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The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.
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Phil Jackson
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He who masters the power formed by a group of people working together has within his grasp one of the greatest powers known to man.
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Idowu Koyenikan (All You Need Is a Ball: What Soccer Teaches Us about Success in Life and Business)
β
Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves youβeven, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition. Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world. So none of this is happening. Such things could not occur. Never a word of it is literally true.
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Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))
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Champions donβt do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits theyβve learned.
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Charles Duhigg (The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business)
β
My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That's how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they're done by a team of people.
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Steve Jobs
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Our power as individuals is multiplied when we gather together as families, teams, and communities with common goals.
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Susan Scott (Fierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst "Best" Practices of Business Today)
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I want to see a world in which entrepreneurs give time to their visions to reality so that they have more money, more family time, and more support, a world in which they can stop working so hard and start living!
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Curtis L. Jenkins (Vision to Reality: Stop Working, Start Living)
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If you spend your life trying to be good at everything, you will never be great at anything.
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Tom Rath (Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow)
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The purpose of data is to learn on time what is working and what is not and take any corrective actions according to that.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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Itβs very possible that your inexperienced intern knows more than you think, even if you have been part of the industry for over thirty years.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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A good marketing plan canβt be formed in just four hours. Plans are formed on extensive research.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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A team is very much like a chain. The weakest link in the chain will affect the entire strength of that chain.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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There canβt be anything more fatal to a business than making decisions based on somebody elseβs assumptions.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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Building a team is a huge task. This task canβt be delegated to someone else. Youβre the leader of your business and you have to behave like a leader for your employees.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
Even though marketing is one of the building blocks of a successful business, we should make sure that our marketing is effective and productive.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
People skills are very crucial for the purpose of proper team building.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
You guide your team when they lose the path, you pick them up when they fall, and you give them motivation when they have none.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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Employee loyalty is cheaper than hiring new employees, training them, and motivating them.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
Building an employee team or employee tribe is a little time consuming which requires little effort but in the long process of achieving business growth, itβs totally worth it.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
Hiring is not as simple as you think. You have to make sure you are hiring somebody who is going to be a great fit in the kind of employee tribe youβre building.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
A team is built when your employees are inspired by the same vision and connected with the same goal.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
If you canβt build a team that loves your company and your product the way you do, youβre going to face a hard time bringing your idea to life.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
Great leaders help in building teams that work as one entity, trying to achieve the same common goal.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
Good leaders are above all that. They think of their team first before they think of themselves.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
Market research is not an add-on feature, itβs a necessity for business survival and business success.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
In other words, market research is the swiss knife for the survival of any business.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
Market research is the process by which a business gathers and studies information related to the product or service it is providing or the market it is operating in.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
There is no alternative to market research.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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You donβt want to run your business based on mere suspicions and assumptions.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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A successful business owner will know their business as good as they know their favorite celebrity, their partner, and even their dogs.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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Proper market research keeps you informed on what your competitors are doing, as well as their strengths and weaknesses.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
Market research helps you understand the need of your product in the existing market and the current competition.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
Being successful is not that tough, you just need a little mindset change.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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Incorporate market research as an integral part of your business, and youβll not just become competitive, but also profitable.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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Remember market research is like warming up. It will keep you safe from unnecessary injuries.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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Business growth happens when people remember you.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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Incorrect results of the market research when fed to the marketing strategy and action plans produce disastrous results.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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Accepting that youβre wrong, shows humility which will set a better example of you as a leader on your team than sticking to something that others can clearly see is wrong.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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Become a leader that shows humility and not stubbornness.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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Search engines' results arenβt always trustworthy. As a matter of fact, they can be easily manipulated.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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If we say that our office is like our second home. Then, our team should be like our second family.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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The first and the only rule of team building is employees being comfortable with each other.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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Your employees shouldnβt be scared of being let go but you should be scared of them leaving you.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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Inaccurate market research always leads to a business wipe-out.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
The moment you will start considering market research as an ongoing process of your business, you will start uncovering so many hidden insights.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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Market research not only helps you in gaining competitive advantage, but also helps you in being prepared to handle any testing business times.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
If you first take a minute, an hour or a month to let go of feeling annoyed, frustrated or critical of the person or situation that may be driving you crazy, you set yourself up for much greater leadership and personal success.
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John Kuypers (Who's The Driver Anyway? Making the Shift to a Collaborative Team Culture)
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Hard work without a solid plan isnβt likely to get you where you want to be. You need to be teachable; you need to be dedicated, and you need to work smart.
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Curtis L. Jenkins (Vision to Reality: Stop Working, Start Living)
β
We canβt completely eliminate the chances of hiring somebody wrong. It is very much like dating.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
You need an environment where your employees are not afraid to share even their silliest ideas. A place where they are respected, loved and heard, where they feel like an important part of the team.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
The success of a strategy largely depends on it's implementation. You can have a good strategy, you can have a winning game plan, but ultimately you and your team have to implement the strategy and execute and put the game plan into action if your business is going to succeed.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
β
Entrepreneurs arenβt looking to go backward. They are looking to go forward, toward their prize of realizing their dreams.
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Curtis L. Jenkins (Vision to Reality: Stop Working, Start Living)
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Although individuals need not be well-rounded, teams should be.
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Tom Rath (Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow)
β
And those who urge entrepreneurs to never give up? Charlatans. Sometimes you have to give up. Sometimes knowing when to give up, when to try something else, is genius. Giving up doesnβt mean stopping. Donβt ever stop. Luck plays a big role. Yes, Iβd like to publicly acknowledge the power of luck. Athletes get lucky, poets get lucky, businesses get lucky. Hard work is critical, a good team is essential, brains and determination are invaluable, but luck may decide the outcome. Some people might not call it luck. They might call it Tao, or Logos, or JΓ±Δna, or Dharma. Or Spirit. Or God. Put
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β
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog)
β
Instead of waiting for a leader you can believe in, try this: Become a leader you can believe in.
β
β
Stan Slap
β
A great team doesnβt mean that they had the smartest people. What made those teams great is that everyone trusted one another. It can be a powerful thing when that magic dynamic exists.
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Gene Kim (The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win)
β
Pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.
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Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
β
In addition to building a strong team, you also have to motivate that team when their spirits are down, show your pride in them when they perform well, and be there when they make mistakes. You have to invest in their training and start treating them as partners in your businessβ success.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
Internet articles can be used to give direction to your research, but the real research will start after that. You can read The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, Economic Times, or Entrepreneur as much as you want but these still canβt replace market research.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
β
Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you - even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))
β
Champions donβt do extraordinary things,β Dungy would explain. βThey do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits theyβve learned.
β
β
Charles Duhigg (The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business)
β
You canβt sell it outside if you canβt sell it inside.
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Stan Slap
β
Multicultural teams need low-context processes.
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Erin Meyer (The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business)
β
One competent go-getter is worth One Hundred incompetent do-nothings. - Kailin Gow, On Hiring a Winning Team
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Kailin Gow
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The purpose of leadership is to change the world around you in the name of your values, so you can live those values more fully.
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Stan Slap
β
Perhaps the ultimate test of a leader is not what you are able to do in the here and now - but instead what continues to grow long after you're gone
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Tom Rath (Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow)
β
Let's face it. We live in a command-based system, where we have been programmed since our earliest school years to become followers, not individuals. We have been conditioned to embrace teams, the herd, the masses, popular opinion -- and to reject what is different, eccentric or stands alone. We are so programmed that all it takes for any business or authority to condition our minds to follow or buy something is to simply repeat a statement more than three or four times until we repeat it ourselves and follow it as truth or the best trendiest thing. This is called "programming" -- the frequent repetition of words to condition us how to think, what to like or dislike, and who to follow.
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Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
β
A good Board Of Directors team is one where ideas are flowing fluidly - and where each idea is met with an initial welcome, an intellectual challenge, an expression of gratitude, a rigorous scrutiny and a readiness for action.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
β
I'm not into those kind of rivalries. I remember standing out in front of Stratford, minding my own business. Carload of about eighty kids would pull up: 'STRATFORD SUCKS!' Am I supposed to run after these guys? I'd just stand there, you know. They'd back up. 'STRATFORD SUCKS! ...STRATFORD SUCKS!' I'd say, 'I know. I go there. You're wasting gas, man.
β
β
Bill Hicks
β
Building a high-performance board requires a long-term commitment to building a cohesive and effective team.
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β
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Board Room Blitz: Mastering the Art of Corporate Governance)
β
Thatβs the problem with any βsimple truthββit always takes a gaggle of complete idiots or a team of all-knowing geniuses to miss it.
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Ali Sheikh (Closure of the Helpdesk β A Geek Tragedy)
β
What great leaders have in common is that each truly knows his or her strengths - and can call on the right strength at the right time.
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Tom Rath (Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow)
β
We know about bad guys, what they do, and often, who they are. The politicians have chosen to send us into battle, and that's our trade. We do what's necessary. And in my view, once those politicians have elected to send us out to do what 99.9 percent of the country would be terrified to undertake, they should get the hell out of the way and stay there.
This entire business of modern war crimes, as identified by the liberal wings of politics and the media, began in Iraq and has been running downhill ever since. Everyone's got to have his little hands in it, blathering on about the public's right to know.
Well, the view of most Navy SEALs, the public does not have that right to know, not if it means placing our lives in unnecessary peril because someone in Washington is driving himself mad worrying about the human rights of some cold-hearted terrorist fanatic who would kill us as soon as look at us, as well as any other American at whom he could point that wonky old AK of his.
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Marcus Luttrell (Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10)
β
as a lobbyist he had long ago concluded there was no difference in how Democrats and Republicans conducted the business of government. The game stayed the same: It was always about favors and friends, and who controlled the dough. Party labels were merely a way to keep track of the teams; issues were mostly smoke and vaudeville. Nobody believed in anything except hanging on to power, whatever it took. .....
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Carl Hiaasen (Sick Puppy (Skink, #4))
β
Introverts almost never cause me trouble and are usually much better at what they do than extroverts. Extroverts are too busy slapping one another on the back, team building, and making fun of introverts to get much done. Extroverts are amazed and baffled by how much some introverts get done and assume that they, the extroverts, are somehow responsible.
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Mark Vonnegut
β
When youβre a manager, you work for your company. When youβre a leader, your company works for you.
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β
Stan Slap
β
TOGETHER we stand, TOGETHER we fall, TOGETHER we win, and winners take ALL.
-Temple College Volleyball Team
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Larry O'Sullivan (How Is My Driving?: Motivational Tips for Success in Business and Life)
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Great things in business are never done by one person,They are done by a team of people
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Steve Jobs (Steve Jobs: His Own Words and Wisdom (Steve Jobs Biography Book 1))
β
Work/life balance is not about escaping work. Itβs about living exactly the way you want to when youβre at work.
β
β
Stan Slap
β
Profitability. Growth. Quality. Exceeding customer expectations. These are not examples of values. These are examples of corporate strategies being sold to you as values.
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β
Stan Slap
β
The first step to solving any problem is to accept oneβs own accountability for creating it.
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β
Stan Slap
β
No one on a cohesive team can say, Well, I did my job. Our failure isnβt my fault.
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Patrick Lencioni (The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business)
β
The value of a business is a function of how well the financial capital and the intellectual capital are managed by the human capital. You'd better get the human capital part right.
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Dave Bookbinder (The NEW ROI: Return on Individuals: Do you believe that people are your company's most valuable asset?)
β
Working together as a team helps build a cohesive organization.
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Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
β
True leaders live their values everywhere, not just in the workplace.
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Stan Slap
β
What first separates a leader from a normal human being? A leader knows who they are as a human being.
β
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Stan Slap
β
Every great athlete, artist and aspiring being has a great team to help them flourish and succeed - personally and professionally. Even the so-called 'solo star' has a strong supporting cast helping them shine, thrive and take flight.
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Rasheed Ogunlaru
β
None of this can actually be happening. If it makes you more comfortable, you could simply think of it as metaphor. Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you β even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition.
Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))
β
Harvard Business School teams expert Amy Edmondson explains, βGreat teams consist of individuals who have learned to trust each other. Over time, they have discovered each otherβs strengths and weaknesses, enabling them to play as a coordinated whole.
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General S McChrystal (Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World)
β
The only way for the leader of a team to create a safe environment for his team members to be vulnerable is by stepping up and doing something that feels unsafe and uncomfortable first. By getting naked before anyone else, by taking the risk of making himself vulnerable with no guarantee that other members of the team will respond in kind, a leader demonstrates an extraordinary level of selflessness and dedication to the team. And that gives him the right, and the confidence, to ask others to do the same.
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Patrick Lencioni (The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business)
β
Companies that are made up of clusters of leaders will actually accelerate their growth by speeding up their rate of innovation as their competition pulls back, build better teams by investing in people while their rivals shrink training budgets, and pick up top talent as their industry peers lay people off. And so fast companies get that unsettling times are actually gifts for them and periods to get so far ahead of the competition that they can never catch up.
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Robin S. Sharma (The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in)
β
The problem with your company is not the economy, it is not the lack of opportunity, it is not your team. The problem is you. That is the bad news. The good news is, if you're the problem, you're also the solution. You're the one person you can change the easiest. You can decide to grow. Grow your abilities, your character, your education, and your capacity. You can decide who you want to be and get about the business of becoming that person.
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Dave Ramsey (EntreLeadership: 20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches)
β
Jobs liked to tell the story- and he did so to his team that day- about how everything that he had done correctly had required a moment when he hit the rewind button. In each case he had to rework something that he discovered was not perfect. He talked about doing it on Toy Story, when the character of Woody had evolved into being a jerk, and on a couple of occasions with the original Macintosh. " If something isn't right, you can't just ignore it and say you'll fix it later," he said. " That's what other companies do.
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Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
β
I would not choose to live in any age but my own; advances in medicine alone, and the consequent survival of children with access to these benefits, should preclude any temptation to trade for the past. But we cannot understand history if we saddle the past with pejorative categories based on our bad habits for dividing continua into compartments of increasing worth towards the present. These errors apply to the vast paleontological history of life, as much as to the temporally trivial chronicle of human beings. I cringe every time I read that this failed business, or that defeated team, has become a dinosaur is succumbing to progress. Dinosaur should be a term of praise, not opprobrium. Dinosaurs reigned for more than 100 million years and died through no fault of their own; Homo sapiens is nowhere near a million years old, and has limited prospects, entirely self-imposed, for extended geological longevity.
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Stephen Jay Gould
β
Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people. People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with toddlersβa prize for the best Halloween costume, grades in school, gold starsβand on up through the university. On the job, people, teams, and divisions are ranked, reward for the top, punishment for the bottom. Management by Objectives, quotas, incentive pay, business plans, put together separately, division by division, cause further loss, unknown and unknowable.
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Peter M. Senge (The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization)
β
The Engineering Question Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements? 2. The Timing Question Is now the right time to start your particular business? 3. The Monopoly Question Are you starting with a big share of a small market? 4. The People Question Do you have the right team? 5. The Distribution Question Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product? 6. The Durability Question Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future? 7. The Secret Question Have you identified a unique opportunity that others donβt see?
β
β
Peter Thiel (Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future)
β
There is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family, organization, nation, economy, and civilization throughout the worldβone thing which, if removed, will destroy the most powerful government, the most successful business, the most thriving economy, the most influential leadership, the greatest friendship, the strongest character, the deepest love. On the other hand, if developed and leveraged, that one thing has the potential to create unparalleled success and prosperity in every dimension of life. Yet, it is the least understood, most neglected, and most underestimated possibility of our time. That one thing is trust.
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β
Stephen M.R. Covey (The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything)
β
It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look - I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring - caring deeply and passionately, really caring - which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. NaΓ―vetΓ© - the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball - seems a small price to pay for such a gift.
β
β
Roger Angell (Game Time: A Baseball Companion)
β
You'd never have gotten it right. You have to hit the door just so. It took me weeks to learn."
"And what were you doing sneaking out at night?" he demanded.
"I fail to see how that is your business."
"You became my business when you took up residence
in my house."
"Well, I wouldn't have moved in if you hadn'tkidnapped me!"
"I wouldn't have kidnapped you if you hadn't been wandering about the countryside with no thought to
your own safety."
"I was certainly safer in the countryside than I was at Prewitt Hall, and you well know it."
"You wouldn't be safe in a convent," he muttered.
"If you two lovebirds can stop snapping at each other," James cut in, "I'd like to search the study before
Prewitt returns home."
Blake glared at Caroline as if this entire delay were her fault, causing her to hiss, "Don't forget that if it
weren't for me-"
"If it weren't for you," he shot back, "I would be a very happy man indeed."
"We are wasting time," James reminded them. "The both of you may remain here, if you cannot cease
your squabbling, but I am going in to search the south drawing room."
"I'll go first," Caroline announced, "since I know the way."
"You'll go behind me," Blake contradicted, "and give me directions as we go along."
"Oh, for the love of Saint Peter," James finally burst out, exasperation showing in every line of his body.
"I'll go first, if only to shut the two of you up. Caroline, you follow and give me directions. Blake, you
guard her from the rear.
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Julia Quinn (To Catch an Heiress (Agents of the Crown, #1))
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I began looking for these four: Smart. It doesnβt mean high IQ (although thatβs great), it means disposed toward learning. If thereβs a best practice anywhere, adopt it. We want to turn as much as possible into a routine so we can focus on the few things that require human intelligence and creativity. A good interview question for this is: βTell me about the last significant thing you learned about how to do your job better.β Or you might ask a candidate: βWhatβs something that youβve automated? Whatβs a process youβve had to tear down at a company?β Humble. I donβt mean meek or unambitious, I mean being humble in the way that Steph Curry is humble. If youβre humble, people want you to succeed. If youβre selfish, they want you to fail. It also gives you the capacity for self-awareness, so you can actually learn and be smart. Humility is foundational like that. It is also essential for the kind of collaboration we want at Slack. Hardworking. It does not mean long hours. You can go home and take care of your family, but when youβre here, youβre disciplined, professional, and focused. You should also be competitive, determined, resourceful, resilient, and gritty. Take this job as an opportunity to do the best work of your life. Collaborative. Itβs not submissive, not deferentialβin fact itβs kind of the opposite. In our culture, being collaborative means providing leadership from everywhere. Iβm taking responsibility for the health of this meeting. If thereβs a lack of trust, Iβm going to address that. If the goals are unclear, Iβm going to deal with that. Weβre all interested in getting better and everyone should take responsibility for that. If everyoneβs collaborative in that sense, the responsibility for team performance is shared. Collaborative people know that success is limited by the worst performers, so they are either going to elevate them or have a serious conversation. This one is easy to corroborate with references, and in an interview you can ask, βTell me about a situation in your last company where something was substandard and you helped to fix it.
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Ben Horowitz (What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture)