Sustainable Leadership Quotes

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Democracy is not simply a license to indulge individual whims and proclivities. It is also holding oneself accountable to some reasonable degree for the conditions of peace and chaos that impact the lives of those who inhabit one’s beloved extended community.
Aberjhani (Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays)
Imagine if all the car makers in the world were to sit down together to design one extremely simple, embellishment-free, functional car that was made from the most environmentally-sustainable materials, how cheap to buy and humanity-and-Earth-considerate that vehicle would be. And imagine all the money that would be saved by not having different car makers duplicating their efforts, competing and trying to out-sell each other, and overall how much time that would liberate for all those people involved in the car industry to help those less fortunate and suffering in the world. Likewise, imagine when each house is no longer designed to make an individualised, ego-reinforcing, status-symbol statement for its owners and all houses are constructed in a functionally satisfactory, simple way, how much energy, labour, time and expense will be freed up to care for the wellbeing of the less fortunate and the planet.
Jeremy Griffith
To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz quartet, quintet or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase the creative tension with the group--a tension that yields higher levels of performance to achieve the aim of the collective project. This kind of critical and democratic sensibility flies in the face of any policing of borders and boundaries of "blackness", "maleness", "femaleness", or "whiteness".
Cornel West (Race Matters)
At the different stages of recognition, reflection, and redress, practicing compassion provides potentially world-saving opportunities which otherwise likely would not exist.
Aberjhani (Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.)
No matter what type of leader you are or how widespread your influence, you face personal temptations, challenges, and stresses. And only a foundation of character will sustain you and your leadership.
Myles Munroe (The Power of Character in Leadership: How Values, Morals, Ethics, and Principles Affect Leaders)
Organisational change leadership is about effectively and proactively articulating the vision, modelling the new way and intervening to ensure sustainable change
Peter F Gallagher
Leadership is the wise use of power. Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it.
Warren Bennis
Sustainable change, after all, depends not upon compliance with external mandates or blind adherence to regulation, but rather upon the pursuit of the greater good.
Douglas B. Reeves (Leading Change in Your School: How to Conquer Myths, Build Commitment, and Get Results)
Profit enables businesses to innovate and develop sustainable solutions, such as environmentally friendly technologies, socially responsible products, and ethical supply chains.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (The Virtuous Boardroom: How Ethical Corporate Governance Can Cultivate Company Success)
The great differentiator going forward, the next frontier for exponential growth, the place where individuals and organizations will find a new and sustainable competitive edge, resides in the area of human connectivity.
Susan Scott (Fierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst "Best" Practices of Business Today)
In essence, a blitz play in football is a microcosm of corporate governance principles. It showcases the importance of coordination in mind body and spirit, clear roles, strategic planning, risk management, and performance evaluation – all critical elements in ensuring a company's success and sustainability.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Board Room Blitz: Mastering the Art of Corporate Governance)
To be an ethical leader is indeed to be different. This kind of leader acknowledges the complexity of running a responsible business, yet tries to do it anyway.
Andrew Leigh (Ethical Leadership: Creating and Sustaining an Ethical Business Culture)
Your talent and giftedness as a leader have the potential to take you farther than your character can sustain you. That ought to scare you.
Andy Stanley (Next Generation Leader: 5 Essentials for Those Who Will Shape the Future)
There’s no such thing as “sustaining” leadership; it must be reinvented again and again.
Gary Hamel (Competing for the Future)
Women have always had to be #creative about making limited resources work to sustain themselves and their families. They understand what it means to make the hard decisions and to just get on with it. That is why it is imperative for women not just to be the ones dusting off the table but, crafting its legs for our world to stand on.
Sandra Sealy (Chronicles Of A Seawoman: A Collection Of Poems)
Most people set intentions wrong. The right way to set intentions is to be clear on what you want to go FROM and what you want to go TO.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
Strive to be bored is a contradictory statement for most entrepreneurs. But we have to strive to be bored to make space for more if we want to grow our business.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
The self-employed need business strategies that are relationship-based, not transactional, authentic to who you are, and right-sized for small business.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
It is not your job to prove your value to anyone. It is your job to find the people that already value what you do.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
At any particular time, leaders are operating from either fear or love. This
Jim Dethmer (The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success)
The act of deeply thinking through problems, energizing people, and aligning them toward a common goal is the only way to practice and develop real leadership ability.
Jeffrey K. Liker (The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence through Leadership Development)
We hire coaches for our mindsets, attend conferences to improve our skill set, work with specialists for every need in our business and wonder why we feel like we’re all over the place.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
We are doing business in the empowerment age. It is our job to empower our customers to choose us. The moment you tell them to choose you, they will back up. The moment you tell someone to trust you, they won’t.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
We have to change the culture from one in which people simply do their own job in their own function to make their own numbers look good (a vertical focus) to one in which people are focused horizontally on the customer and on improving value streams that deliver value across functions.
Jeffrey K. Liker (The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence through Leadership Development)
There are two powerful fuels, two forces; motivation and inspiration. To be motivated you need to know what your motives are. Over time - and to sustain you through it - your motivation must become an inner energy; a 'motor' driving you forward, passionately, purposefully, wisely and compassionately... come what may, every day. Inspiration is an outer - worldly - energy that you breathe and draw in. It may come from many places, faces, spaces and stages - right across the ages. It is where nature, spirit, science, mind and time meet, dance, play and speak. It keeps you outward facing and life embracing. But you must be open-minded and open-hearted to first let it in and then let it out again. Together - blended, combined and re-entwined - motivation and inspiration bring connectivity, productivity, creativity and boundless possibilities that is not just 'self' serving but enriching to all humanity and societies...just as it should be.
Rasheed Ogunlaru
You appear dangerous to people when you question their values, beliefs, or habits of a lifetime. You place yourself on the line when you tell people what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. Although you may see with clarity and passion a promising future of progress and gain, people will see with equal passion the losses you are asking them to sustain.
Martin Linsky (Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading)
Every good-to-great company had Level 5 leadership during the pivotal transition years. • “Level 5” refers to a five-level hierarchy of executive capabilities, with Level 5 at the top. Level 5 leaders embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are ambitious, to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves. • Level 5 leaders set up their successors for even greater success in the next generation, whereas egocentric Level 4 leaders often set up their successors for failure. • Level 5 leaders display a compelling modesty, are self-effacing and understated. In contrast, two thirds of the comparison companies had leaders with gargantuan personal egos that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company. • Level 5 leaders are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results. They are resolved to do whatever it takes to make the company great, no matter how big or hard the decisions. • Level 5 leaders display a workmanlike diligence—more plow horse than show horse. • Level 5 leaders look out the window to attribute success to factors other than themselves. When things go poorly, however, they look in the mirror and blame themselves, taking full responsibility. The comparison CEOs often did just the opposite—they looked in the mirror to take credit for success, but out the window to assign blame for disappointing results.
Jim Collins (Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't)
Businesses are better positioned in cities that prioritize sustainability. For example, business leaders look at the architectural environment - whether or not the buildings in the city designed for efficiency and resiliency. Business leaders look at energy - whether or not solar and other renewable energy sources are designed into the city's systems. And business leaders look at a variety of other factors regarding sustainability when they're deciding where to establish or relocate a business. So cities that prioritize sustainable development are positioning themselves to be hubs of business success.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Principles of a Permaculture Economy)
When you’re self-employed, your success is proportionate to your personal development.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
When we’re self-employed, much of what has been typical of business, marketing, and sales has creeped us out. We want to do business in ways that feel good to us.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
The beginning of change doesn’t come from motivation and dangling carrots. It begins with being clear about what you want to get away from.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
We stretch ourselves when the impact we want to make and the life we want to create is bigger than the fear and challenges.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
Having a successful life and business requires that we first learn who we are, then do what we have to do in order to have what we want.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
We used to build businesses with all effort and hard work. Today, we create businesses by paying attention to what the market wants and co-creating with those we serve.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
Build systems for the business to come, not the business you have.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
The biggest risk is not in what you build. It is in not supporting what you build.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
To create success in your business, you have to protect your capacity to serve others by learning to work efficiently and effectively.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
Your success is limited by your personal development- what you think you’re capable of, what you think you deserve, and the mindsets that hold you back.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
Daily habits that create steady mindsets are vital to be sure the uncontrollable circumstances of business and life don’t derail you.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
Prosperity is not hard-wired into human beings; it must be orchestrated and sustained by political leadership.
Zachary D. Carter (The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes)
Grounded leaders are present for others, operate with fortitude, and influence with the full impact of their vision and strength.
Catherine Robinson-Walker (Leading Valiantly in Healthcare: Four Steps to Sustainable Success)
Develop your leaders into a competitive advantage. Reconnect your leader-power to success.
Gene Morton (Leaders First: Six Bold Steps to Sustain Breakthroughs in Construction)
The use of a good process that engages people is much more desirable, even if it does not initially achieve all the results.
Jeffrey K. Liker (The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence through Leadership Development)
Leadership is an important part of ESG. Both the S and the G in ESG have a strong correlation to leadership.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
The ability to make risk scenario simulations is a profoundly helpful to company leadership to engage in risk management.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
The ability to make risk scenario simulations is a profoundly helpful way for company leadership to engage in risk management.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. —Ralph Nader, consumer advocate
Jeffrey K. Liker (The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence through Leadership Development)
If evangelism is really going to be a value that your church embraces, the church will have to embrace the changes that will take place when evangelism is activated in the church.
Gary Rohrmayer (Spiritual Conversations: Creating and Sustaining Them Without Being a Jerk)
Scholars who have studied the development of leaders have situated resilience, the ability to sustain ambition in the face of frustration, at the heart of potential leadership growth. More important than what happened to them was how they responded to these reversals, how they managed in various ways to put themselves back together, how these watershed experiences at first impeded, then deepened, and finally and decisively molded their leadership.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
Profit provides the financial foundation for businesses to invest in CSR initiatives, such as sustainable practices, employee well-being programs, and community development projects.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (The Virtuous Boardroom: How Ethical Corporate Governance Can Cultivate Company Success)
[The wives of powerful noblemen] must be highly knowledgeable about government, and wise – in fact, far wiser than most other such women in power. The knowledge of a baroness must be so comprehensive that she can understand everything. Of her a philosopher might have said: "No one is wise who does not know some part of everything." Moreover, she must have the courage of a man. This means that she should not be brought up overmuch among women nor should she be indulged in extensive and feminine pampering. Why do I say that? If barons wish to be honoured as they deserve, they spend very little time in their manors and on their own lands. Going to war, attending their prince's court, and traveling are the three primary duties of such a lord. So the lady, his companion, must represent him at home during his absences. Although her husband is served by bailiffs, provosts, rent collectors, and land governors, she must govern them all. To do this according to her right she must conduct herself with such wisdom that she will be both feared and loved. As we have said before, the best possible fear comes from love. When wronged, her men must be able to turn to her for refuge. She must be so skilled and flexible that in each case she can respond suitably. Therefore, she must be knowledgeable in the mores of her locality and instructed in its usages, rights, and customs. She must be a good speaker, proud when pride is needed; circumspect with the scornful, surly, or rebellious; and charitably gentle and humble toward her good, obedient subjects. With the counsellors of her lord and with the advice of elder wise men, she ought to work directly with her people. No one should ever be able to say of her that she acts merely to have her own way. Again, she should have a man's heart. She must know the laws of arms and all things pertaining to warfare, ever prepared to command her men if there is need of it. She has to know both assault and defence tactics to insure that her fortresses are well defended, if she has any expectation of attack or believes she must initiate military action. Testing her men, she will discover their qualities of courage and determination before overly trusting them. She must know the number and strength of her men to gauge accurately her resources, so that she never will have to trust vain or feeble promises. Calculating what force she is capable of providing before her lord arrives with reinforcements, she also must know the financial resources she could call upon to sustain military action. She should avoid oppressing her men, since this is the surest way to incur their hatred. She can best cultivate their loyalty by speaking boldly and consistently to them, according to her council, not giving one reason today and another tomorrow. Speaking words of good courage to her men-at-arms as well as to her other retainers, she will urge them to loyalty and their best efforts.
Christine de Pizan (The Treasure of the City of Ladies)
You need a healthy, thriving self-employed ecosystem. An ecosystem that integrates the three main elements of self-employed success--personal development, business strategies, and daily habit.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
The myth of self-employment is we go into business for ourselves thinking we’re going to gain control over our destiny without realizing we are entering completely uncontrollable circumstances.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
People do not resist change, per se. People resist loss. You appear dangerous to people when you question their values, beliefs, or habits of a lifetime. You place yourself on the line when you tell people what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. Although you may see with clarity and passion a promising future of progress and gain, people will see with equal passion the losses you are asking them to sustain.
Martin Linsky (Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading)
Your inspiration taps hidden reserves of promise that sustain people through times that induce despair. You enable people to envision a future that sustains the best from their past while also holding out new possibilities.
Ronald A. Heifetz (The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World)
Few people make sound or sustainable decisions in an atmosphere of chaos. The more serious the situation, usually accompanied by a deadline, the more likely everyone will get excited and bounce around like water on a hot skillet. At those times I try to establish a calm zone but retain a sense of urgency. Calmness protects order, ensures that we consider all the possibilities, restores order when it breaks down, and keeps people from shouting over each other. You are in a storm. The captain must steady the ship, watch all the gauges, listen to all the department heads, and steer through it. If the leader loses his head, confidence in him will be lost and the glue that holds the team together will start to give way. So assess the situation, move fast, be decisive, but remain calm and never let them see you sweat.
Colin Powell (It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership)
Civil and voting rights for blacks didn’t come from the White House or from masses demonstrating in front of the White House. They came after the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–56, the Freedom Rides in 1961, the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham in 1963, the Mississippi Freedom Summer and Freedom Schools in 1964, and the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965. In other words, they came only after hundreds of thousands of black Americans and their white supporters had accepted the challenge and risks of ourselves making or becoming the changes we want to see in the world. Women’s leadership in the public sphere didn’t come from the White House or from CEOs. It came only after millions of women came together in small consciousness-raising groups to share stories of our “second sex” lives. Today’s good news is that Americans in all walks of life have begun to create another America from the ground up in many unforeseen ways. In our bones we sense that this is no ordinary time. It is a time of deep change, not just of social structure and economy but also of ourselves.
Grace Lee Boggs (The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century)
The old-adage that business is business, don’t take it personal, doesn’t apply to the self-employed. It’s all personal!
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
Putting a stake in the ground that you’re self-employed is important. It’s the only term that accurately portrays your lifestyle and your business model.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
We don’t let go of something until the benefits of what’s ahead are greater than what we’ve been holding on to.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
Business is the most important institution on the planet for furthering human flourishing.
Paul Gibbons (The Science of Successful Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture)
Engage the whole community with a common purpose to build an innovative and sustainable enterprise.
Miguel Reynolds Brandao (The Sustainable Organisation - a paradigm for a fairer society: Think about sustainability in an age of technological progress and rising inequality)
the most crucial ingredient in a team that achieves and sustains historic greatness is the character of the player who leads it.
Sam Walker (The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership)
Valor in the leader is often an expression of the leader's character, fortitude, grace, vulnerability, openness, and honesty.
Catherine Robinson-Walker (Leading Valiantly in Healthcare: Four Steps to Sustainable Success)
The New Economy brings the need to tap people’s curiosity, quest for knowledge and understanding, in order to develop a sustainable society.
Miguel Reynolds Brandao (The Sustainable Organisation - a paradigm for a fairer society: Think about sustainability in an age of technological progress and rising inequality)
What is new in your fight is the fact that it was initiated, fed, and sustained by students.
David J. Garrow (Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference)
MERIT IS A PRODUCT OF KNOWLEDGE AND TRANSPARENCY
Miguel Reynolds Brandao (The Sustainable Organisation - a paradigm for a fairer society: Think about sustainability in an age of technological progress and rising inequality)
It is not enough to believe. Believe must lead to change of attitude and conduct.
Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
We often describe unconscious leaders as reactive. They react from a “story” about the past or an imagined future, and their personality, ego, or mind takes over.
Jim Dethmer (The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success)
The leader who is able to embrace his or her imperfections is the one who will most likely inspire sustainable and healthy success.
Minter Dial (You Lead: How Being Yourself Makes You a Better Leader)
These toxic residues lead to high turnover and low innovation, creativity, and collaboration. No team can win with these elements corroding their effectiveness long term.
Jim Dethmer (The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success)
People with purpose thrive, brands with purpose grow, and companies with purpose last.
Paul Polman (Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take)
Leadership is great, however, it is founded and sustained by followership.
Ubong Ntewo (A Misplaced Priority: A Biblical Vision of Followership and Its Preeminence)
Genuine curiosity can lead to more authentic, engaging conversations, which lay the foundation for sustained relationships.
Michelle Tillis Lederman (The 11 Laws of Likability: Relationship Networking . . . Because People Do Business with People They Like)
Courage is a habit that is learned by acting courageously whenever the quality of courage is required.
Brian Tracy (12 Disciplines of Leadership Excellence: How Leaders Achieve Sustainable High Performance)
It’s not sufficient to know that something is wrong. You also have to appreciate why it is wrong, how things might be changed, and then persuade others of the new possibilities.
David Sharpley (7 Principles for Exceptional Performance: Develop Purpose, Motivation & Leadership Skills)
By continuously adapting to change and seeking improvement, businesses can sustain their ability to provide value and maintain a competitive advantage.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (GAME CHANGR6: An Executives Guide to Dominating Change, by applying the R6 Resilience Change Management Framework)
In the context of religious leadership, tinkering with structure is not a first choice of means for building or sustaining quality in an institution. Leadership is the prime concern!
Robert K. Greenleaf (The Power of Servant-Leadership)
Prudence alike, and the habits which he had acquired in travelling, as well as the character of a merchant which he still sustained, induced him to wave the morgue, or haughty superiority of a knight and noble towards an inferior personage, especially as he rightly conjectured that free intercourse with this man, whose acquirements seemed of a superior cast, was likely to render him a judge of his opinions and disposition towards him. In return for his condescension, he obtained a good deal of information concerning the province which he was approaching.
Walter Scott (Anne of Geierstein)
Creating positive returns for stakeholders does not mean satisfying all of them at the same time, or focusing equal attention and resources on each. You can't prioritize everyone at once.
Paul Polman (Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take)
Leaders are passionate learners. Leaders are always seeking ways to improve themselves by sharpening their skills. They fully embrace the fact that growing leaders lead growing organizations.
Gary Rohrmayer (Spiritual Conversations: Creating and Sustaining Them Without Being a Jerk)
When people lead from the perspective of fear, they can be intimidating. They’re not open. They don’t listen. They’re not willing to admit when they’ve made a mistake. It’s always someone else’s fault.   That kind of leadership model is not sustainable. It might produce decent performance over a short period of time. But I don’t think you’re a leader when you lead through fear—you’re a manager.
John Hope Bryant (Love Leadership: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World)
In short, contrary to the founders—and in ways they do not realize themselves—Americans today are heedlessly pursuing a vision of freedom that is short-lived and suicidal. Once again, freedom without virtue, leadership without character, business without trust, law without customs, education without meaning and medicine, science and technology without human considerations can end only in disaster.
Os Guinness (A Free People's Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future)
The safest way to be in business today and the way to gain as much control over your business as possible, is to have a business model of multiples where you can reach a multiple of audiences in multiple ways.
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
People do not resist change, per se. People resist loss. You appear dangerous to people when you question their values, beliefs, or habits of a lifetime. You place yourself on the line when you tell people what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. Although you may see with clarity and passion a promising future of progress and gain, people will see with equal passion the losses you are asking them to sustain.
Tod Bolsinger (Leadership for a Time of Pandemic: Practicing Resilience)
Leadership begins and ends with hunger. The hunger of an individual to risk his or her own personal comfort and affluence and attack the status quo is not only the initiation of leadership but also its sustaining force.
Chris Brady (Leadership Lessons from the Age of Fighting Sail)
Leaders instill courage in the hearts of those who follow. This rarely happens through words alone. It generally requires action. It goes back to what we said earlier: Somebody has to go first. By going first, the leader furnishes confidence to those who follow. As a next generation leader, you will be called upon to go first. That will require courage. But in stepping out you will give the gift of courage to those who are watching. What do I believe is impossible to do in my field, but if it could be done would fundamentally change my business? What has been done is safe. But to attempt a solution to a problem that plagues an entire industry - in my case, the local church - requires courage. Unsolved problems are gateways to the future. To those who have the courage to ask the question and the tenacity to hang on until they discover or create an answer belongs the future. Don’t allow the many good opportunities to divert your attention from the one opportunity that has the greatest potential. Learn to say no. There will always be more opportunities than there is time to pursue them. Leaders worth following are willing to face and embrace current reality regardless of how discouraging or embarrassing it might be. It is impossible to generate sustained growth or progress if your plan for the future is not rooted in reality. Be willing to face the truth regardless of how painful it might be. If fear causes you to retreat from your dreams, you will never give the world anything new. it is impossible to lead without a dream. When leaders are no longer willing to dream, it is only a short time before followers are unwilling to follow. Will I allow my fear to bind me to mediocrity? Uncertainty is a permanent part of the leadership landscape. It never goes away. Where there is no uncertainty, there is no longer the need for leadership. The greater the uncertainty, the greater the need for leadership. Your capacity as a leader will be determined by how well you learn to deal with uncertainty. My enemy is not uncertainty. It is not even my responsibility to remove the uncertainty. It is my responsibility to bring clarity into the midst of the uncertainty. As leaders we can afford to be uncertain, but we cannot afford to be unclear. People will follow you in spite of a few bad decisions. People will not follow you if you are unclear in your instruction. As a leader you must develop the elusive skill of leading confidently and purposefully onto uncertain terrain. Next generation leaders must fear a lack of clarity more than a lack of accuracy. The individual in your organization who communicates the clearest vision will often be perceived as the leader. Clarity is perceived as leadership. Uncertainty exposes a lack of knowledge. Pretending exposes a lack of character. Express your uncertainty with confidence. You will never maximize your potential in any area without coaching. It is impossible. Self-evaluation is helpful, but evaluation from someone else is essential. You need a leadership coach. Great leaders are great learners. God, in His wisdom, has placed men and women around us with the experience and discernment we often lack. Experience alone doesn’t make you better at anything. Evaluated experience is what enables you to improve your performance. As a leader, what you don’t know can hurt you. What you don’t know about yourself can put a lid on your leadership. You owe it to yourself and to those who have chosen to follow you to open the doors to evaluation. Engage a coach. Success doesn’t make anything of consequence easier. Success just raises the stakes. Success brings with it the unanticipated pressure of maintaining success. The more successful you are as a leader, the more difficult this becomes. There is far more pressure at the top of an organization than you might imagine.
Andy Stanley
Each one of us has a unique spot in this harmonious and self-sustaining universe. If our desire is to succeed and enjoy life to the full both personally, professionally, and business wise, we should spot our unique place in the universe.
Assegid Habtewold (The 9 Cardinal Building Blocks: For continued success in leadership)
I do not think the African, Caribbean, and Blacks have studied to any degree and depth and seriousness the rise of modern Japan. Went into a war and loss. They sustained two atomic bombs. Had their country occupied. Now the people who defeated them are now begging them for commercial space. What did they do, that we have forgotten how to do? They did some serious astute planning. Not loud mouthing, not boasting. They did not get on the radio or any platform or call them any names, but they did what they had to do. If we are carrying out a well designed plan for liberation any literate person can contribute and share leadership. So if the leader dies while you are on page 13 move to page 14 and continue the struggle. Bury the man, continue the plan. I think any person who calls them self a leader, preacher, policy maker of any kind, should ask and answer the question in his own lifetime... How will my people stay on this earth? How will they be educated? How will they be schooled, and how will they be housed and how will they be defended. The answers to these questions will create the concept of enduring nationhood, because it creates the concept of enduring responsibility.
John Henrik Clarke
I'm often called in as a coach and speaker to motivate staff, teams, the public and leaders. The key to this is simple; you cannot truly, deeply and sustainably motivate anybody until you know what their motives are...what motivates them...?
Rasheed Ogunlaru
hope that going forward, even when I am no longer here, people with power can show creativity, courage and leadership. Let them rise to the challenge of the sustainable development goals, and act, not out of self-interest, but out of common interest. I
Stephen W. Hawking (Brief Answers to the Big Questions)
The strength of a woman lies in her intuition and femininity which when harnessed through proper education, give her the autonomy and power to participate in democracy and leadership. Women economic empowerment is a promise of a better and sustainable future.
Njau Kihia
TAKING 100% RESPONSIBILITY PROCESS STEP 1: Identify an issue/complaint about anything going on in your life. State the complaint in “unenlightened” terms. Be dramatic. Ham it up. Blame overtly. STEP 2: Step into 100% responsibility. Physically find a place in the room that represents your internal shift to being 100% responsible for the situation. STEP 3: Gain insight by completing these statements, repeating each of them several times, until you have what feels like a breakthrough: From the past this reminds me of… I keep this issue going by… What I get from keeping this issue going is… The lifelong pattern I’m noticing is… I can demonstrate 100% responsibility concerning this issue by… STEP 4: If during Step 3, you do not experience a shift, go back to Step 1 and repeat the process.
Jim Dethmer (The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success)
A controlling God, who is usually represented by a controlling church leadership, is just not good news. How can church leadership create freedom and not more rules? How can we bring out the best in human beings and keep it at the surface even as we deal with their problems and shortcomings? Can we empower others and release them to live from their best natures and from the truest reasons they are alive? Will we as Christian leaders, parents, and employers take on the responsibility to learn how to draw out the dreams and destiny in the people we lead?
Danny Silk (Culture of Honor: Sustaining a Supernatural Enviornment: Sustaining a Supernatural Environment)
Only a visionary leadership that can motivate "the better angels of our nature," as Lincoln said, and activate possibilities for a freer, more efficient, and stable America -- only that leadership deserves cultivation and support. / This new leadership must be grounded in grassroots organizing that highlights democratic accountability. Whoever our leaders will be as we approach the twenty-first century, their challenge will be to help Americans determine whether a genuine multiracial democracy can be created and sustained in an era of global economy and a moment of xenophobic frenzy.
Cornel West (Race Matters)
Weakness is still what I see: weakness in the sense of a great gap between what is expected of a man (or someday woman) and assured capacity to carry through. Expectations arise and clerkly tasks increase, while prospects for sustained support from any quarter worsen as foreign alliances loosen and political parties wane.
Richard E. Neustadt (Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan)
The capacity is there, the crisis is the catalyst. But is crisis the only catalyst? And how long are we able to sustain extraordinary levels of performance? Some of this potential can be accessed by coaching, and performance can be sustainable, perhaps not at superhuman levels but certainly at levels far higher than we generally accept.
John Whitmore (Coaching for Performance Fifth Edition: The Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership UPDATED 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION)
It is rather pointless to go head to head with strong and entrenched competition. But numerous opportunities can be found in the marketplace for a company to maximize its unique qualities, differentiate its products and services, and go after a specific market segment where its competitors are weak and where you can develop superiority, where you can win battles.
Brian Tracy (12 Disciplines of Leadership Excellence: How Leaders Achieve Sustainable High Performance)
the first businesses in the United States to implement Owen’s 8-hour day was the Ford Motor Company. In 1914, it not only cut the standard workday to eight hours, but it also doubled its workers’ pay in the process. To the shock of many at the time, this resulted in a significant increase in productivity, and Ford’s profit margins doubled within two years of implementation.
Steven P. MacGregor (Sustaining Executive Performance: How the New Self-Management Drives Innovation, Leadership, and a More Resilient World)
Experts say that the nervous system needs to be reprogrammed to allow for greater happiness, fulfillment, and relational connectedness. The good news is that the nervous system is highly receptive to new programming. In fact, it is somewhat capable of reprogramming itself if we provide support. To create the space and allow the nervous system to develop this new capacity, we encourage leaders to integrate just after they experience a new high. For example, you close the deal you never thought you’d be able to close; you get the promotion you’ve always wanted; you have a great weekend away with your partner and experience a new level of closeness. At these moments, we suggest leaders integrate by doing things that are grounding, ordinary, mindless, soothing, mundane, and/or repetitive. This could be going for a walk, mowing the lawn, sweeping the floor, washing the car, making a meal, flipping through a favorite hobby magazine, or taking a little longer shower. This allows for the gentle raising of old Upper Limits (the reprogramming of the nervous system), without forcefully blowing past them in a way that actually causes a big crash.
Jim Dethmer (The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success)
Gone are days when politics was an adventure of the hegemonic masculinity, when men were canonized and women demonized for being in politics. A Woman's strength lies in her intuition and femininity which when harnessed through proper education, give her the autonomy and power to participate in democracy and leadership. Women economic empowerment is a promise of a better and sustainable future.
Njau Kihia
Thus, by 1888 it had become evident that a national cooperative movement could not succeed in America, at least not in the absence of sustained, massive and violent attack on the wage-system, far more massive and well-organized than the Knights’ movement had been. As Henry Sharpe said, what they were doing was not realistic. Small workshops with little capital and obsolete machinery in an age of rapid industrialization; insufficient institution-building to give financial and material support to co-ops; enslavement to the market at a time when competitors would stop at nothing to suppress working-class moves toward independence. Especially with the weak leadership of Terence Powderly and the mass desertion of former Knights after 1886, as they lost strike after strike, the great dream of building a national cooperative economy was effectively over.
Chris Wright (Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States)
Many argue that individual action doesn't matter in an issue as global and enormous as the climate crisis. They are wrong. Individual actions matter, but perhaps not in the way you think. You alone will not solve the climate crisis. Neither will I. But if you intentionally live a more sustainable life and connect with your community about your practice of One Green Thing, you can build momentum for culture change to shift policy.
Heather White (One Green Thing: Discover Your Hidden Power to Help Save the Planet)
The transformation of a business-as-usual culture into one focused on innovation and driven by design involves activities, decisions, and attitudes. Workshops help expose people to design thinking as a new approach. Pilot projects help market the benefits of design thinking within the organization. Leadership focuses the program of change and gives people permission to learn and experiment. Assembling interdisciplinary teams ensures that the effort is broadly based. Dedicated spaces such as the P&G Innovation Gym provide a resource for longer-term thinking and ensure that the effort will be sustained. Measurement of impacts, both quantitative and qualitative, helps make the business case and ensures that resources are appropriately allocated. It may make sense to establish incentives for business units to collaborate in new ways so that younger talent sees innovation as a path to success rather than as a career risk.
Tim Brown (Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation – From the IDEO CEO: Creative Strategies for Business Leaders at Every Level)
Burned-out, stressed-out, and frazzled leaders foster organizations that experience high turnover, low employee engagement, steep healthcare costs, and dysfunctional teams that often work against one another. The current models of leadership require organizations to motivate their people largely with fear and extrinsic rewards. Though no one argues that these forms of motivation can produce short-term results, they are usually accompanied by distrust and cynicism in the workplace, which have long-term negative consequences.
Jim Dethmer (The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success)
He intuitively understood, as we must today, that leaders need to construct a reinforced base to support all that they are going to do. What are the most important pillars of your thinking about a vital issue? Why are you invested in this particular problem? What do you hope to achieve as you delve into it, and what is your best guess about how you will do this? The answers to these questions are vital not only to your actions going forward, but also to how you sustain your commitment when you run into obstacles and setbacks.
Nancy F. Koehn (Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times)
The work of God requires stamina. Nehemiah sustained his stamina even through staggering difficulties. He persisted through both ridicule and discouragement, and he remained faithful when tempted to compromise. This tenacity is required of leaders who will make a difference. Will you crumble under the pressures, or will you face the trials with God’s strength? Many today question the possibility of revival. These naysayers see only the decaying moral condition of society and the disappointing lukewarm condition of churches. Revival, however, is not dependent on or the result of a flourishing spiritual condition. Some of the greatest revivals in Scripture came during the darkest times. Let us not look at the rubbish, but at Christ, the Rock, who can rebuild our country through revival. Let us be leaders God can use to bring revival. Nehemiah was not a man to sit idly by when there was tremendous need. Neither was he a man to attempt meeting such need in his own strength. God used Nehemiah to bring revival because Nehemiah began with supplication for God’s forgiveness and power. The task of rebuilding the walls could never have been completed by one man alone; it needed a leader who understood the power of synergy. Nehemiah’s willingness to be personally involved in the work, as well as his ability to convey the need to others, resulted in a task force that completed this enormous building project in a mere fifty-two days—to the glory of God. Like any godly leader, Nehemiah did not go unchallenged. Yet, he sustained his stamina in the face of every opposition. Nehemiah’s life proves that revival is possible, even when it appears the most unlikely. God sends revival through leaders willing to make a difference.
Paul Chappell (Leaders Who Make a Difference: Leadership Lessons from Three Great Bible Leaders)
It is unlikely those who signed the [US.] Constitution were 100 percent oblivious to how remarkable it was that they managed to set aside regional ambitions and affirm the value of forming a sustainable union of alliances... Faith and trust in each other was a lot harder to come by than faith and trust in individual religions or ideology. Yet they managed to balance any inclinations towards either by incorporating into the Constitution ideas concerning individual rights, the separation of governmental powers, and popular sovereignty, at the time considered fresh by some and dangerous by others…
Aberjhani (Democratic Dilemmas and Divine Inspiration: On leadership and the fate of freedom in America)
I’m feeling that if we make this decision, it will have devastating consequences,” or “I feel like you’re missing the point,” or “I feel that your data isn’t accurate.” Notice that even though these sentences begin with “I feel,” they are actually thoughts, judgments, beliefs, or opinions. They are not feelings. The primary learning is this: When asked to check in with current feeling states the accurate answer is “I feel…” followed by one or more of the five core emotions. If the words “I feel” are followed by “that” or “like,” you are expressing a thought, not describing a feeling. Once leaders
Jim Dethmer (The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success)
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)
When we shift from talking about the problems of community to talking about the breakdown of community, something changes. Naming the challenge as the “breakdown of community” opens the way for restoration.Holding on to the view that community is a set of problems to be solved holds us in the grip of retribution. At every level of society, we live in the landscape of retribution. The retributive community is sustained by several aspects of the modern community conversation, which I will expand on throughout the book: the marketing of fear and fault, gravitation toward more laws and oversight, an obsession with romanticized leadership, marginalizing hope and possibility, and devaluing associational life to the point of invisibility.
Peter Block (Community: The Structure of Belonging)
Under this scenario, in sum, we would collectively stumble our way toward a fragmented, parochial, Big Brotherish kind of information system “characterized by supervision, regulation, constraint, and control.” Moreover, given his view of the world in 1979, Lick had to rate this possibility as far more likely than his optimistic projection. An integrated, open, universally accessible Multinet wouldn’t just happen on its own, he pointed out. It would require cooperation and effort on a time scale of decades, “a long, hard process of deliberate study, experiment, analysis, and development.” That process, in turn, could be sustained only by the forging of a collective vision, some rough consensus on the part of thousands or maybe even millions of people that an open electronic commons was worth having. And that, wrote Lick, would require leadership.
M. Mitchell Waldrop (The Dream Machine)
Ambitious but not revolutionary, they work within what they perceive as the grain of history, moving their societies forward while viewing their political institutions and fundamental values as an inheritance to be transmitted to future generations (albeit with modifications that sustain their essence). Wise leaders in the statesman mode will recognize when novel circumstances require existing institutions and values to be transcended. But they understand that, for their societies to thrive, they will have to ensure that change does not go beyond what it can sustain. Such statesmen include the seventeenth-century leaders who fashioned the Westphalian state system[*] as well as nineteenth-century European leaders such as Palmerston, Gladstone, Disraeli and Bismarck. In the twentieth century, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Jawaharlal Nehru were all leaders in the statesman mode.
Henry Kissinger (Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy)
There are ideologies of control lying behind the insistence on the need for instrumentally rational tools and techniques. In reflecting these ideologies, some believe that without the tools and techniques organizations would not be able to produce success; indeed, they would be ungovernable. Others believe that without the tools and techniques it would be impossible to improve the human condition or take action to sustain the planet. There is a very powerful belief that ‘we’ must be able to improve whole organizations intentionally. For some, these beliefs are impervious to reason, perhaps because it is too disappointing to accept the humbler realization that success and failure, sustainability and destruction, all emerge across populations through myriad local interactions and all anyone can do is participate as meaningfully and as influentially as possible, acting on practical judgment, in these local interactions.
Ralph D. Stacey (Tools and Techniques of Leadership and Management: Meeting the Challenge of Complexity)
There are times when even the best leaders lose their emotional balance. Leadership brings with it responsibility, and responsibility, in times of serious adversity, brings emotional turmoil and strain. In this sense responsibility is like a lever, which can upset a leader’s emotional balance when adversity presses down hard on one end. When the adversity is threatening enough or comes without warning, it can unbalance the leader at a single stroke. Even a leader as great as Lincoln was floored more than once in this way. Other times the effect is cumulative, coming after a period of sustained high tension—of pressure on one end and resistance on the other—until finally the leader’s equanimity begins to give way. The point is that every leader has her emotional limits, and there is no shame in exceeding them. What distinguishes effective leaders from inferior ones, rather, is their ability to restore their emotional balance.
Raymond M. Kethledge (Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude)
Dii Nvwati (Cherokee). Translation: Skunk medicine. The skunk asks us to defend ourselves effectively, without causing further conflict. Self-protection but do no harm. Gangsterish peace-making. That is the kind of masculinity that I try to embody. With my leadership, with my poise, with my privileges. As my body continues on a journey of thickening, muscle hardening, limbs lengthening, Ayurvedic drying, shorter synapse pathways, fuzzier intuition, and choppier verbal articulation all facilitated by weekly testosterone injections these are poignant lessons to forward. The objective is for men and masculine people to not yield our power to others… Women and femme people don’t need our paternalistic sickle to swath as we ‘tap out.’ We must figure out power without domination. The skunk asks us to use our powers effectively, without wiping ourselves out. Without recapitulating top down, give-less-to-get-more social structures. Just as the skunk does not seek to be the bear, let us not attempt to trade places with the oppressor. Let us navigate a road of paradigm shifting that seeks to salve both current social and economic injuries, but also prepare a sustainable method of being for seven generations to come.
Adrienne Maree Brown (Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (Emergent Strategy, #0))
we have much to learn from the struggles in Alabama and Mississippi in the early 1960s. In the spring of 1963 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. King launched a “fill the jails” campaign to desegregate downtown department stores and schools in Birmingham. But few local blacks were coming forward. Black adults were afraid of losing their jobs, local black preachers were reluctant to accept the leadership of an “Outsider,” and city police commissioner Bull Connor had everyone intimidated. Facing a major defeat, King was persuaded by his aide, James Bevel, to allow any child old enough to belong to a church to march. So on D-day, May 2, before the eyes of the whole nation, thousands of schoolchildren, many of them first graders, joined the movement and were beaten, fire-hosed, attacked by police dogs, and herded off to jail in paddy wagons and school buses. The result was what has been called the “Children’s Miracle.” Inspired and shamed into action, thousands of adults rushed to join the movement. All over the country rallies were called to express outrage against Bull Connor’s brutality. Locally, the power structure was forced to desegregate lunch counters and dressing rooms in downtown stores, hire blacks to work downtown, and begin desegregating the schools. Nationally, the Kennedy administration, which had been trying not to alienate white Dixiecrat voters, was forced to begin drafting civil rights legislation as the only way to forestall more Birminghams. The next year as part of Mississippi Freedom Summer, activists created Freedom Schools because the existing school system (like ours today) had been organized to produce subjects, not citizens. People in the community, both children and adults, needed to be empowered to exercise their civil and voting rights. A mental revolution was needed. To bring it about, reading, writing, and speaking skills were taught through discussions of black history, the power structure, and building a movement. Everyone took this revolutionary civics course, then chose from more academic subjects such as algebra and chemistry. All over Mississippi, in church basements and parish halls, on shady lawns and in abandoned buildings, volunteer teachers empowered thousands of children and adults through this community curriculum. The Freedom Schools of 1964 demonstrated that when Education involves young people in making community changes that matter to them, when it gives meaning to their lives in the present instead of preparing them only to make a living in the future, young people begin to believe in themselves and to dream of the future.
Grace Lee Boggs (The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century)
SEVEN CHANGE MASTERY SHIFTS • Change Mastery Shift 1: From Problem Focus to Opportunity Focus. Effective leaders tend to perceive and to innovate on the opportunities inherent in change. • Change Mastery Shift 2: From Short-Term Focus to Long-Term Focus. Effective leaders don’t lose sight of their long-term vision in the midst of change. • Change Mastery Shift 3: From Circumstance Focus to Purpose Focus. Effective leaders maintain a clear sense of purpose, value, and meaning to rise above immediate circumstances. • Change Mastery Shift 4: From Control Focus to Agility Focus. Effective leaders understand that control is a management principle that yields a certain degree of results. However, agility, flexibility, and innovation are leadership principles that sustain results over the long haul. • Change Mastery Shift 5: From Self-Focus to Service. Effective leaders buffer their teams and organizations from the stress of change by managing, neutralizing, and/or transcending their own stress. • Change Mastery Shift 6: From Expertise Focus to Listening Focus. Effective leaders stay open and practice authentic listening to stay connected with others and to consider multiple, innovative solutions. • Change Mastery Shift 7: From Doubt Focus to Trust Focus. Effective leaders are more secure in themselves; they possess a sense that they can handle whatever may come their way; their self-awareness and self-trust are bigger than the circumstances of change.
Kevin Cashman (Leadership from the Inside Out: Becoming a Leader for Life)
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)
I see many so-called conservative commentators, including some faith leaders, focusing on favorable policy initiatives or court appointments to justify their acceptance of this damage, while de-emphasizing the impact of this president on basic norms and ethics. That strikes me as both hypocritical and wrong. The hypocrisy is evident if you simply switch the names and imagine that a President Hillary Clinton had conducted herself in a similar fashion in office. I've said this earlier but it's worth repeating: close your eyes and imagine these same voices if President Hillary Clinton had told the FBI director, 'I hope you will let it go,' about the investigation of a senior aide, or told casual, easily disprovable lies nearly every day and then demanded we believe them. The hypocrisy is so thick as to be almost darkly funny. I say this as someone who has worked in law enforcement for most of my life, and served presidents of both parties. What is happening now is not normal. It is not fake news. It is not okay. Whatever your politics, it is wrong to dismiss the damage to the norms and traditions that have guided the presidency and our public life for decades or, in many cases, since the republic was founded. It is also wrong to stand idly by, or worse, to stay silent when you know better, while a president so brazenly seeks to undermine public confidence in law enforcement institutions that were established to keep our leaders in check...without these checks on our leaders, without those institutions vigorously standing against abuses of power, our country cannot sustain itself as a functioning democracy. I know there are men and women of good conscience in the United States Congress on both sides of the aisle who understand this. But not enough of them are speaking out. They must ask themselves to what, or to whom, they hold a higher loyalty: to partisan interests or to the pillars of democracy? Their silence is complicity - it is a choice - and somewhere deep down they must know that. Policies come and go. Supreme Court justices come and go. But the core of our nation is our commitment to a set of shared values that began with George Washington - to restraint and integrity and balance and transparency and truth. If that slides away from us, only a fool would be consoled by a tax cut or different immigration policy.
James B. Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
Mandal vs Mandir The V.P. Singh government was the biggest casualty of this confrontation. Within the BJP and its mentor, the RSS, the debate on whether or not to oppose V.P. Singh and OBC reservations reached a high pitch. Inder Malhotra | 981 words It was a blunder on V.P. Singh’s part to announce his acceptance of the Mandal Commission’s report recommending 27 per cent reservations in government jobs for what are called Other Backward Classes but are, in fact, specified castes — economically well-off, politically powerful but socially and educationally backward — in such hot haste. He knew that the issue was highly controversial, deeply emotive and potentially explosive, which it proved to be instantly. But his top priority was to outsmart his former deputy and present adversary, Devi Lal. He even annoyed those whose support “from outside” was sustaining him in power. BJP leaders were peeved that they were informed of what was afoot practically at the last minute in a terse telephone call. What annoyed them even more was that the prime minister’s decision would divide Hindu society. The BJP’s ranks demanded that the plug be pulled on V.P. Singh but the top leadership advised restraint, because it was also important to keep the Congress out of power. The party leadership was aware of the electoral clout of the OBCs, who added up to 52 per cent of the population. As for Rajiv Gandhi, he was totally and vehemently opposed to the Mandal Commission and its report. He eloquently condemned V.P. Singh’s decision when it was eventually discussed in Parliament. This can be better understood in the perspective of the Mandal Commission’s history. Having acquired wealth during the Green Revolution and political power through elections, the OBCs realised that they had little share in the country’s administrative apparatus, especially in the higher rungs of the bureaucracy. So they started clamouring for reservations in government jobs. Throughout the Congress rule until 1977, this demand fell on deaf ears. It was the Janata government, headed by Morarji Desai, that appointed the Mandal Commission in 1978. Ironically, by the time the commission submitted its report, the Janata was history and Indira Gandhi was back in power. She quietly consigned the document to the deep freeze. In Rajiv’s time, one of his cabinet ministers, Shiv Shanker, once asked about the Mandal report.
Anonymous
me to be honest about his failings as well as his strengths. She is one of the smartest and most grounded people I have ever met. “There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy, and that’s the truth,” she told me early on. “You shouldn’t whitewash it. He’s good at spin, but he also has a remarkable story, and I’d like to see that it’s all told truthfully.” I leave it to the reader to assess whether I have succeeded in this mission. I’m sure there are players in this drama who will remember some of the events differently or think that I sometimes got trapped in Jobs’s distortion field. As happened when I wrote a book about Henry Kissinger, which in some ways was good preparation for this project, I found that people had such strong positive and negative emotions about Jobs that the Rashomon effect was often evident. But I’ve done the best I can to balance conflicting accounts fairly and be transparent about the sources I used. This is a book about the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. You might even add a seventh, retail stores, which Jobs did not quite revolutionize but did reimagine. In addition, he opened the way for a new market for digital content based on apps rather than just websites. Along the way he produced not only transforming products but also, on his second try, a lasting company, endowed with his DNA, that is filled with creative designers and daredevil engineers who could carry forward his vision. In August 2011, right before he stepped down as CEO, the enterprise he started in his parents’ garage became the world’s most valuable company. This is also, I hope, a book about innovation. At a time when the United States is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build creative digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness, imagination, and sustained innovation. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology, so he built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering. He and his colleagues at Apple were able to think differently: They developed not merely modest product advances based on focus groups, but whole new devices and services that consumers did not yet know they needed. He was not a model boss or human being, tidily packaged for emulation. Driven by demons, he could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and passions and products were all interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is thus both instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
he methodically distinguishes two types of success—whether in the arts, in battle, or in politics. The first success, he argues, belongs to the man “who has in him the natural power to do what no one else can do, and what no amount of training, no perseverance or will power, will enable an ordinary man to do.” He cites the poet who could write the “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the president who could “deliver the Gettysburg Address,” and Lord Nelson at Trafalgar as manifestations of genius, examples of men assigned extraordinary gifts at birth. The second and more common type of success, he maintains, is not dependent on such unique inborn attributes, but on a man’s ability to develop ordinary qualities to an extraordinary degree through ambition and the application of hard, sustained work. Unlike genius, which can inspire, but not educate, self-made success is democratic, “open to the average man of sound body and fair mind, who has no remarkable mental or physical attributes,” but who enlarges each of those attributes to the maximum degree. He suggests that it is “more useful to study this second type,” for with determination, anyone “can, if he chooses, find out how to win a similar success himself.” It is clear from the start of Roosevelt’s story of his leadership journey that he unequivocally aligns himself with this second type of success.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
Lincoln had read the Bible all his life, but he had never attended church regularly or talked publicly about sustaining any kind of spiritual faith.
Nancy F. Koehn (Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times)
● Developing your first-ever leadership strategy and don't know where to start? ● Are you stuck with a particular phase of leadership strategy? ● Having a tough time achieving corporational milestones with your robust strategy? If you're facing these questions and confused regarding canvassing a robust leadership strategy, this article can help you solve these queries. Several factors affect the development of a leadership strategy, such as the influence of decision-making processes for leadership/management, the personnel brought on board for strategy development and the resources involved. There are specific "keys" to effective leadership that help in efficient development and deployment of strategies. Professionals who want to develop robust strategies and move up in their leadership career can opt for online strategy courses. These courses aim to build concepts from the grass-root level, such as what defines a strategy leadership and others. What is a Leadership Strategy? Leadership is required for leading organisational growth by optimising the resources and making the company's procedures more efficient. A leadership strategy explicitly enlists the number of leaders required, the tasks they need to perform, the number of employees, team members and other stakeholders required, and the deadlines for achieving each task. Young leaders who have recently joined the work-force can take help of programs offered by reputable institutes for deepening their knowledge about leadership and convocating successful strategies. Various XLRI leadership and management courses aim to equip new leaders with a guided step-by-step pedagogy to canvass robust leadership strategies. What it Takes to Build a Robust Leadership Strategy: Guided Step-By-Step Pedagogy The following steps go into developing an effective and thriving leadership strategy:- ● Step 1 = Identify Key Business Drivers The first step involves meeting with the senior leaders and executives and identifying the business's critical drivers. Determining business carriers is essential for influencing the outcome of strategies. ● Step 2 = Identifying the Different Leadership Phases Required This step revolves around determining the various leadership processes and phases. Choosing the right techniques from hiring and selection, succession planning, training patterns and others is key for putting together a robust strategy. ● Step 3 = Perform Analysis and Research Researching about the company's different leadership strategies and analysing them with the past and present plans is vital for implementing future strategies. ● Step 4 = Reviewing and Updating Leadership Strategic Plan Fourth step includes reviewing and updating the strategic plan in accordance with recent developments and requirements. Furthermore, performing an environmental scan to analyse the practices that can make strategies long-lasting and render a competitive advantage. All it Takes for Building a Robust Leadership Strategy The above-mentioned step by step approach helps in auguring a leadership strategy model that is sustainable and helps businesses maximise their profits. Therefore, upcoming leaders need to understand the core concepts of strategic leadership through online strategy courses. Moreover, receiving sound knowledge about developing strategies from XLRI leadership and management courses can help aspiring leaders in their careers.
Talentedge
if there are negative benefits, there must be full transparency. What is hidden is always revealed in the end, affecting future credibility. There can be no secrets any longer. As one being presented with information, the bottom line becomes who's benefitting, and sustainability. A lack of transparency should immediately move you to request full disclosure. Transparency is lightness.
Christine Horner (Awakening Leadership: Embracing Mindfulness, Your Life’s Purpose, and the Leader You Were Born to Be)
We are taught that the sole purpose of business is to maximize shareholder value. I dispute this premise. Yes, businesses need to be profitable to survive. Without profitability, the business dies. Profitable businesses help communities and the economy. But conscious businesses with conscious cultures include focusing on sustainability, not profitability alone. Conscious and sustainable organizations are those companies that include making a difference for the community at large and being purpose-driven as primary values. This can only be driven by REAL leaders. Robertson, Susan. Real Leadership: Waken To Wisdom. The Books Factory. Kindle Edition.
Susan Robertson (Real Leadership: Waken To Wisdom)
You can have more if you become more. Bringing more value to the marketplace is the goal for you today and every day. Every other concern you have will take care of itself. You cannot give to others what you do not have yourself. If you get financial wealth without developing a growing personal wealth and growth, your success and wealth will be for a minute. Here today and gone tomorrow. You must have the superstructure in place to sustain your success. That superstructure is you and your continuing development and growth.
Chris J. Gregas
From these dimensions emerge the alternative identity and lifestyle or practices of these followers of Jesus: 1. Instead of looking to Abraham, Enoch, Moses, Baruch, Ezra, and Solomon, or to the synagogue's leadership, or to imperial ideology for revelations about acceptable teaching and praxis, this community looks to Jesus to manifest God's will. 2. Instead of commitment to the emperor as head of the empire, this community is to follow Jesus crucified by the empire (chs. 26-27). 3. Instead of embracing Pax Romana, this community encounters, proclaims and prays for God's empire (4:17; 6:10; 12:28; 24-25). 4. Instead of understanding the emperor as manifesting the will of the gods, this community finds God's saving presence and will manifested in Jesus, Emmanuel (1:23; passim; 18:20; 28:20). 5. Instead of gladly embracing imperial power, this community is to critique kingship and leadership (ch. 2; 14:1-12; 20:20-28; 27). 6. Instead of supporting imperial power as the sustainer of order, this community sides with the prophetic tradition (John the Baptist, ch. 3) in calling it to account.
Warren Carter (Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading: A Socio-Political and Religious Reading / Warren Carter. (Bible and Liberation))
In traditional performance management models, working teams present to leadership in performative, high-stakes monthly or quarterly reviews. By keeping these reviews on such an infrequent cadence, both sides can lose sight of what the real purpose of the review is: to support and sustain the work, and to ensure that everyone is moving together toward the desired results. Such an approach is ill-suited to the ecosystem economy. When you have agile tribes, chapters, and squads working on dynamic, cross-sectoral value propositions, you need to push your performance management process toward a much more frequent operating cadence.
Venkat Atluri (The Ecosystem Economy: How to Lead in the New Age of Sectors Without Borders)
responses to our deductive assessments of intercultural competence and transcultural leadership, corporate effectiveness and sustainability, cultural aspects of personality and team development, and innovation.
Fons Trompenaars (Riding the Waves of Culture, Fourth Edition: Understanding Diversity in Global Business)
Entrepreneurs who devote themselves with dedication and passion to work 'on' their company and the people working in it create the conditions for sustainable growth and success.
Sandy Pfund | The Enterneer®
Toyota’s concept of a good process is one that expects and reveals problems, without blame, not one that is problem-free.
Jeffrey K. Liker (The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence through Leadership Development)
Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say “We have done this ourselves.” —Lao-Tsu, founder of Daoism
Jeffrey K. Liker (The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership: Achieving and Sustaining Excellence through Leadership Development)
During the modern period and particularly in the last two centuries in most Western countries there has developed a broad consensus in favor of the political philosophy known as “liberalism.” The main tenets of liberalism are political democracy, limitations on the powers of government, the development of universal human rights, legal equality for all adult citizens, freedom of expression, respect for the value of viewpoint diversity and honest debate, respect for evidence and reason, the separation of church and state, and freedom of religion. These liberal values developed as ideals and it has taken centuries of struggle against theocracy, slavery, patriarchy, colonialism, fascism, and many other forms of discrimination to honor them as much as we do, still imperfectly, today. . . . However, we have reached a point in history where the liberalism and modernity at the heart of Western civilization are at great risk on the level of the ideas that sustain them. The precise nature of this threat is complicated, as it arises from at least two overwhelming pressures, one revolutionary and the other reactionary, that are waging war with each other over which illiberal direction our societies should be dragged. Far-right populist movements claiming to be making a last desperate stand for liberalism and democracy against a rising tide of progressivism and globalism are on the rise around the world. They are increasingly turning toward leadership in dictators and strongmen who can maintain and preserve “Western” sovereignty and values. Meanwhile, far-left progressive social crusaders portray themselves as the sole and righteous champions of social and moral progress without which democracy is meaningless and hollow. These, on our furthest left, not only advance their cause through revolutionary aims that openly reject liberalism as a form of oppression, but they also do so with increasingly authoritarian means seeking to establish a thoroughly dogmatic fundamentalist ideology regarding how society ought to be ordered.
Helen Pluckrose (Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody)
Standard work and good job instruction are foundations for sustaining know- why in the organization. Are they in place in your organization? How can you build a know- why culture?
Hal Macomber (Mastering Lean Leadership with 40 Katas (The Pocket Sensei - Vol.1))
There’s actually some very persuasive leadership research that supports the idea that asking for support is critical, and that vulnerability and courage are contagious. In a 2011 Harvard Business Review article, Peter Fuda and Richard Badham use a series of metaphors to explore how leaders spark and sustain change. One of the metaphors is the snowball. The snowball starts rolling when a leader is willing to be vulnerable with his or her subordinates. Their research shows that this act of vulnerability is predictably perceived as courageous by team members and inspires others to follow suit.
Brené Brown (Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead)
The 99 always watch the one
Paul Pierroz (The Purpose-Driven Marketing Handbook: How to Discover Your Impact and Communicate Your Business Sustainability Story to Grow Sales, Retain Talent, and Attract Investors)
Recognize that strategies shift and can change the underlying dynamics of your organization. Effective leaders are constantly reinventing and disrupting their organizations to take advantage of the next growth wave. They realize the dangers of maintaining the status quo when disruptive forces, trends, and customer requirements change.
Paul Pierroz (The Purpose-Driven Marketing Handbook: How to Discover Your Impact and Communicate Your Business Sustainability Story to Grow Sales, Retain Talent, and Attract Investors)
Saipem, an Italian-based company founded in 1957, has built some of the world's largest energy and infrastructure projects. It is organized into five business divisions that focus on onshore and offshore drilling, engineering and construction, and conceptual design services. Given its connection to oil and gas contracts, which effectively collapsed in 2014 with a plunge in oil prices, it has had to set a course beyond fossil fuels and rethink everything about its business. This "change or die" scenario sets the tone for its reporting and disclosure. Its 2019 sustainability report acknowledges the scenario it is facing and tackles the issue of the low-carbon transition head-on. At its core is the organziations rallying call, or "the four challenges," which describe the context and frame the opportunities it must capture to remain competitive.
Paul Pierroz (The Purpose-Driven Marketing Handbook: How to Discover Your Impact and Communicate Your Business Sustainability Story to Grow Sales, Retain Talent, and Attract Investors)
Leaders co-create their reality not just by reflection but by asking the right questions. In the creative process, a question is a quest. Answers are dead ends. An answer is a blind alley through which no further movement of the mind is possible. When leaders live in questions they are able to navigate the complex problems of life and arrive at simple yet profound solutions. Complexities of the life arise because of our normal thinking process is not able to grasp our reality. So we need creativity in thinking. Creativity is a discontinuity in our thinking process. Creativity comes with sustained questioning of our old assumptions about reality.
Debashis Chatterjee (The Other 99%: You Can Dare To Lead)
Good business is simply good for business and seriously needed in solving the world’s wicked problems. And as a corporate business leader, you are crucial in this transformation. In understanding the challenges and providing purpose, direction, and resources, you can contribute to meaning, transformation and growth and help enhance the wellbeing of both people and our planet—all while futureproofing your corporate business to ensure that it stays relevant and attractive and can thrive going forward.
Elisabet Lagerstedt (Better Business Better Future)
As corporate business leaders (and consumers), we have seriously contributed to the dire situation that our planet is currently in. We have far too long left it to others to solve the problems that we have created. But what got us here will not get us into the future. We must realise that the challenges ahead are bigger than what we could have ever imagined and rethink how we do business so we can hand over a thriving planet and society to the coming generations.
Elisabet Lagerstedt (Better Business Better Future)
Sustainability is no longer something for conscious consumers and brands in some of the most developed countries in the world but something that concerns us all. Across the world. Across industries. It should have been since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
Elisabet Lagerstedt (Better Business Better Future)
Better Business can be described as a company that has a long-term perspective and is guided and inspired by a higher purpose that helps the organization create, deliver, and capture value to stakeholders while minimizing ecological and social costs, engaging its business ecosystem, and reducing its footprint.
Elisabet Lagerstedt (Better Business Better Future)
The problem is that these are earthly-focused models of leadership. Without the flow of grace from the apostles and prophets, who are not only focused on seeing what is going on in Heaven but also on releasing that reality here on earth, these models will inevitably lead us to focus on what we know God has done in the past and miss out on what He is doing now. They lead us to care more about knowledge than experience.
Danny Silk (Culture of Honor: Sustaining a Supernatural Enviornment: Sustaining a Supernatural Environment)
Father John Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame, once said, “Let no one ever say we dreamed too small.” The great leaders of this world never dream too small. They have a bold vision—a man on the moon, eradicating smallpox, equality for all, building a world on sustainable energy, a high school team going to the championship, or a new business model. And in addition to that vision, leaders must have a firm foundation in detailed planning and hard work (not just wishful thinking).
William H. McRaven (The Wisdom of the Bullfrog: Leadership Made Simple (But Not Easy))
Winners build and sustain momentum. They take initiative and want to contribute.
Mark C. Crowley (Lead From The Heart: Transformational Leadership For The 21st Century)
Nate Fick sees “a distinction between self-awareness and self-consciousness.” The latter Fick sees as something to be wary of: a mindset that is focused outward, which can lead to posturing and decisions based on how others will perceive them. But self-awareness, in Fick’s view, is something to develop: an understanding of the forces within oneself that cause one to do or feel certain things as a leader. The mindset is fundamentally introspective. The understanding that it brings usually comes only after sustained and searching thought. And thus, Fick says, “I think solitude is essential to self-awareness.” One
Raymond M. Kethledge (Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude)
The new paradigm says that focusing solely on piling up accomplishments makes it impossible for us to experience success—an optimized daily experience that’s sustainable over time.
Larry Yatch (How Leadership (Actually) Works: A Navy SEAL’s Complete System for Coordinating Teams)
Heaven is Under the Feet of Governments" is a groundbreaking exploration of how integrating spiritual values with secular governance can transform societies. Through the innovative Maqasid model, this book offers a holistic approach that addresses both material needs and spiritual fulfillment. Authored by Abdellatif Raji, it combines clear, accessible language with real-world applications and case studies, making complex concepts understandable for all readers. In an era demanding ethical leadership and social justice, this book provides practical solutions to modern governance challenges, promoting equity, sustainability, and inclusivity. It's a must-read for anyone passionate about creating a just and compassionate world.
Abdellatif Raji
True success is not a future reward. It’s a daily experience. If you can let go of the struggle long enough to optimize your daily experience—not on vacation or on the rare day off, but in a way that’s truly sustainable—you can experience success right now. And not just now, but in the future as well.
Larry Yatch (How Leadership (Actually) Works: A Navy SEAL’s Complete System for Coordinating Teams)
Success is an optimized daily experience that’s sustainable over time.
Larry Yatch (How Leadership (Actually) Works: A Navy SEAL’s Complete System for Coordinating Teams)
Distinction Success is an optimized daily experience that’s sustainable over time.
Larry Yatch (How Leadership (Actually) Works: A Navy SEAL’s Complete System for Coordinating Teams)
The incredible thing is, if the money doesn’t come, who gives a shit? We’re happy every day, and we can keep being happy for the foreseeable future because we have focused on making this happiness sustainable over time. Success comes first, and if achievements follow, it’s icing on the cake.
Larry Yatch (How Leadership (Actually) Works: A Navy SEAL’s Complete System for Coordinating Teams)
You can use force or influence to cause behavior change. Force is quicker but you pay for that speed with the loss of connection and sustainability
Larry Yatch (How Leadership (Actually) Works: A Navy SEAL’s Complete System for Coordinating Teams)
Horizon 2: Areas of focus and accountability—The segments of our life and work that we need to maintain, to ensure stability and health of ourselves and our enterprises (e.g., health, finances, customer service, strategic planning, family, career) Horizon 3: Goals and objectives—The mid- to longer-term outcomes to accomplish (usually within three to twenty-four months); e.g., “Finalize acquisition of Acme Consulting,” “Establish profitable online version of our leadership training course,” “Get Maria’s college plans finalized” Horizon 4: Vision—Long-term desired outcomes; ideal scenarios of wild success (e.g., “Publish my memoir,” “Take the company public,” “Have a vacation home in Provence”) Horizon 5: Purpose, principles—Ultimate intention, raison d’être, and core values of a person or enterprise (e.g., “To serve the growth of our community in ways that sustainably provide the greatest good for the greatest number of our citizens”)
David Allen (Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity)
Humanize your company. Educate about change. Assure stability. Revolutionize offerings. Tackle the future. These strategies make up what we call the HEART framework of sustained crisis communication.
Harvard Business Review (Coronavirus: Leadership and Recovery: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review (HBR Insights))
Simple organisational mechanisms, such as the creation of a sub committee of the EXCO body, under the authorisation of the CEO and chaired by the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) or the Chief Operating Officer (COO) — i.e., those who have the necessary organisational authority to resolve issues — should be established. Reporting into this group should be weekly and any variance to plan should be identified for resolution. There may be other organisational solutions but as a minimum, project reporting should be frequent and escalation for issue resolution should be integral to the process.
Alan Hustwick (Real Procurement Transformation - Powerful, Sustaining)
Procurement, though, cannot move to a high achieving team acting alone, but if the will, desire, drive and commitment are there, it will succeed. It will require passionate and committed leadership. What this book describes and provides readers is how to progress to this aspiration and subscribe to the following value proposition, “Procurement is the key and respected organisation resource that secures goods, services and materials to the organisation aligned with key business performance metrics, strategic objectives, priorities and values. It is the primary commercial team in the business.
Alan Hustwick (Real Procurement Transformation - Powerful, Sustaining)
Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology. When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible. At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales. Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day. We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform. Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.[431]
Charles Morris (Tesla: How Elon Musk and Company Made Electric Cars Cool, and Remade the Automotive and Energy Industries)
We cannot connect with anyone in sustainable, healthy ways unless we connect with ourselves in meaningful, honest ways.
Karen Joy Hardwick (The Connected Leader: 7 Strategies to Empower Your True Self and Inspire Others)
Smart leaders leave behind sustainable legacies.
Gift Gugu Mona (The Effective Leadership Prototype for a Modern Day Leader)
The former head of this operation, Gary Wendt, who is credited with much of the enormous success of GEFS, used his personal agenda as a simple but inordinately powerful tool for growing the business into ever new entrepreneurial arenas. Over the years, he used his personal agenda to make it unequivocally clear that he expected entrepreneurial business growth from every member of management. At every major meeting, the topic of business development was on the agenda (usually in the number one spot). In every annual review, managers were asked to demonstrate the revenues they had created from businesses that did not exist five years before. From division heads to newly hired analysts, everyone was held accountable for some set of activities having to do with creating entrepreneurial revenue and profit streams. In short, no one who worked in the organization could avoid the unremitting focus on new business development. You need to make sure that you are similarly consistent, predictable, and focused, and that you sustain this emphasis over a long period. Pressure applied only once is soon forgotten, and alternating pressure (as in flavor-of-the-month management) will cause people to be confused, disillusioned, or angry. Wendt’s consistent, visible, and predictable attention to business development created a pressure in GEFS for entrepreneurial business growth that took it from the $300 million installment loan portfolio we looked at in chapter 6 to a financial services behemoth with $250 billion in assets under management when he left in 1998. Examples of Wendt’s single-minded determination to drive growth through entrepreneurial transformation at GEFS are numerous. Years ago, for instance, he was asked whether his agenda would change if someone rushed in and told him that the computer room was on fire (implying that his business could be completely destroyed). Wendt replied that he employed firefighters to handle such emergencies. As the leader, his most important job was to keep people focused on business development. Since business development is an uncomfortable and unpredictable process, Wendt knew that if he allowed it to appear to be a low priority for him, all those working for him would heave a sigh of relief and go back to business as usual, with new businesses struggling to find a place on the priority list. In fact, as he remarked, even if he did try to get involved in putting out the fire, he would probably only interfere with the efforts of the highly competent people employed to do so.
Rita Gunther McGrath (The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty)
Consistent Active Effort offers the best predictability at getting consistent, sustainable results in all roles. Rewarding consistent effort is how to create incentive to continue that effort.
Elaina Noell (Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results)
That logic of American partisanship came under a more sustained and ultimately more effective assault in the Progressive Era, however, precisely because of its relation to the logic of the Constitution. As we have seen, the early progressives critiqued the American system for lacking coherence and sacrificing responsiveness, energy, and effectiveness in government for the sake of stability, safety, and cohesion in society. They argued that this trade-off was neither successful nor necessary, and that unity could be achieved by unified leadership, especially presidential leadership, not by aimless negotiation. So they sought a politics in which different parties offered thoroughly distinct and comprehensive policy programs, the public selected among them on Election Day, and then the winning party would have essentially unlimited power to pursue its program until the public voted for someone else. The competition among factions in society would not be resolved by their bargaining within the institutions of government but by voters choosing among them at the ballot box and letting whichever won a majority deploy all the powers of government in the service of its vision.
Yuval Levin (American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again)
People matter. Choosing the right ones to be with matters. Pain unifies us, and love sustains us. I was now in the right place with the right people.
Tom Ryan (Chosen Suffering: Becoming Elite In Life And Leadership)
Deep-rooted good habits must be formed. It’s the long-term, sustained commitment that turns normal into special. Show up and give over and over. I tell my team to develop a two-word sentence that calms the mind from unraveling during tough things. It’s a mantra. Mine was, keep working. Keep working.
Tom Ryan (Chosen Suffering: Becoming Elite In Life And Leadership)
America has all the ingredients for sustained economic and military strength over many generations. But a fight for leadership in Asia will require not only massive resources but also a measure of national will that is difficult to summon unless the stakes are existential. And the problem for those who want to see America take on this contest against China is that the United States is one of the most secure nations on earth, and therefore has no powerful motivation to do so.
Sam Roggeveen (The Echidna Strategy: Australia's Search for Power and Peace)
the Israelis and Palestinians were at a demographic tipping point, with more-or-less parity in the number of Jews and Arabs living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The century-long struggle over the land was only becoming more intractable. The Israeli Zionist left had long warned that the dream was at stake and that Israel could not have it both ways: Without partition into two separate homelands for Jews and Palestinians, Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish democracy, however compromised those terms were, could not be sustained and Israel would inevitably become a binational country. If all the Palestinians were given equal rights and the vote in Israel, it would not have a Jewish majority. Without partition and without allowing Palestinians to vote for the government that controlled fundamental aspects of their lives, Israel’s claim to be a democracy would eventually implode. The temporary occupation had gone on so long that many critics were already describing the separate statuses of Israel and the occupied territories as a fiction meant to obscure what was already a binational, one-state reality. Instead of a light unto the nations, Israel was being cast by its harshest liberal-left critics and human rights groups such as B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International as a single-state entity and territory that had already veered into a system of varying degrees of “Jewish supremacy” or racial “domination” over the Palestinians in different geographical areas that, they asserted, fit international definitions of apartheid and crimes against humanity. With a weak Palestinian leadership split between the increasingly autocratic Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas-run Gaza, and after years without any semblance of a peace process, Israel, more than seventy years after its founding, was more divided over its endgame than it was on the eve of its independence. Esh Kodesh and a rash of other settlement outposts had stepped into the void to try to determine the outcome and doom Israel to victory, or at least to deepen the entanglement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Isabel Kershner (The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel's Battle for Its Inner Soul)
For roughly sixty minutes, they scored on me at will. If they weren’t identical twins, I would’ve thought I was seeing double. By the end, I was utterly broken. As I sat crying in my car, I thought about what Coach Gable must have been thinking. In the exhaustion, my mind played tricks on me. When we experience disappointment, our thoughts spiral, and it’s important in those moments to press pause and assess the situation, not be led by our emotions. The #1 indicator of sustained success is emotional control. We must keep the issue in the appropriate bucket. Too often, we allow issues from one part of our lives to overflow into another. Therefore, pressing pause at such a time is crucial. Thankfully, at that moment, I pushed pause to consider my options. I could drive back to Syracuse. My coaches there would gladly allow me to return. I was the reigning EIWA Champ with a redshirt and two more years of eligibility. However, when my tears and emotions got under control, I thought more clearly. When you’re under emotional duress, it’s not a good time to make any decisions. I’ve seen lives ruined over emotional decisions.
Tom Ryan (Chosen Suffering: Becoming Elite In Life And Leadership)
regularly chose to suffer in the wrestling room because I knew the results. Of course, I suffered most for the things I loved deeply. But, excellence also requires us to invest in things we may not deeply love. It’s just more sustainable when we love what we pursue.
Tom Ryan (Chosen Suffering: Becoming Elite In Life And Leadership)
The leaders, corporations, organizations and nations who will be enduringly wealthy or who will sustain their abundance will be those who practice altruism. This is the key to sustained prosperity, and it is the formula for good luck and entitlement.
Master Del Pe (8 Types of Leaders: Every Leader Should Know)
You can ignite your internal energy by revealing the direction of travel you want to follow. The sense of perspective is not about the outcomes you want to achieve but rather about the ideals you wish to pursue. It is an aspiration to reach higher, once unimaginable latitudes.
Niels de Fraguier (Cartography of Inner Worlds: A Journey to Deepen the Meaning of our Lives)
Of all the things that sustain a leader over time, love is the most lasting. It's hard to imagine leaders getting up day after day, putting in the long hours and hard work it takes to make extraordinary things happen, without having their hearts in it. The best-kept secret of successful leaders is love: staying in love with leading, with the people who do the work, with what their organizations provide, and with those who honor the organization by using its products and services. Leadership is not an affair of the head. Leadership is an affair of the heart.
James M. Kouzes (The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations (J-B Leadership Challenge: Kouzes/Posner))
Target the Business Opportunity and Desired Results Pinpoint the High-Impact Behavior Understand the Drivers Implement the Behavior Change Plan Continuously Improve Your Own Leadership Practices Measure Behavior Change Progress and Impact Sustain It, Improve It, Apply It to New Priorities
Steve Jacobs (The Behavior Breakthrough: Leading Your Organization to a New Competitive Advantage)
The higher loyalty is to lasting values, most important the truth. I hope this book is useful in stimulating all of us to think about the values that sustain us, and to search for leadership that embodies those values.
James B. Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
I see entrepreneurship, like many other activities, as a type of mission. A mission by which we can provide better life chances and quality for both our current and future generations.
Miguel Reynolds Brandao (The Sustainable Organisation - a paradigm for a fairer society: Think about sustainability in an age of technological progress and rising inequality)
So imagine that fans of our products or services no longer simply consume and use them. Now we are creating a new opportunity for them to both participate directly in the development of the products but also benefit from a share of the profits too.
Miguel Reynolds Brandao (The Sustainable Organisation - a paradigm for a fairer society: Think about sustainability in an age of technological progress and rising inequality)
Issues that China Convoy nurses confronted remain relevant today: the struggle to build healthcare facilities that are sustainable and tailored to local needs; the battle against agendas driven by political or economic rather than healthcare needs; the dogged leadership and personal resilience required to provide compassionate care and high standards of nursing service in difficult and dangerous circumstances; and the recognition that health and human security are inextricably interwoven.
Susan Armstrong-Reid (China Gadabouts: New Frontiers of Humanitarian Nursing, 1941–51)
It’s the notion that the most crucial ingredient in a team that achieves and sustains historic greatness is the character of the player who leads it.
Sam Walker (The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership)
It is hard to find many better examples of values-first leadership than Ventura, California-based outdoor clothing company Patagonia. For more than 30 years, the company has defied conventional wisdom by building its brand as much around environmental responsibility as on quality products and service. How many businesses would run a marketing campaign encouraging customers to not buy new products but repair the old ones instead in order to reduce their environmental footprint? Only companies interested in creating a “lovability economy” would prioritize sustainable growth for themselves and the world and take a long-term perspective. They see themselves as stewards of meaningful relationships and understand that mutually positive interactions and exchanges of value are lasting. Patagonia has even made its supply chain public with an online map showing every farm, textile mill, and factory it uses in sourcing its materials and manufacturing its products. Anyone who wants to can see where their Patagonia products come from and verify that the company is walking the walk — using sustainable materials and producing apparel in facilities that are safe for workers. That is transparency that breeds trust. Founder Yvon Chouinard’s vision has also led to a culture that is not only employee-friendly (the company even encourages employees at its corporate headquarters to quit early when the surf is up) but attracts people whose values align with the company’s. This aggressively anti-profit, pro-values approach has yielded big dividends. The privately-held benefit corporation is tight-lipped about its revenues, but two years after it began its “cause marketing” campaign, sales increased 27 percent, to $575 million in 2013.7
Brian de Haaff (Lovability: How to Build a Business That People Love and Be Happy Doing It)
Lovability — the capacity to earn genuine, heartfelt love and loyalty from customers — is the secret ingredient that propels a select few organizations ahead and leads not only to consistent growth and profitability but sustainable happiness for everyone involved.
Brian de Haaff (Lovability: How to Build a Business That People Love and Be Happy Doing It)
True Success is about A Winners Heart-Mind-set that enables, energizes and empowers Leadership and SWIFT Actions that Ensure REAL Success and Sustained Long-Term Freedom, Love, Abundance, Peace, Meaning and Joy.” ― Tony "Success Activator" Dovale
Tony Dovale
Strengthening consumer data privacy protections in the United States is an important Administration priority. 1 Americans value privacy and expect protection from intrusions by both private and governmental actors. Strong privacy protections also are critical to sustaining the trust that nurtures Internet commerce and fuels innovation. Trust means the companies and technical systems on which we depend meet our expectations for privacy, security, and reliability. 2 In addition, United States leadership in consumer data privacy can help establish more flexible, innovation-enhancing privacy models among our international partners. 3
Anonymous
To sustain momentum through a period of difficult change, you have to find ways to remind people of the orienting value—the positive vision—that makes the current angst worthwhile.
Ronald A. Heifetz (Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading)
We need leaders who can meet and adapt to new challenges, build strategic partnerships, build and sustain human capital organizations, and have the courage to act and react to the challenges
Thomas Narofsky (F(X) Leadership Unleashed!)
The most difficult work of leadership involves learning to experience distress without numbing yourself. The virtue of a sacred heart lies in the courage to maintain your innocence and wonder, your doubt and curiosity, and your compassion and love even through your darkest, most difficult moments. Leading with an open heart means you could be at your lowest point, abandoned by your people and entirely powerless, yet remain receptive to the full range of human emotions without going numb, striking back, or engaging in some other defense. In one moment you may experience total despair, but in the next, compassion and forgiveness. You may even experience such vicissitudes in the same moment and hold those inconsistent feelings in tension with one another. Maybe you have. A sacred heart allows you to feel, hear, and diagnose, even in the midst of your mission, so that you can accurately gauge different situations and respond appropriately. Otherwise, you simply cannot accurately assess the impact of the losses you are asking people to sustain, or comprehend the reasons behind their anger. Without keeping your heart open, it becomes difficult, perhaps impossible, to fashion the right response and to succeed or come out whole.
Martin Linsky (Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading)
However we assess the relief of the siege of Orleans and the subsequent successes in the Loire Valley, the military proficiency of the French shocked the English to the point that French victory now seemed almost inevitable. If the English had learned that the French had new materiel or a brilliant new commander, they might have been able to devise counter procedures. But they had underestimated everything, from the loyalty evoked by Joan's leadership at Orleans to the fresh resolve of the men who knew her. In a way she also stood for something like a principle of minimal violence, for although she was always exposed to injury and indeed sustained serious wounds, she never personally harmed an enemy solider. The events of the late spring and early summer of 1929 engendered a new collective spirit among the French.
Donald Spoto (Joan: The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint)
The Shah "had traveled to Europe and had been fascinated by the march of progress he observed there. But, once back in Terhan, this fascination had not been translated into sustained Persian modernization, but rather dissipated in the Shah's intense but short-lived passion for the latest novelties. "He is continually taking up and pushing some new scheme or invention which, when the caprice has been gratified, is neglected or allowed to expire".
Charles Emmerson (1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War)
In times of distress, when everyone looks to authorities to provide direction, protection, and order, this is an easy diagnostic mistake to make. In the face of adaptive pressures, people don’t want questions; they want answers. They don’t want to be told that they will have to sustain losses; rather, they want to know how you’re going to protect them from the pains of change. And of course you want to fulfill their needs and expectations, not bear the brunt of their frustration and anger at the bad news you’re giving.
Martin Linsky (Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading)
I do not think the African, Caribbean, and Blacks have studied to any degree and depth and seriousness the rise of modern Japan. Went into a war and loss. They sustained two atomic bombs. Had their country occupied. Now the people who defeated them are now begging them for commercial space. What did they do, that we have forgotten how to do? They did some serious astute planning. Not loud mouthing, not boasting. They did not get on the radio or any platform or call them any names, but they did what they had to do. If we are carrying out a well designed plan for liberation any literate person can contribute and share leadership. So if the leader dies while you are on page 13 move to page 14 and continue the struggle. Bury the man, continue the plan. I think any person who calls them self a leader, preacher, policy maker of any kind, should ask and answer the question in his own lifetime...How will my people stay on this earth? How will they be educated? How will they be schooled, and how will they be housed and how will they be defended. The answers to these questions will create the concept of enduring nationhood, because it creates the concept of enduring responsibility.
John Henrike Clark
Teamwork and trust trump ego and arrogance in building high performance sustainable successful teams. Rethink your team building ideas
Tony Dovale
When challenges present themselves, practice will permit you to draw on the wisdom and learning you cultivate as you learn to lead valiantly.
Catherine Robinson-Walker (Leading Valiantly in Healthcare: Four Steps to Sustainable Success)
Leadership is a dynamic process that expresses our skill, our aspirations, and our essence as human beings.
Catherine Robinson-Walker (Leading Valiantly in Healthcare: Four Steps to Sustainable Success)
Leadership Seductions are behaviors or attitudes in which we become "stuck".
Catherine Robinson-Walker (Leading Valiantly in Healthcare: Four Steps to Sustainable Success)
The Leadership Seduction of storytelling invites self-pity, exaggerates one's importance, and encourages inaction.
Catherine Robinson-Walker (Leading Valiantly in Healthcare: Four Steps to Sustainable Success)
True Success is about A Winners Heart-Mind-set that enables, energizes and empowers Leadership and SMART Actions that Ensure REAL Success and Sustained Long-Term Freedom, Love, Abundance, Peace and Joy.
Tony Dovale
The great leaders learn to rely on God to sustain them when nothing of this world can. And this, too, is the price—and the privilege—of leadership. Oh,
Mark Rutland (ReLaunch How to Stage an Organizational Comeback)
Jack Welch said, “The team that sees reality the best wins.” Notice
Jim Dethmer (The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success)