Management Guru Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Management Guru. Here they are! All 50 of them:

Live your life in such a way that you'll be remembered for your kindness, compassion, fairness, character, benevolence, and a force for good who had much respect for life, in general.
Germany Kent
Convince yourself everyday that you are worthy of a good life. Let go of stress, breathe. Stay positive, all is well.
Germany Kent
The world is bursting with wonder, and yet it’s the rare productivity guru who seems to have considered the possibility that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder.
Oliver Burkeman (Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals)
What you post online speaks VOLUME about who you really are. POST with intention. REPOST with caution.
Germany Kent
Tell me what you value and I might believe you,” management guru Peter Drucker once said, “but show me your calendar and your bank statement, and I’ll show you what you really value.
Steven Kotler (Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work)
Tell me what you value and I might believe you,” management guru Peter Drucker once said, “but show me your calendar and your bank statement, and I’ll show you what you really value.” So
Steven Kotler (Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work)
The whole art of being a Guru is just this: to constantly puncture people’s egos and still manage to remain their friend.
Sadhguru (Pebbles Of Wisdom)
For all the talk about the need to be a likable "team player," many people work in a fairly cutthroat environment that would seem to be especially challenging to those who possess the recommended traits. Cheerfulness, upbeatness, and compliance: these are the qualities of subordinates -- of servants rather than masters, women (traditionally, anyway) rather than men. After advising his readers to overcome the bitterness and negativity engendered by frequent job loss and to achieve a perpetually sunny outlook, management guru Harvey Mackay notes cryptically that "the nicest, most loyal, and most submissive employees are often the easiest people to fire." Given the turmoil in the corporate world, the prescriptions of niceness ring of lambs-to-the-slaughter.
Barbara Ehrenreich (Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream)
I used to think that happiness, like God, was an idea weaker people were sold on, to manage the grief of a world with so much suffering. It is just easier, I thought, to decide that you are doing something wrong and you just need to buy the right thing, read the right book, find the right guru, or pray more to be happy than to accept that life is a great long heartbreak. Happiness is not what I imagined that mirage to be: an unending ecstasy or state of perpetual excitement. Not a high or a mirage, it is just being okay. My happiness is the absence of fear that there won't be enough -- enough money, enough power, enough security, enough of a cushion of these things to protect me from the everyday heartbreaks of being human. Heartbreak doesn't kill you. It changes you.
Melissa Febos (Whip Smart: A Memoir)
But as management guru Peter Drucker once said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Satya Nadella (Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone)
When you study success, you become a dreamer. When you study failure, you become a victor. When you study organisations, you become a mentor. When you study management, you become a leader. When you study nature, you become a scholar. When you study people, you become a counselor. When you study life, you become a thinker. When you study God, you become a philosopher. When you study magic, you become a sorcerer. When you study stars, you become an astronomer. When you study oracles, you become a seer. When you study visions, you become a diviner. When you study combat, you become a warrior. When you study war, you become a commander. When you study policy, you become a governor. When you study politics, you become a ruler. When you study nothing, you become a loser. When you study little, you become a loafer. When you study much, you become a winner. When you study all, you become a master.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Ford hired the quality management guru Edward Deming to train his people on quality principles. In the kick-off meeting, he introduced Deming, spoke briefly about the critical need for quality management and then, leaving Deming to do the rest, left the room. As he was walking out, he realized Deming was following him. Surprised, he asked what had happened. In answer, Deming famously quipped that he was simply following the leader. Ford immediately realized his mistake and turned back to sit down with his team to learn about Total Quality Management (TQM).
Subroto Bagchi (The Elephant Catchers: Key Lessons for Breakthrough Growth)
The public wants gurus, and new gurus will come. As an intelligent trader, you must realize that in the long run, no guru is going to make you rich. You have to work on that yourself.
Alexander Elder (The New Trading for a Living: Psychology, Discipline, Trading Tools and Systems, Risk Control, Trade Management (Wiley Trading))
Management guru Stephen Covey tells this old Japanese tale about a samurai warrior and his three sons: The samurai wanted to teach his sons about the power of teamwork. So he gave each of them an arrow and asked them to break it. No problem. Each son did it easily. Then the samurai gave them a bundle of three arrows bound together and asked them to repeat the process. But none of them could. “That’s your lesson,” the samurai said. “If you three stick together, you will never be defeated.
Phil Jackson (Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success)
The man who had abused him would ask, ”I abused you yesterday, why did you not reply yesterday? You are very strange.” No one waits for a second when you abuse him. He retorts immediately.” Junnaid answered, ”My master taught me not to hurry in anything. Take some time. I must wait a little when someone insults me. If I were to give an immediate answer, the heat of the happening would catch hold of me; the smoke would blind my eyes. So I have to wait and let the cloud pass. When twenty-four hours have passed and the skies are clear again, then I can give my reply in full consciousness. Now I realize how tricky my guru was. Because I have never been able to answer my opponents since then.” Is it possible to hold on to anger for twenty-four hours? It is impossible to maintain it for twenty-four minutes or even twenty-four seconds. The truth is that, even if you hold back and watch for a single second, the anger vanishes. But you do not wait even for a moment. A person abuses you – as if someone switches the button, and the fan starts whirring. There is not the slightest gap between the two, no distance! And you pride yourself in your alertness! You have no control of yourself. How can an unconscious person be master of himself? Anybody can push the button and goad him into action. Someone comes and flatters you, and you are filled with joy; you are happy. Someone insults you, you are full of tears. Are you your own master or anyone can manipulate you? You are the slave of slaves. And those who are manipulating are not their own masters either! And the irony is that everyone is expert in manipulating others and none of them is conscious. What greater insult can there be for your soul than the fact that anyone can affect you?
Osho (Bliss: Living beyond happiness and misery)
Indian Express (Indian Express) - Clip This Article at Location 721 | Added on Sunday, 30 November 2014 20:28:42 Fifth column: Hope and audacity Ministers, high officials, clerks and peons now report for duty on time and are no longer to be seen taking long lunch breaks to soak in winter sunshine in Delhi’s parks. Reform is needed not just in economic matters but in every area of governance. Does the Prime Minister know how hard it is to get a passport? Tavleen Singh | 807 words At the end of six months of the Modi sarkar are we seeing signs that it is confusing efficiency with reform? I ask the question because so far there is no sign of real reform in any area of governance. And, because some of Narendra Modi’s most ardent supporters are now beginning to get worried. Last week I met a man who dedicated a whole year to helping Modi become Prime Minister and he seemed despondent. When I asked how he thought the government was doing, he said he would answer in the words of the management guru Peter Drucker, “There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.” We can certainly not fault this government on efficiency. Ministers, high officials, clerks and peons now report for duty on time and are no longer to be seen taking long lunch breaks to soak in winter sunshine in Delhi’s parks. The Prime Minister’s Office hums with more noise and activity than we have seen in a decade but, despite this, there are no signs of the policy changes that are vital if we are to see real reform. The Planning Commission has been abolished but there are many, many other leftovers from socialist times that must go. Do we need a Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in an age when the Internet has made propaganda futile? Do we need a meddlesome University Grants Commission? Do we need the government to continue wasting our money on a hopeless airline and badly run hotels? We do not. What we do need is for the government to make policies that will convince investors that India is a safe bet once more. We do not need a new government that simply implements more efficiently bad policies that it inherited from the last government. It was because of those policies that investors fled and the economy stopped growing. Unless this changes through better policies, the jobs that the Prime Minister promises young people at election rallies will not come. So far signals are so mixed that investors continue to shy away. The Finance Minister promises to end tax terrorism but in the next breath orders tax inspectors to go forth in search of black money. Vodafone has been given temporary relief by the courts but the retroactive tax remains valid. And, although we hear that the government has grandiose plans to improve the decrepit transport systems, power stations and ports it inherited, it continues to refuse to pay those who have to build them. The infrastructure industry is owed more than Rs 1.5 lakh continued... crore in government dues and this has crippled major companies. No amount of efficiency in announcing new projects will make a difference unless old dues are cleared. Reform is needed not just in economic matters but in every area of governance. Does the Prime Minister know how hard it is to get a passport? Does he know that a police check is required even if you just want to get a few pages added to your passport? Does he know how hard it is to do routine things like registering property? Does he know that no amount of efficiency will improve healthcare services that are broken? No amount of efficiency will improve educational services that have long been in terminal decline because of bad policies and interfering officials. At the same time, the licence raj that strangles private investment in schools and colleges remains in place. Modi’s popularity with ordinary people has increased since he became Prime Minister, as we saw from his rallies in Kashmir last week, but it will not la
Anonymous
We must become what we wish to teach. As an aside to parents, teachers, psychotherapists, and managers who may be reading this book to gain insight on how to support the self-esteem of others, I want to say that the place to begin is still with oneself. If one does not understand how the dynamics of self-esteem work internally—if one does not know by direct experience what lowers or raises one’s own self-esteem—one will not have that intimate understanding of the subject necessary to make an optimal contribution to others. Also, the unresolved issues within oneself set the limits of one’s effectiveness in helping others. It may be tempting, but it is self-deceiving to believe that what one says can communicate more powerfully than what one manifests in one’s person. We must become what we wish to teach. There is a story I like to tell psychotherapy students. In India, when a family encounters a problem, they are not likely to consult a psychotherapist (hardly any are available); they consult the local guru. In one village there was a wise man who had helped this family more than once. One day the father and mother came to him, bringing their nine-year-old son, and the father said, “Master, our son is a wonderful boy and we love him very much. But he has a terrible problem, a weakness for sweets that is ruining his teeth and health. We have reasoned with him, argued with him, pleaded with him, chastised him—nothing works. He goes on consuming ungodly quantities of sweets. Can you help us?” To the father’s surprise, the guru answered, “Go away and come back in two weeks.” One does not argue with a guru, so the family obeyed. Two weeks later they faced him again, and the guru said, “Good. Now we can proceed.” The father asked, “Won’t you tell us, please, why you sent us away for two weeks. You have never done that before.” And the guru answered, “I needed the two weeks because I, too, have had a lifelong weakness for sweets. Until I had confronted and resolved that issue within myself, I was not ready to deal with your son.” Not all psychotherapists like this story.
Nathaniel Branden (Six Pillars of Self-Esteem)
Peter Drucker, the noted management guru, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “customer research may be more important than market research—but far more difficult.
Jaynie L. Smith (Creating Competitive Advantage: Give Customers a Reason to Choose You Over Your Competitors)
According to tech guru Tim O’Reilly, “data scientist” is the hottest job title in Silicon Valley. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that by 2018 the United States alone will need 140,000 to 190,000 more machine-learning experts than will be available, and 1.5 million more data-savvy managers.
Pedro Domingos (The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World)
When management guru Peter Drucker was asked for one thing that would make a person better in business, he responded, “Learn to play the violin.” Different
Keith Ferrazzi (Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time)
Management guru Jim Collins has some good words here. He and Morten T. Hansen studied leadership in turbulent times. They looked at more than twenty thousand companies, sifting through data in search of an answer to this question: Why in uncertain times do some companies thrive while others do not? They concluded, “[Successful leaders] are not more creative. They’re not more visionary. They’re not more charismatic. They’re not more ambitious. They’re not more blessed by luck. They’re not more risk-seeking. They’re not more heroic. And they’re not more prone to making big, bold moves.” Then what sets them apart? “They all led their teams with a surprising method of self-control in an out-of-control world.”2
Max Lucado (God Will Use This for Good: Surviving the Mess of Life)
There is a story of a Japanese guru working with a board of management on what to do to improve their organization’s performance. He drew up a flip-chart list of recommendations on which the first one was, ‘The board should resign.’ He got their attention. The point he wanted to make was that unless you change the way you think, your system will not change and therefore, its performance won’t change either. The question is: ‘What thinking needs to change?
John Seddon (Freedom from Command and Control: Rethinking Management for Lean Service)
Francine’s pace always picked up as she approached Reuben, her arms outstretched for a hug. When they were in a room together, she never strayed far from his ample side, unabashedly besotted. Reuben was Francine’s crown jewel, her black South African management guru who was living proof of empowerment. And, boy, was Reuben empowered. As one of a handful of black South Africans with the combined education, experience, skills and charm to consult to international organizations and donors, he was an anti-apartheid millionaire. Reuben had four cars, each a German luxury brand, and four houses scattered around Johannesburg: one for himself, one for his mother, the others for choice. He’d been on management courses in Boston, co-written articles about South African NGOs for university publications, and claimed to savor a nice glass of Cabernet at the end of a long week.
Jillian Reilly (Shame - Confessions of an Aid Worker in Africa)
The management guru Stephen Covey offers this insight about no and how it keeps important things in focus: 'Keep in mind that you are always saying "no" to something. If it isn't in the apparent, urgent things in life, it is probably to the more fundamental, highly important things.
Greg Cootsona (Say Yes To No: Using The Power Of No To Create The Best In Life, Work, and Love)
Ram Charan, the well-known Indian management guru, became world-famous because of his book by the same name — Execution. In it, he says, "Execution is the key through which every CEO opens his door to success." Without this, the goal cannot be reached. Even Swami Chinmayananda phrased it beautifully, "Plan out your work and work out your plan.
Radhakrishnan Pillai (Corporate Chanakya, 10th Anniversary Edition—2021)
As the legendary management guru Peter Drucker once wrote, “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.
Robert Glazer (Elevate: Push Beyond Your Limits and Unlock Success in Yourself and Others)
you’re in business, listen to what management guru Peter Drucker
Angela Duckworth (Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance)
The bad news is that your inner saboteur never goes away. The good news is that it can be managed.
RuPaul (GuRu)
Mindfulness, neuroplasticity, trauma-informed cognitive behavioral therapy, psychoanalysis, career coaching, Kripalu yoga – the list of “cures” for our lack of resilience and related problems is endless. If you are overweight, alone, miserable at work or crippled by stress or anxiety or depression, there are hordes of gurus and experts chasing you with books and quick fixes. With their advice, guidance, motivation or inspiration, you can fix your problems. But make no mistake: They are always your problems. You alone are responsible for them. It follows that failing to fix your problems will always be your failure, your lack of will, motivation or strength. Galen, the second-century physician who ministered to Roman emperors, believed his medical treatments were effective. “All who drink of this treatment recover in a short time,” he wrote, “except those whom it does not help, who all die. It is obvious, therefore, that it fails only in incurable cases.” This is the way of the billion-dollar self-help industry: You are to blame when the guru’s advice does not produce the expected outcome, and by now, we are all familiar enough with self-help to know that expected outcomes are elusive. […] Personal explanations for success actually set us up for failure. TED Talks and talk shows full of advice on what to eat, what to think and how to live seldom work. Self-help fixes are like empty calories: The effects are fleeting and often detrimental in the long term. Worse, they promote victim blaming. The notion that your resilience is your problem alone is ideology, not science. We have been giving people the wrong message. Resilience is not a DIY endeavor. Self-help fails because the stresses that put our lives in jeopardy in the first place remain in the world around us even after we’ve taken the “cures.” The fact is that people who can find the resources they require for success in their environments are far more likely to succeed than individuals with positive thoughts and the latest power poses. […] The science of resilience is clear: The social, political and natural environments in which we live are far more important to our health, fitness, finances and time management than our individual thoughts, feelings or behaviors.
Michael Ungar
Ultimately, where the vision comes from is less important than ensuring that it is the correct one. As product management guru Rich Mironov says, “It’s not important to me who has the good idea, but it is my job to make sure it’s the best one, that it’s still validated, and that we have people who are going to pay for it. The process has to continually validate the vision. If we do that, I don’t care whose vision it is.
Richard Banfield (Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams)
We’ve covered the time and work and responsibility a jackpot often entails, the isolation, trust and security issues, and the reluctance of the superwealthy to engage with outsiders. Well, all of the above was shaping up to be a hurdle for Bob Kenny, who was eager to learn about the inner lives of America’s wealthiest citizens. We met Kenny before. He’s a developmental psychologist and cofounder of North Bridge Advisory Group, which helps superwealthy parents and their children “manage the unique opportunities, dilemmas, and challenges that can accompany family money.” Back in 2007, though, he was the newly minted associate director of Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy. The center’s data guru, John Havens, had projected that the baby boomers and their successors would leave behind about $59 trillion in private wealth between 2007 and 2061. Some portion of that would go to charity, and so getting a handle on the mindset of America’s elite was of big interest to the philanthropic world. With a $250,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Kenny and Havens set out to survey ultra-high-net-worth families. “If you’ve got kids and you got more money then you’re going to spend in your lifetime, you’ve got a dilemma,” Kenny explains. “And if you don’t think about it and plan it out a little bit, you’re going to cause a problem.… You gonna give it to them now, give it to them later, not going to give it to them at all? How do you talk about it? How do you think about it?
Michael Mechanic (Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All)
The world is bursting with wonder, and yet it’s the rare productivity guru who seems to have considered the possibility that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder. The world also seems to be heading to hell in a handcart—our civic life has gone insane, a pandemic has paralyzed society, and the planet is getting hotter and hotter—but
Oliver Burkeman (Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals)
The same self-defeating pattern applies to many of our attempts to become more productive at work. A few years ago, drowning in email, I successfully implemented the system known as Inbox Zero, but I soon discovered that when you get tremendously efficient at answering email, all that happens is that you get much more email. Feeling busier—thanks to all that email—I bought Getting Things Done, by the time management guru David Allen, lured by his promise that it is “possible for a person to have an overwhelming number of things to do and still function productively with a clear head” and “what the martial artists call a ‘mind like water.’ ” But I failed to appreciate Allen’s deeper implication—that there’ll always be too much to do—and instead set about attempting to get an impossible amount done. In fact, I did get better at racing through my to-do list, only to find that greater volumes of work magically started to appear. (Actually, it’s not magic; it’s simple psychology, plus capitalism. More on that later.)
Oliver Burkeman (Four Thousand Weeks: The smash-hit bestseller that will change your life)
I know people who repeatedly jump from one guru to the next in search of the Holy Grail of trading. Of course, it doesn’t exist, but you need to know this fact to stop looking for it.
Naved Abdali
In 1993, the management guru Peter Drucker wrote: ‘That knowledge has become the resource, rather than a resource, is what makes our society “post-capitalist”. It changes, and fundamentally, the structure of society. It creates new social dynamics. It creates new economic dynamics. It creates new politics.’ 7 At the age of ninety, the last surviving pupil of Josef Schumpeter had jumped the gun a little, but the insight was correct.
Paul Mason
The best piece of advice I ever received was from one manager who suggested I could become an expert in emerging markets simply by telling people I was an expert in emerging markets. Over time I would fill in the gaps. Amazingly, this advice proved correct, and after a very short stint in the business, even employees in Morgan Stanley’s DPG, including Scarecrow, regarded me as an emerging markets derivatives guru. I wasn’t about to dissuade them. As long as emerging markets, especially in Latin America, continued to be powerful and profitable, I liked my position there.
Frank Partnoy (FIASCO: Blood in the Water on Wall Street)
Like a management consultant is hired to guide people in managing and solving their business problems, a belief system works as a mentor or guru or life coach or consultant to direct people in managing and resolving their life problems.
Vikrmn: CA Vikram Verma (Smiling Brahma)
Timing Your Rewards Retail guru Rick Segel famously said, “The behavior that is rewarded is the behavior that is repeated.
Dane Taylor (Organize Your Day: 17 Easy Strategies to Manage Your Day, Improve Productivity & Overcome Procrastination (Time Management Skills & Productivity Hacks Book 1))
In the spiritual or religious field having a living guru is a very inconvenient thing! A guru who is long gone is much simpler. He is not there to contradict you or reprimand you; to correct your understanding. It is interesting to consider whether Jesus or Mohammed or Krishna would ratify what their followers have done in their name?
Dr Janki Santoke (How Do You Know What You Know?: Manage Thoughts, Manage Life)
It helped us know exactly who we were speaking to at all times. And exactly whose problems we were solving. But simplicity and ease may not be enough to sway you, so let me illustrate why honing in on one niche will make you more money. Reason: you can literally charge 100x more for the exact same product. Dan Kennedy was the first person to illustrate this for me, and I will do my best to pass on the torch to you in these pages. Niching Product Pricing Example: Example Dan Kennedy taught me this (and it changed my life forever). Let’s say you sold a generic course on Time Management. Unless you were some massive time management guru with a compelling or unique story, it would be unlikely it would turn into anything significant. What do you think “yet another” time management course is valued at? $19, $29? Sure. Nothing to write home about. Let’s just say $19 for illustration sake. **Now we shall unleash the power of niche pricing in various stages on your product** So let’s imagine you make the product more specific, keeping the same principles, and call it “Time Management For Sales Professionals.” All of a sudden, this course is for a more specific type of person. We could tie their increase to even one more sale or one more deal and it would be worth more. But there are a lot of sales people. So this might be a $99 product. Neat, but we can do better. So let’s go down another level of niching and call our product…. “Time Management for B2B Outbound Sales Reps.” Following the same principles of specificity, now we know our sales people probably have very experienced deals and commissions. A single sale would easily net this salesman $500 (or more), so it would be easy to justify a $499 price tag. This is already a 25x increase in price for almost an identical product. I could stop here, but I’m going to go one step further. Let’s just niche down one last level…. “Time Management for B2B Outbound Power Tools & Gardening Sales Reps.” Boom. Think about it for a second, if you were a power tools outbound sales rep, you would think to yourself “This is made exactly for me” and would happily fork over maybe $1000 to $2000 for a time management program that could help you achieve your goal.
Alex Hormozi ($100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No (Acquisition.com $100M Series Book 1))
Author Steve Denning has highlighted the weakness of Porter’s assumption that the purpose of strategy is to avoid competition. Denning pointed instead to management guru Peter Drucker’s dictum that the purpose of business is “to create a customer.
Geoffrey G. Parker (Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy―and How to Make Them Work for You)
Instead of courage' management guru Tom Peters recommends fostering 'a level of fury with the status quo such that one cannot not act.
Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
The great management guru Charles Handy says that, as far as money goes, you have to look after yourself. He reckons you may need to do something else as well as your “passion project” to earn money, particularly in the early stages of a new business
Tom Hodgkinson (Business for Bohemians: Live Well, Make Money)
In our pursuit of happiness, we heed the timeless words of management guru Peter Drucker who told us “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” We define key performance indicators (KPIs) and objectives and key results (OKRs) for business. And we use wearable sensors to track steps, calories, insulin levels, and the heart rates of individuals. The numbers keep us so busy, we fail to realize Drucker would never have said those words. The quote is also attributed to W. Edwards Deming, but what he really said is “it is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it –a costly myth.”[
Peter Morville (Planning for Everything: The Design of Paths and Goals)
Management guru Peter Drucker calls it “risk which is coincident with the commitment of present resources to future expectations.
Jim Paul (What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars)
The line attributed to the management guru Peter Drucker is that culture eats strategy. It’s a truism that applies as much to conspiracies as it does to businesses. It doesn’t matter how great your plan is, it doesn’t matter who your people are, if what binds them all together is weak or toxic, so, too, will be the outcome—if you even get that far. But if the ties that bind you together are strong, if you have a sense of purpose and mission, you can withstand great trials.
Ryan Holiday (Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue)
There are no big things, only a logical accumulation of little things done at a very high standard of performance,’ the late John Wooden, US basketball coach and leadership guru once said
Ian Herbert (Quiet Genius: Bob Paisley, British football’s greatest manager)
Process standardization from on high is disempowerment. It is a direct result of fearful management, allergic to failure. It tries to avoid all chance of failure by having key decisions made by a guru class (those who set the standards) and carried out mechanically by the regular folk. As defense against failure, standard process is a kind of armor. The more worried you are about failure, the heavier the armor you put on. But armor always has a side effect of reduced mobility. The overarmored organization has lost the ability to move and move quickly. When this happens, standard process is the cause of lost mobility. It is, however, not the root cause. The root cause is fear.
Tom DeMarco (Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency)
You can use three questions on a regular basis to keep yourself focused on completing your most important tasks on schedule. The first question is, “What are my highest-value activities?” Put another way, what are the biggest frogs that you have to eat to make the greatest contribution to your organization? To your family? To your life in general? This is one of the most important questions you can ever ask and answer. What are your highest-value activities? First, think this through for yourself. Then, ask your boss. Ask your coworkers and subordinates. Ask your friends and family. Like focusing the lens of a camera, you must be crystal clear about your highest-value activities before you begin work. The second question you can ask continually is, “What can I and only I do, that if done well, will make a real difference?” This question came from the late Peter Drucker, the management guru. It is one of the most important of all questions for achieving personal effectiveness. What can you and only you do that if done well can make a real difference? This is something that only you can do. If you don’t do it, it won’t be done by someone else. But if you do do it, and you do it well, it can really make a difference to your life and your career. What is this particular frog for you? Every hour of every day, you can ask yourself this question and come up with a specific answer. Your job is to be clear about the answer and then to start and work on this task before anything else. The third question you can ask is, “What is the most valuable use of my time right now?” In other words, “What is my biggest frog of all at this moment?” This is the core question of time management. Answering this question correctly is the key to overcoming procrastination and becoming a highly productive person. Every hour of every day, one task represents the most valuable use of your time at that moment. Your job is to ask yourself this question, over and over again, and to always be working on the answer to it, whatever it is.
Brian Tracy (Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time)
It’s also why he gave his little conspiratorial laugh in spring training when he heard of the Red Sox plan, based on analysis by statistical guru and team consultant Bill James, to have rotating closers instead of one designated pitcher. James, in part because of what he felt was the inflated statistic of the save (you get one even with a three-run lead), believed that it wasn’t always necessary to bring in a classic closer to pitch the ninth. La Russa repected James, but based on managing nearly 4,000 games, was convinced James was wrong. La Russa was also right: the Red Sox ultimately dumped the idea when it became
Buzz Bissinger (Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager)