorial. New ideas emerge spontaneously from a variety of people.

To technical people, these seem like minor oversights that take only a minute to fix. “Oops. I forgot to change the server name to the production server.” Or, “Oh, the new screens are there. I just forgot to link the button.” But to users who are already feeling a bit skittish about trying out the new technology, these first impressions are a big deal. To you, these events probably seem inconsequential, carrying no inherent meaning, but to them it sets off major alarm bells. It signals things like, “This technology must be a sloppy piece of crap,” and, “These IT people must be completely incompetent,” and, “They must think I’m not important enough for them to check their work.

The old saying that “reason makes people think and emotion makes people act” isn’t quite right for geeks. It would be more accurate to say that reason makes us think and emotion makes us suspicious.