651 Posts Found

Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jawaharial Nehru | Subject: Life

Ignorance is the most important component for helping others to solve any problem in any industry. Ignorance is not such a bad thing if one knows how to use it, and all managers must learn how to do this. You must frequently approach problems with your ignorance; not what you think you know from past experience, because not infrequently, what you think you know is … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Peter F. Drucker | Source: American Marketing Association (AMA) | Subject: Knowledge

We have to rely both on analysis and synthesis. Analysis—taking complex things and studying and understanding them—is very useful for knowing how well something is going to work and how you might improve it or make it more efficient. It’s not very good for coming up with major new ideas. There we have to be able to synthesize many competing ideas or competing insights—even if … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Tim Brown | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Design, Innovation, Trends / Analysis

Lucky risk takers use hindsight to reinforce their feeling that their gut is very wise. Hindsight also reinforces others’ trust in that individual’s gut. That’s one of the real dangers of leader selection in many organizations: leaders are selected for overconfidence. We associate leadership with decisiveness. That perception of leadership pushes people to make decisions fairly quickly, lest they be seen as dithering and indecisive. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Daniel Kahneman | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Confidence, Decision Making, Leadership, Organizational Behavior

You can advertise. You can hire sales people. You can sponsor events. But your competitors are doing the same things. How does that help you stand out?

Instead of trying to out-spend, out-sell, or out-sponsor competitors, try to out-teach them. Teaching probably isn’t something your competitors are even thinking about. Most businesses focus on selling or servicing, but teaching never even occurs to them.

Content: Quotation | Authors: David Heinemeier Hansson, Jason Fried | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Teaching

One of the best ways to improve retention of the material you are about to read is to imagine yourself having to tell someone else about it. That act of imagining yourself as teacher completely changes the way you read. As you turn the pages, you start to anticipate what would be most interesting and applicable to your “class.” You begin to organize the structure … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Todd Sattersten | Source: ChangeThis | Subject: Information

We naturally develop patterns of thought and behavior over time. These are a sort of survival technique, enabling us to deal with what life has taught us can be classified and dealt with by recourse to routine approaches. As a result, our reservoirs of intellectual energy are freed from being drained by repetitive solutions to the same problems, and are available to be alert to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jim Stroup | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Thought

Hate is the consequence of fear. We fear something before we hate it.

Content: Quotation | Author: Cyril Connolly | Subjects: Change Management, Fear / Doubt, Organizational Behavior

We human beings are not prepared at all for the explosion of new practices the Internet will produce. Education is going to be in networks and it will not be about knowledge. It will be about being successful in relationships, about how to make offers, how to build trust, how to cultivate prudence and emotional resilience.

Content: Quotation | Author: Fernando Flores | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Education, Knowledge

When management waits until the data is clear, the game is over. But that means management has to take action on a theory rather than evidence. Unfortunately, the word theory gets a bum rap at the Harvard Business School and in business in general because it’s associated with the term theoretical, which connotes impractical. But actually theory is very practical. It says this will happen … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Clayton M. Christensen | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Action, Decision Making, Management

If we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already past.

Content: Quotation | Author: Iris Murdoch | Source: Amazon.com | Subjects: Attention, Decision Making, Marketing / Sales

…most companies devote much more energy to optimizing what is there than to imagining what could be. We need to create constituencies for “What Could Be.”

Content: Quotation | Author: Gary Hamel | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Future, Management

…in the long term the most important question for a company is not what you are but what you are becoming.

Content: Quotation | Author: Gary Hamel | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Future, Management

Knowledge is our most important business. The success of almost all our other business depends on it, but its value is not only economic. The pursuit, production, dissemination, application, and preservation of knowledge are the central activities of a civilization. Knowledge is social memory, a connection to the past; and it is social hope, an investment in the future. The ability to create knowledge and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Louis Menand | Subject: Knowledge

Progress is not created by contented people.

Content: Quotation | Author: Frank Tyger | Source: 800-CEO-READ (8CR) | Subjects: Achievement, Progress

Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.

Content: Quotation | Author: John Wooden | Subjects: Adversity, Personal Development

The most fascinating thing in the world is a mirror.

Content: Quotation | Author: Esther Dyson | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Competitive Intelligence, Knowledge, Leadership, Management

Socrates established that while there is value in finding affirmation for existing assumptions and beliefs, the most useful learning occurs through falsification. Falsification requires the discipline of reason and hypothesis testing. What are the assumptions behind this proposal? What data or evidence would we need to prove those assumptions to be false? What do we believe to be true that is actually untrue? What do … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Lynda Gratton | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Knowledge, Learning, Thought

The challenge for me was to have informal contacts and to get information from outside the organization that had been set up to provide me information. I did that beginning at 6:30 every morning, when I’d hit my office having read all the newspapers. I would get the CIA to come in for 20 minutes with no other staff members present and tell me what … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Colin Powell | Source: Context Magazine | Subjects: Knowledge, Leadership

Words are only secondarily the means by which we communicate; they’re primarily the means by which we think.

Content: Quotation | Author: Dee Hock | Source: Leader to Leader | Subject: Thought