Pfeffer Quotes

I guess I always felt even if the world came to an end, McDonald's would still be open.

I never really thought about how when I look at the moon, it's the same moon as Shakespeare and Marie Antoinette and George Washington and Cleopatra looked at.

I wonder if I'll ever have to decide which is worse, life as we're living or no life at all.

If God wanted a world filled with saints, He never would have created adolescence.

We may not have a future, but you can't deny we have a past.

What about desserts?" I asked. "If the world comes to an end, I'm going to want cookies.

Maybe I'm wrong," Mom said. "Maybe the world really is coming to an end." "Should I try Fox News?" I asked. Mom shuddered. "We're not that desperate," she said.

But she's wrong about hell. You don't have to wait until you're dead to get there.

The only way you can be the best at something is to be the best you can be.

Here's the funny thing about the world coming to an end. Once it gets going, it doesn't seem to stop.

I have no privacy. But I feel so alone.

I hate the moon. I hate tides and earthquakes and volcanoes. I hate a world where things that have absolutely nothing to do with me can destroy my life and the lives of people I love.

Even the rats are drowning,' Alex said. Nah,' Kevin said. 'They've been taking swimming lessons at the Y.

What about desserts?" I asked. "If the world comes to an end, I'm going to want cookies." "We're all going to want cookies if the world comes to an end," Mrs. Nesbitt agreed. "And chips and pretzels. If the world is coming to an end, why should I care about my blood pressure?" "Okay, we'll die fat," Mom said.

I remember the day you left. Tying rocks to your ankles, you said, "I'm going to find a new world, under the ocean." I guess you must be enjoying yourself, I haven't seen you since

I feel myself shriveling along with my world, getting smaller and harder. I'm turning into a rock, and in some ways that's good, because rocks last forever. But if this is how I'm going to last forever, then I don't want to.

Your most important task as a leader is to teach people how to think and ask the right questions so that the world doesn't go to hell if you take a day off.

He taught me to trust in tomorrow.

It wouldn't be New Year's without a resolution. I've resolved to take a moment every day for the rest of my life to appreciate what I have.

But it's our curse and our blessing to remember the past and to know there's a future. —Charlie

Mom, is the world coming to an end?" Jonny asked, picking up the plate of cookies and ramming one into his mouth. "No, it isn'T," Mom said, folding her lawn chair and carrying it to the front of the house. "And yes, you do have to go to school tomorrow.

Back in the time when life was easy, the Internet would have told me what I needed to know. The great thing about the Internet was it didn't care why you were asking.

Just in case the world ends tomorrow," she said. "We might as well enjoy today.

Librarians! Librarians always know how to find out things. That was their job even before the Internet.

About 10 minutes ago, we all woke up because of this strange roaring sound. We all raced toward the sound, which turned out to be the washing machine going back on. Who knew the rinse cycle could be so scary?

What's the point of God making us human if He doesn't want us to act like we're human?' 'To see if we can rise above our natures,'Megan said.

He walked out of the office to find Kevin Daley standing there. 'I like your style,' Kevin said. Thank you,' Alex said. 'I like it, too.

I wonder if I cry whether my tears would be gray.

This morning the electricity came on for a few minutes, and when it did, Jonny said, "Hey, it's a black-on." This is what passes for humor around here.

Trust in tomorrow...Every day of your life, there's been a tomorrow. I promise you, there'll be a tomorrow. —Alex Morales to Miranda Evans

Great, the worlds coming to an end and we're fixing it with Band-Aids

woman must not depend on the protection of man, but must learn to protect herself

The last living boy in America drops into my bedroom only he wants to be a monk. I think that pretty much sums up my life.

Sometimes the rules don't work. Sometimes the rules cause the anarchy.

Life's sloppy...You think you know how tomorrow's going to be, you've made your plans, everything is set in place, and then the unimaginable happens. Life catches you by surprise. It always does. But there's good mixed in with the bad. It's there. You just have to recognize it.

Lisa's baby was due about now. I've decided she had it and it was a girl. I've named her Rachel.

They say asteroids hit the moon pretty often, which is how the moon gets its crater, but this one is going to be the biggest asteroid ever to hit it and on a clear night you should be able to see the impact when it happens, maybe even with the naked eye but certainly with binoculars. They made it sound pretty dramatic, but I still don't think it's worth three homework assignments.

Life catches you by surprise. It always does. But there's good mixed in with the bad. It's there. You just have to recognize it.

Matt looked up kids from his high school class. Only three were listed as dead, but a bunch were listed as missing/presumed dead. As a test, he looked us up, but none of our names were on any of the lists. And that's how we know we're alive this Memorial Day.

But today when I am 17 and warm and well fed, I'm keeping this journal for myself so I can always remember life as we knew it, life as we know it, for a time when I am no longer in the sunroom.

All my life I've been well behaved," she said. "It's about time I got to push people around and not apologize.

I can't decide which is worse, no electricity or unreliable electricity. I wonder if I'll ever have to decide which is worse, life as we're living or no life at all.

People see what they want to see

I thought about how unlikely it was I would ever meet any guy,fall in love, get married, have babies. Especially since I was going to spend the rest of my life in the cellar, where, in the not too distant future, I'd turn into a toadstool. I hoped I'd be the poisonous variety.

The electricity came on for the second time today wile we were eating. This may be a fool's paradise, but it's a paradise nonetheless.

todays the first anniversary of the asteroid hitting the moon. A year ago i was sixteen years old, a sophomore in high school.

Carlos was probably somewhere warm, eating three meals a day, and sleeping in a real bed. That was the life

Don't stop believing in miracles.

The sun’s rays, focused, are much more powerful than they are without focus. The same is true for people seeking power.

But I don't want to have to stop feeling. I really think I'd rather die than stop feeling.

That's the function of big brothers... to help their little sisters when their worlds are collapsing.

Being memorable equals getting picked.

Megan's right about my being a sinner. But she's wrong about hell. You don't have to wait until you're dead to get there.

One of the more gratifying things about guilt is that it makes us feel important.

When two people always agree, one of them is unnecessary.

This past year I grew up to know hunger, grief, darkness, fear. I began to understand how lonely you can feel even when all you want is to be alone.

I thought about the earth then, really thought about it, the tsunami's and earthquakes and volcanoes, all the horrors I haven't witnessed but have changed my life, the lives of everyone I know, all the people I'll never know. I thought about life without the sun, the moon, stars, without flowers and warm days in May. I thought about a year ago and all the good things I'd taken for granted and all the unbearable things that had replaced those simple blessings. And even though I hated the thought of crying in from of Syl, tears streamed down my face.

...when I came back, I found Mom sobbing at the kitchen table...Then I asked her what had happened. 'Nothing,'she said. 'I was thinking about that man...I started thinking about...if he and his wife and their other child are okay, and I don't know. It just got to me.' 'I know,' I said, because I did know. Sometimes it's safer to cry about people you don't know than to think about people you really love.

Michael Schrage is right: “A collaboration of incompetents, no matter how diligent or well-meaning, cannot be successful.

Sometimes the rues don't work. Sometimes the rules cause the anarchy.

Do people ever realize how precious life is? I know I never did before. There was always time. There was always a future.

I'm 16 years old. Let me get my learner's permit first. then I'll worry about lifetime commitments

The Christmas after Mom & Dad split up, they both went crazy buying us presents. Matt, Jonny, and I were showered with gifts at home and at Dads apartment. I thought that was great. I was all in favor of my love being paid for with presents. This year all I got was a diary and a secondhand watch. Okay, I know this is corny, but this really is what Christmas is all about.

I'm the one not caring. I'm the one pretending the Earth isn't shattering all around me because I don't want it to be. I don't want to know there was an earthquake in Missouri. I don't want to know the Midwest can die, also, that what's going on isn't just tides and tsunamis. I don't want to have any more to be afraid of. I didn't start this diary for it to be a record of death.

So what if I don't learn algebra?' 'Someday schools will be open again,' Mom said. 'Things will be normal. You need to do your work now for when that happens.' 'That's never going to happen,' Jon said. 'And even if schools do open up somewhere, they're not going to open up here. There aren't enough people left.' 'We don't know how many people are like us, holed up, making do until times get better.' 'I bet whoever they are, they aren't studying algebra,' Jon said.

Their eyes were usually open, and they stared up at the moon that had killed them.

a large body of empirical research conducted over decades suggests that student evaluations are more than unhelpful; instead, they are likely to change the behaviors of presenters in ways that make learning and personal growth less likely. That is one reason why Armstrong concluded that “teacher ratings are detrimental to students.

I never really thought about how when I look at the moon it’s the same moon Shakespeare and Marie Antoinette and George Washington and Cleopatra looked at. Not to mention all those zillions of people I’ve never heard of. All those Homo sapiens and Neanderthals looked at the very same moon as me. It waxed and waned in their sky, too.

So we baked and sweated together. I like punching the dough. I told myself it was the moon and punched it senseless.

Thinking is very hard work. And management fashions are a wonderful substitute for thinking.

We can't accept that things will always be bad. If we do, we won't fight to make things better.

People see what they want to see.

Just in case the world ends tomorrow, we might as well enjoy today.

Maybe we lost the things we loved then so we could survive losing every thing else.

Every day when I go to sleep I think what a jerk I was to have felt sorry for myself the day before. My Wednesdays are worse than my Tuesdays, my Tuesdays way worse than my Tuesday of a week before. Which means every tomorrow is going to be worse than every today. Why feel sorry for myself today when tomorrow's bound to be worse? It's a hell of a philosophy, but it's all I've got.

Even in good times we didn't socialize with most of our neighbors. Mom says when she was growing up she did, but so many of the old families have moved out and new people moved in and neighborliness has changed. Now being a good neighbor means minding your own business.

Well, no one says you can be happy about everything," I said. "I know I should be glad for you, Megan, but frankly I think you're crazy. And if Reverend Marshall is making you this way, I think he's evil. This life, this everyday existence, is the one gift we're given. To throw it away, to want to be dead, to me that's the sin.

When I'm in the water I feel as though nothing bad has happened. I think about the fish, how they don't know what's going on. Their world is unchanged. Actually it's probably better now to be a tuna or a sardine or a salmon. Less chance of ending up as somebody's lunch.

I wondered how many people had sung "By the dawn's early light' yesterday and were dead today.

If doctors practiced medicine the way many companies practice management, there would be far more sick and dead patients, and many more doctors would be in jail.

No one who is unmemorable is going to be chosen for an important job, because one cannot select what one cannot remember.

What we were concerned about—what seems to be happening now—is volcanoes,

We're all alive. We're all healthy. These are the good times.

Nothing good happened to Romeo or Juliet.

This life, this everyday existence, is the one gift we’re given. To throw it away, to want to be dead, to me that’s the sin.

Sometimes it's safer to cry about people you don't know than to think about people you really love.

Believing that the world is fair, people fail to note the various land mines in the environment that can undermine their careers.

I remember the day you left. Tying rocks to your ankles, you said, "I'm going to find a new world, under the ocean." I guess you must be enjoying yourself, I haven't seen you since.

The two fundamental dimensions that distinguish people who rise to great heights and accomplish amazing things are will, the drive to take on big challenges, and skill, the capabilities required to turn ambition into accomplishment. The three personal qualities embodied in will are ambition, energy, and focus. The four skills useful in acquiring power are self-knowledge and a reflective mind-set, confidence and the ability to project self-assurance, the ability to read others and empathize with their point of view, and a capacity to tolerate conflict.

Asian professionals are frequently held back from senior positions by the perception that they don’t have “executive presence,” a factor that similarly operates against other minority groups in the workplace, including women.39 And what constitutes executive presence? Certainly not modesty:

Because if I let myself feel the pain and the anger, I think it might kill me. Or I might kill someone else. I know it's wrong to feel that way about God and I know its's wrong to not feel anything. I hate it. I don't hate God. I hate not loving Him.

that leaders inspire trust, be authentic, tell the truth, serve others (particularly those who work for and with them), be modest and self-effacing, exhibit empathic understanding and emotional intelligence, and other similar seemingly sensible nostrums.

Deming argued that if there are performance problems and quality defects, one needs to understand how those problems arise almost naturally as a consequence of how a system has been designed—and then fix those design flaws. Put simply, attack the problems by fixing the system, not scapegoating the necessarily fallible human beings working in and operating that system—whether or not they deserved it.

Peter always brings death with him, along with spinach or nuts. He said he'd seen 20 cases of West Nile during the week and five deaths from it. He also said two people had died from food allergies. "They're so hungry they're taking their chances eating foods they're seriously allergic to," he said.

The idiot’s still alive!” Mom cried. “And he’s still an idiot!

Planning is essentially unrelated to organizational performance

Condoleezza Rice is right: people will join your side if you have power and are willing to use it, not just because they are afraid of your hurting them but also because they want to be close to your power and success.

Hitler’s style of leadership functioned precisely because of the readiness of all his subordinates to accept his unique standing in the party, and their belief that such eccentricities of behaviour had simply to be taken on board in someone they saw as a political genius. ‘He always needs people who can translate his ideologies into reality so that they can be implemented,’ Pfeffer is reported as stating. Hitler’s way was, in fact, not to hand out streams of orders to shape important political decisions. Where possible, he avoided decisions. Rather, he laid out – often in his diffuse and opinionated fashion – his ideas at length and repeatedly. These provided the general guidelines and direction for policy-making. Others had to interpret from his comments how they thought he wanted them to act and ‘work towards’ his distant objectives. ‘If they could all work in this way,’ Hitler was reported as stating from time to time, ‘if they could all strive with firm, conscious tenacity towards a common, distant goal, then the ultimate goal must one day be achieved. That mistakes will be made is human. It is a pity. But that will be overcome if a common goal is constantly adopted as a guideline.’ This instinctive way of operating, embedded in Hitler’s social-Darwinist approach, not only unleashed ferocious competition among those in the party – later in the state – trying to reach the ‘correct’ interpretation of Hitler’s intentions. It also meant that Hitler, the unchallenged fount of ideological orthodoxy by this time, could always side with those who had come out on top in the relentless struggle going on below him, with those who had best proven that they were following the ‘right guidelines’. And since only Hitler could determine this, his power position was massively enhanced.

That’s when I realized it. I liked this girl. A lot. I liked her super-moist double chocolate chip cupcakes. I liked how kind and patient she was with the guests, the way her forehead crinkled when she was thinking about a problem. I liked her low, soft voice and that long ribbon of platinum-blond hair. I liked the way she looked at the world, as if it were an okay place, where good things were actually possible. 

Measuring the wrong thing is often worse than measuring nothing, because you do get what you measure. So if the assessments focus on how much people “enjoy” the experience—be that reading a book, watching a talk, or going to a training session—those same books, talks, and trainings will respond to those measurements by prioritizing the wrong outcomes: making participants feel good and giving them a good time. Simply stated, measuring entertainment value produces great entertainment, not change; measuring the wrong things crowds out assessing other, more relevant indicators such as improvements in workplaces. Improvement comes from employing measurements that are appropriate, those that are connected to the areas in which we seek improvement. In the case of leadership, that appropriate measurement would include assessing the frequency of desirable leader behaviors; actual workplace conditions such as engagement, satisfaction, and