651 Posts Found

Wolfe argues, in a distinction particularly powerful as we grapple with the limits to the information age, that information is what machines can pass back and forth, or construct by analysis, while meaning is what only people can make. Meaning, as he defines it, is a macrophenomenon that involves making larger sense out of smaller bits, while information reduces larger complexity into smaller, and presumably … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) | Subjects: Information, Knowledge

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Content: Quotation | Source: Google | Subjects: Learning, Wisdom

Fear constrains behavior. Love liberates it. So, if all you need is compliance, fear will probably do. But fear freezes initiative, stifles creativity, and provides no incentive to stretch and grow. Love is about wanting and allowing people to be at their best, and engaging with them to help them achieve that.

Content: Quotation | Author: Phil Dourado | Source: CEO Refresher | Subjects: Fear / Doubt, Leadership, Organizational Behavior

Whenever a new idea might affect resources, power, control or turf, politics will be part of the problem at the implementation stage. You need to prepare an idea-selling campaign, not just a presentation.

Content: Quotation | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Change Management, Persuasion

Conventional wisdom is often long on convention and short on wisdom.

Content: Quotation | Source: Business Pundit | Subject: Wisdom

The problem — and the essence of what makes forecasting hard — is that human nature is hardwired to abhor uncertainty. We are fascinated by change, but in our effort to avoid uncertainty we either dismiss outliers entirely or attempt to turn them into certainties that they are not.

Content: Quotation | Sources: Harvard Business Review, Six Rules for Effective Forecasting | Subjects: Decision Making, Future

The packaging of big ideas can sometimes add as much value as the content itself.

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Teaching, Thought

The source, modification and directional flow of knowledge are the three things around which today’s firms have to organize.

Content: Quotation | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Knowledge, Organizational Behavior

When a company faces an adaptive challenge, the locus of responsibility for problem solving must shift to its people. Innovative and well-adapted solutions reside in the collective intelligence of employees at all levels, who need to use one another as resources, often across boundaries, and learn their way towards solutions.

Content: Quotation | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Problems / Solutions

Most organizations staff their problems and starve their opportunities. When people begin to start talking about problems, I say, ‘No, wait a minute. Let’s first look at the opportunities.’

Content: Quotation | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Opportunity, Problems / Solutions

If one is to properly understand events and to influence the future, it is essential to master four ways of looking at things: as they were, as they are, as they might become, and [most importantly] as they ought to be..

Content: Quotation | Source: The New Transnational HR Model: Building A Chaordic Organization | Subject: Future

Substance is enduring, form is ephemeral. Failure to distinguish clearly between the two is ruinous. Success follows those adept at preserving the substance of the past by clothing it in the forms of the future.

Content: Quotation | Source: The New Transnational HR Model: Building A Chaordic Organization | Subjects: Success / Failure, Wisdom

Strategic thinking is essentially a substitute for having clear connections between the positions we take and their economic outcomes.

Strategic thinking helps us take positions in a world that is confusing and uncertain. You can’t get rid of ambiguity and uncertainty-they are the flip side of opportunity. If you want certainty and clarity, wait for others to take a position and see how they do. Then … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Opportunity, Strategy

The thoughts of others
Were light and fleeting,
Of lovers’ meeting
Or luck or fame.
Mine were of trouble,
And mine were steady,
So I was ready
When trouble came.
– A.E. Houseman

You can say, who wants to go through life anticipating trouble? Well I did. All my life I’ve gone through life anticipating trouble. And here I am, going along in my 84th year and like Epectitus, I’ve had a … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: USC School of Law Commencement – May 13 | Subjects: Preparation, Wisdom

Darwin paid particular attention to disconfirming evidence. Objectivity maintenance routines are totally required in life if you’re going to be a great thinker. There, we’re talking about Darwin’s special attention to disconfirming evidence and also about checklist routines. Checklist routines avoid a lot of errors. You should have all this elementary wisdom and then you should go through a mental checklist in order to use … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: USC School of Law Commencement – May 13 | Subjects: Decision Making, Thought

If you would persuade, appeal to interest not to reason.

Content: Quotation | Author: Charlie Munger | Subject: Persuasion

The safest way to get what you want is to deserve what you want.

Content: Quotation | Source: USC School of Law Commencement – May 13 | Subjects: Goals, Wisdom

I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another and that is: I say that I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who support it. I think only when I’ve reached that state am I … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: USC School of Law Commencement – May 13 | Subjects: Decision Making, Wisdom

If you gave away every idea you ever had, people would still step up to ask you to help them, or do it for them. The same can’t be said if you don’t share with them at all. …As our friend Sean D’Souza likes to say, “Give the ideas. Sell the system.”

Content: Quotation | Source: GrokDotCom | Subjects: Competition, Information

There are two ways to persuade people. The first is by using conventional rhetoric, which is what most executives are trained in. It’s an intellectual process, and in the business world it usually consists of a PowerPoint presentation… The other way to persuade people – and ultimately a much more powerful way – is by uniting an idea with an emotion. The best way to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Persuasion, Storytelling