651 Posts Found

The Curse of Knowledge says that once we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine what it was like not to know it. And that, in turn, makes us communicate to others like speakers of a foreign language. We forget to translate.

Content: Quotation | Source: MarketingProfs | Subjects: Communication, Knowledge

The most basic way to get someone’s attention is this: Break a pattern. Humans adapt incredibly quickly to consistent patterns. Figure out what is counterintuitive about the message-i.e., What are the unexpected implications of your core message? Communicate your message in a way that breaks your audiences’ guessing machines.

Content: Quotation | Source: Business Pundit | Subjects: Attention, Marketing / Sales

Youth is not a time of life – it is a state of mind; it is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over love of ease.

Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Quest for Prosperity: The Life of a Japanese Industrialist | Subjects: Life, Wisdom

Gratitude for blessings is the most exalted of all virtues. The measure of one’s existence is enhanced in proportion to the strength of his spirit of gratitude.

We all feel some degree of gratitude. I have always thought that young people who feel strongly the sense of gratitude are the ones who will grow and accomplish the most.

Content: Quotation | Source: Quest for Prosperity: The Life of a Japanese Industrialist | Subjects: Life, Wisdom

Not only spiritual peace but material abundance is necessary if the quality of human life is to be better and people are to be happier. You may be spiritually enlightened, but if you are deprived of certain material comforts you will find it hard to survive. And of course, the greatest abundance of material wealth is worthless unless you enjoy fulfillment and a purpose in … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Quest for Prosperity: The Life of a Japanese Industrialist | Subject: Life

The principal obstruction to what we want most is ourselves. Our tendency, when we stand where we are and look toward what we want, is to see all kinds of obstructions imposed from without. When we change our point of view and look backward at where we are from where we want to be, in many cases the obstructions disappear.

Content: Quotation | Source: Rotman Magazine | Subjects: Ability, Perception

As a resource, knowledge is totally different from the other resources economists have studied before. To begin with, it’s intangible, and it’s not depletable: the more we use it, the more we can create. The fact that knowledge is inherently inexhaustible knocks a gigantic hole in the economics that grew out of the industrial era. And, by and large, our economists haven’t caught up with … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Rotman Magazine | Subjects: Economics, Knowledge

Bureaucratic institutions in both the private and public sector break up knowledge and its components, storing and processing them in separate compartments, or ‘stovepipes’. Over time, these stovepipes multiply, as ever-more narrow specialization increases the number of uncrossable boundaries. This makes it extremely difficult to cope with fastchanging new problems requiring knowledge that falls beyond artificial departmental borders.To complicate matters, guarding each stovepipe is an … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Rotman Magazine | Subjects: Bureaucracy, Knowledge

Knowledge is the treasure, but judgement is the treasurer of a wise man.

Content: Quotation | Source: LeaderValues | Subjects: Judgement, Knowledge

Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.

Content: Quotation | Source: LeaderValues | Subjects: Action, Vision

Everybody knows that you need more prevention than treatment, but few reward acts of prevention. We glorify those who left their names in history books at the expense of those contributors about whom our books are silent. We humans are not just a superficial race (this may be curable to some extent); we are a very unfair one.

Content: Quotation | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Problems / Solutions

The way we’ve taught managers to make decisions and consultants to analyze problems condemns them to taking action when it’s too late. The only way you can look into the future is with theory. And that’s a big leap for managers to take.

The key to good theory is good categorization–understanding the circumstances you’re in, and the circumstances you’re not in.

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Decision Making, Problems / Solutions

Theory of Embedded Wrongs: If a problem has been around a long, long while, and there’s a dominant prevailing notion as to what will cure it, the answer is almost inevitably wrong.

Content: Quotation | Source: Global Province | Subject: Problems / Solutions

Much of the information needed to diagnose the cause of a problem invariably comes from the people associated with the problem. To get the needed information requires asking the right questions of the right people and then having the discipline to be quiet and listen closely. Determining the right questions to ask too often gets short shrift, with predictable consequences for results.

Content: Quotation | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: Problems / Solutions

The key to changing minds is to introduce conflicting ideas and create “constructive confusion.” Only after confusion has been attained can clarity appear.

Content: Quotation | Source: Across the Board (ATB) | Subjects: Change Management, Persuasion

Scenarios are, in the end, simply a best guess at the future, tempered by informed judgment as to how trends may play out over time. The risk here is that it is very easy to believe the future that plays into our own set of biases. Compounding this is the absence of any way of predicting when discontinuities might logically occur or what their impact … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Future, Strategy

The way to an interesting life is to stay on the steep part of the learning curve.

Content: Quotation | Source: The Wilson Quarterly | Subjects: Learning, Life

I try to argue as if I am right, but listen as if I am wrong.

Content: Quotation | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Communication, Persuasion

My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.

Content: Quotation | Source: Unknown | Subject: Future

A problem well stated is a problem half solved.

Content: Quotation | Source: Unknown | Subject: Problems / Solutions