Strategy Leadership Quotes

Whenever I am in a difficult situation where there seems to be no way out, I think about all the times I have been in such situations and say to myself, "I did it before, so I can do it again.

When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work – the most you will make is 5 dollars.

Any man who retreats into a cave which has only one opening deserves to die.

Today is a new day and it brings with it a new set of opportunities for me to act on. I am attentive to the opportunities and I seize them as they arise. I have full confidence in myself and my abilities. I can do all things that I commit myself to. No obstacle is too big or too difficult for me to handle because what lies inside me is greater than what lies ahead of me. I am committed to improving myself and I am getting better daily. I am not held back by regret or mistakes from the past. I am moving forward daily. Absolutely nothing is impossible for me.

Strategy is really the essence of the boards value proposition to the company. The ability to strategize well is the essence of what makes a board relevant.

Advice to my younger self: 1 Start where you are with what you have 2 Try not to hurt other people 3 Take more chances 4 If you fail, keep trying

Do you know great minds enjoy excellence, average minds love mediocrity and small minds adore comfort zones?

Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.

The most attractive thing about you should have less to do with your face or body and more to do with your attitude and how you treat people.

There can’t be anything more fatal to a business than making decisions based on somebody else’s assumptions.

You need to be a risk-taker, but you have to also make sure that you are a calculated risk-taker.

You don’t want to run your business based on mere suspicions and assumptions.

A successful business owner will know their business as good as they know their favorite celebrity, their partner, and even their dogs.

Being successful is not that tough, you just need a little mindset change.

Accepting that you’re wrong, shows humility which will set a better example of you as a leader on your team than sticking to something that others can clearly see is wrong.

Become a leader that shows humility and not stubbornness.

Search engines' results aren’t always trustworthy. As a matter of fact, they can be easily manipulated.

You gotta make it a priority to make your priorities a priority.

The business landscape is a constantly evolving ecosystem. Changes in the macro environment, such as technological disruptions or changing consumer preferences, can rapidly alter the competitive landscape. A high-performing board needs to be adept at strategic foresight.

The board's vision sets the standard for leadership throughout the company. By actively promoting and embodying the vision, board members hold management accountable for aligning their actions and strategies with the company's long-term aspirations.

Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.

Tweet others the way you want to be tweeted.

Strategy is not really a solo sport – even if you’re the CEO.

Poetry empowers the simplest of lives to confront the most extreme sorrows with courage, and motivates the mightiest of offices to humbly heed lessons in compassion.

Freedom of Speech doesn't justify online bullying. Words have power, be careful how you use them.

Strong GenerationS Churches do not fight tomorrow’s war with yesterday’s strategies.

Doing nothing requires effort. Over time, that effort is greater than the effort necessary to improve, or move somewhere better. The trick is to redirect energy.

Vision without action is a daydream, but action without vision is a nightmare.

7 keys to getting more things done: 1 start 2 dont make excuses 3 celebrate small steps 4 ignore critics 5 be consistent 6 be open 7 stay positive

So how can a leader become great if they lack the natural characteristics necessary to lead? The answer is simple: a good leader builds a great team that counterbalances their weaknesses.

Seven Ways To Get Ahead in Business: 1. Be forward thinking 2. Be inventive, and daring 3. Do the right thing 4. Be honest and straight forward 5. Be willing to change, to learn, to grow 6. Work hard and be yourself 7. Lead by example

In the modern workplace, you gotta be a jack-of-all-trades. Mastering your career is all about being adaptable, versatile, and always learning.

At the different stages of recognition, reflection, and redress, practicing compassion provides potentially world-saving opportunities which otherwise likely would not exist.

The truth is that everything starts from the top. What determines your failure or success is your style of leadership and the chain of command that you design.

Want to make waves in the business world? Then you gotta be bold, take risks, and always be ready to pivot.

Great ideas don’t die in the market, they die in the shower. People are too scared to pursue them because they appear crazy.

What does sincerity mean if it is chosen as deliberate strategy?

The pace and ability at which an organization is able to effectively innovate will be the determining factor of competitiveness in the future. The future is now.

There is an absolute need for organizations to innovate, grow, transform, and reinvent themselves faster than ever before.

A successful blitz requires a well-thought-out strategy and flawless execution. Similarly, effective corporate governance involves developing and implementing sound strategies that align with the company's goals and values.

The history of the failure of war can almost be summed up in two words: too late.

Dream without fear, love without limits, and let your life sing its song.

They say that success is a journey, not a destination. But let's be real, the destination is pretty sweet - especially if it comes with a six-figure salary and a company car.

Don't just climb the corporate ladder, master it! And if anyone tries to push you off, show them who's boss and climb even higher.

Success is not just about hard work, it's about working smart. So, take a break from the grind and strategize like a pro.

Arming employees with the tools, know-how, and mindset needed to successfully innovate on a continual basis will be paramount to organizational survival.

They say that the first step to success is setting clear goals. Well, I've got plenty of goals - like finally getting that corner office with a view, and firing my most annoying colleague.

I have always been fascinated by the intricate dance of power, strategy, and decision-making that unfolds within the boardroom. It is a microcosm of human interaction, where the fate of companies, communities, and sometimes even nations, is shaped.

At its core, macromanagement is a development strategy that allows you to position others to learn more, do more, and be more.

The core leadership strategy is simple: be a model.

If you don't appreciate your customers, someone else will.

articulate and define what has previously remained implicit or unsaid;

To achieve career mastery, you must first master yourself. Take the time to assess your strengths, weaknesses, and goals, and then chart a course for success.

If you want to achieve career mastery, then you need to be willing to put in the work. But don't worry, the view from the top is totally worth it.

If you're not driving business growth and profitability, then you might as well be a houseplant. So get out there and make some money, honey!

Innovation is a learned organizational capability. You must train people how to innovate and navigate organizational barriers that kill off good ideas before they can be tested.

Profitability. Growth. Quality. Exceeding customer expectations. These are not examples of values. These are examples of corporate strategies being sold to you as values.

The best way to predict future is to create it." Abraham Lincoln

Professional development is important, but let's not forget about the most important kind of development - personal brand development. Because in the modern workplace, it's not what you know, it's who knows you.

Bet on your strengths. It’s an underrated business strategy in a world where so many people are obsessed with fixing their weaknesses they give short shrift to the skills they were born with.

There is no shortcut for hard work that leads to effectiveness. You must stay disciplined because most of the work is behind the scenes.

The modern job market is like a game of musical chairs. You need to be the one with a chair when the music stops, or you're out of luck.

The workplace is like a battlefield, and you need to be a warrior to survive. So arm yourself with knowledge and fight for your place in the corporate world.

The problem with most strategic planning processes is they are not designed to create strategy. They are designed to create consistency and predictability.

The leaders and followers of the Harlem Renaissance were every bit as intent on using Black culture to help make the United States a more functional democracy as they were on employing Black culture to 'vindicate' Black people.

Strategy is something that emerges from reality, while tactics might be chosen.

Jackson lead as he lived, sometimes with his heart, sometimes with his mind, sometimes with both.

Psychological pseudoscience dies hard, especially when there are commercial interests at stake.

You want leaders driven by mission – not by adrenaline. No one wants to work with people who need to be heroes more than they need to be catalysts.

Confronted by menace or what is perceived as menace, governments will usually attempt to smash it, rarely to examine it, understand it, and drefine it.

For me the starting point for everything - before strategy, tactics, theories, managing, organizing, philosophy, methodology, talent, or experience - is work ethic.

We are the visionaries, inventors, and artists. We think differently, see the world differently, and solve problems differently. It is from this difference that the dyslexic brain derives its brilliance.

Thriving through change requires clear strategy. But ironically, it also requires the willingness to toss all of your existing plans out the window if the business is presented with new data or new circumstances that delegitimize the clear strategy.

Government was rarely more than a choice between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

With a clever strategy, each action is self-reinforcing. Each action creates more options that are mutually beneficial. Each victory is not just for today but for tomorrow.

Strategy is about shaping the future.

Sometimes, as in a game of chess, we must strategically regress so that we might progress toward our ultimate objective.

In all spheres of life, there are constraints. You have to develop your own strategy to overcome each constraint.

Leaders need to correct for cognitive biases the way a sharpshooter corrects for wind velocity or a yachtsman corrects for the tide.

Leaders need to sacrifice "power-over" to get "power-to".

Develop a compelling change vision that inspires employees with purpose and is aligned to the organisation’s strategy, values and beliefs

The best leaders never stop learning.

The penalty for excessive ambition – what the Greeks called hubris – is exhaustion, while the price for resting on one’s laurels is progressive insignificance and eventual decay.

If you have the choice between saving a man’s ego or saving his life, trust me. Save his ego. He’ll thank you for it later. I mean, he won’t because he’ll be dead, but you know what I mean.

Make sure your product is something your potential investors could personally see themselves using, or else they won’t be able to see any value in it whatsoever. Even though women are half of the population, remember, anything targeting them is considered a niche market.

You may be bipolar, suffer from depression, or anxiety, or any number of other mental health issues. Your company absolutely supports you focusing on these issues and getting the help you need as long as it never comes up at work and you get all of your work done on time.

Mindfulness requires being a beginner. Setting absurdly high-standards, and being unwilling to be a novice, are the joint enemies of personal progress and change. Nobody benchpresses 100 kilos the first time they enter a gym.

When your coworker complains about something, bring up something completely unrelated that they should be complaining about. Then when what they were complaining about becomes a problem, ask them why they didn’t bring it up sooner.

Few of us realize our potential; because if we did, we would pursue our passion and walk in our purpose.

A promising junior executive of IBM was involved in a risky venture for the company and managed to lose over $10 million in the gamble. It was a disaster. When Watson called the nervous executive into his office, the young man blurted out, 'I guess you want my resignation?' Watson said, 'You can't be serious. We've just spent $10 million educating you!

In business, sport, entertainment and beyond an idea is worth next to nothing. The energy, effort, passion, talent, tenacity, strategy, resilience and resourcefulness to see it through and make something of it is worth everything.

Give serious thought to why your company should care about your strategy. Specifically, find problems that the board wants to be solved. What are senior managers scared of? Part of becoming a credible strategic thinker is learning effective approaches to selling ideas for your situation. You’ll know that you’re getting better at selling (or pitching) strategy when managers start coming to you when there is strategic thinking to be done.

Many great leaders understand intuitively that they need to work hard to create a sense of safety in others. In this way, great leaders are often humble leaders, thereby reducing the status threat. Great leaders provide clear expectations and talk a lot about the future, helping to increase certainty. Great leaders let others take charge and make decisions, increasing autonomy. Great leaders often have a strong presence, which comes from working hard to be authentic and real with other people, to create a sense of relatedness. And great leaders keep their promises, taking care to be perceived as fair.

When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a “drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.” So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great high road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart; and tho’ your cause be naked truth itself . . . you shall no more be able to [reach] him, than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw. Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interest. [Italics added]

In carrying out a peacekeeping mission where the grand strategy is to maintain peace and order by persuading armed parties or other hostile elements to back away from aggressive activities, military strength is not a definite measure of success; neither could material contribution alone guarantees the "winning of the hearts and minds" of the people. What appears to be important is the day-to-day conduct of the peacekeepers on the ground; those who uphold the principles of neutrality and impartiality, as well as those who are able to carry all aspects of its operational duties exceptionally.

There is a theory about human behavior called the 10-80-10 principle. I speak of it often when I talk to corporate groups or business leaders. It is the best strategy I know for getting the most out of your team. Think of your team or your organization as a big circle. At the very center of it, the nucleus, are the top 10 percenters, people who give all they've got all the time, who are the essence of self-discipline, self-respect, and the relentless persuit of improvement. They are the elite- the most powerful component of any organization. They are the people I love to coach. Outside the nucleus are the 80 percenters. They are the majority- people who go to work, do a good job, and are relatively reliable. The 80 percenters are for the most part trustworthy and dutiful, but they simply don't have the drive and the unbending will that the nucleus guys do. They just don't burn as hot. The final 10 percenters are uninterested or defiant. They are on the periphery, mostly just coasting through life, not caring about reaching their potential or honoring the gifts they've been given. They are coach killers. The leadership challenge is to move as many of the 80 percenters into the nucleus as you can.

If you have a million fans and no talent, you’re still not a success. a million students and no lesson, you’re still not a teacher. a million sermons and no compassion, you’re still not a priest. a million children and no affection, you’re still not a father. a million anniversaries and no devotion, you’re still not a husband. If you have a million sheep and no courage, you’re still not a shepherd. a million seeds and no harvest, you’re still not a farmer. a million titles and no integrity, you’re still not a champion. a million thoughts and no insights, you’re still not a philosopher. a million predictions and no prophecy, you’re still not a prophet. If you have a million soldiers and no unity, you’re still not an army. a million monks and no camaraderie, you’re still not a monastery. a million cities and no borders, you’re still not a country. a million musicians and no harmony, you’re still not an orchestra. a million armies and no strategy, you’re still not a general. If you have a million titles, and no influence, you’re still not a leader; a million ideas and no creations, you’re still not an artist. a million theories, and no facts, you’re still not a scholar; a million books, and no wisdom, you’re still not a sage; a million virtues, and no love, you’re still not a saint.

Regardless of whether one subscribes to the aims of the four movements whose stories we have told, there is much to appreciate about them as movements. They have overcome schisms; disbandment; leadership scandals; and/or the deaths of their founders. They have developed a highly innovative strategy—bypassing the state—to overcome the obstacles that their ideological strictness; ambitious agendas; and reluctance to compromise present. They have shown a strong entrepreneurial spirit in building effective social service agencies, medical facilities, schools, and businesses that often put the state’s efforts to shame. While they are not the Christian militias, al-Qaeda cells, or Jewish extremist groups whose terrorism has attracted much attention, the Muslim Brotherhood, Shas, Comunione e Liberazione, and the Salvation Army, with their strategy of rebuilding society, one institution at a time, may well prove more successful in sacralizing their societies than movements that use violence.

What I found telling was what Trump and his team didn’t ask. They were about to lead a country that had been attacked by a foreign adversary, yet they had no questions about what the future Russian threat might be. Nor did they ask how the United States might prepare itself to meet that threat. Instead, with the four of us still in our seats—including two outgoing Obama appointees—the president-elect and his team shifted immediately into a strategy session about messaging on Russia. About how they could spin what we’d just told them. Speaking as if we weren’t there, Priebus began describing what a press statement about this meeting might look like. The Trump team—led by Priebus, with Pence, Spicer, and Trump jumping in—debated how to position these findings for maximum political advantage. They were keen to emphasize that there was no impact on the vote, meaning that the Russians hadn’t elected Trump. Clapper interjected to remind them of what he had said about sixty seconds earlier: the intelligence community did not analyze American politics, and we had not offered a view on that.

Everything we do and say will either underline or undermine our discipleship process. As long as there is one unsaved person on my campus or in my city, then my church is not big enough. One of the underlying principles of our discipleship strategy is that every believer can and should make disciples. When a discipleship process fails, many times the fatal flaw is that the definition of discipleship is either unclear, unbiblical, or not commonly shared by the leadership team. Write down what you love to do most, and then go do it with unbelievers. Whatever you love to do, turn it into an outreach. You have to formulate a system that is appropriate for your cultural setting. Writing your own program for making disciples takes time, prayer, and some trial and error—just as it did with us. Learn and incorporate ideas from other churches around the world, but only after modification to make sure the strategies make sense in our culture and community. Culture is changing so quickly that staying relevant requires our constant attention. If we allow ourselves to be distracted by focusing on the mechanics of our own efforts rather than our culture, we will become irrelevant almost overnight. The easiest and most common way to fail at discipleship is to import a model or copy a method that worked somewhere else without first understanding the values that create a healthy discipleship culture. Principles and process are much more important than material, models, and methods. The church is an organization that exists for its nonmembers. Christianity does not promise a storm-free life. However, if we build our lives on biblical foundations, the storms of life will not destroy us. We cannot have lives that are storm-free, but we can become storm-proof. Just as we have to figure out the most effective way to engage our community for Christ, we also have to figure out the most effective way to establish spiritual foundations in each unique context. There is really only one biblical foundation we can build our lives on, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Pastors, teachers, and church staff believe their primary role is to serve as mentors. Their task is to equip every believer for the work of the ministry. It is not to do all the ministry, but to equip all the people to do it. Their top priority is to equip disciples to do ministry and to make disciples. Do you spend more time ministering to people or preparing people to minister? No matter what your church responsibilities are, you can prepare others for the same ministry. Insecurity in leadership is a deadly thing that will destroy any organization. It drives pastors and presidents to defensive positions, protecting their authority or exercising it simply to show who is the boss. Disciple-making is a process that systematically moves people toward Christ and spiritual maturity; it is not a bunch of randomly disconnected church activities. In the context of church leadership, one of the greatest and most important applications of faith is to trust the Holy Spirit to work in and through those you are leading. Without confidence that the Holy Spirit is in control, there is no empowering, no shared leadership, and, as a consequence, no multiplication.