Quote of the Week

In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later. – Harold Geneen

Quote of the Week

"People are definitely a company’s greatest asset. It doesn’t make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps." – Mary Kay Ash (founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics)

Quote of the week

"Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got."

-- Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005), US management consultant and academic

Quote of the week

“The successor must prepare for a job that doesn’t yet exist, in an era no one can fully foresee.”

-- Another Kind of Hero: Preparing Successors for Leadership by Craig E. Aronoff, Ph.D. and John L. Ward, Ph.D.

Quote of the week

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” 
-- Jack Welch  

           

Quote of the week

“Those who ignore the party/conversation/network when they are content and decide to drop in when they need the network may not succeed. It’s pretty easy to spot those that are just joining the network purely to take – not to give. Therefore, be part of the party/conversation/network before you need anything from anyone.”

– Jeremiah Owyang, Web-Strategist.com

Quote of the week

“You are the tool for social media, Twitter is just an app for you to grow and influence your society.”
– Razan Khatib

quote of the week . . .

“The intent of all governance tools is to enhance the capability of the family business system to produce distinctive resources for competitive advantage by driving ambiguity out of the system. This will specifically improve the system’s ability to generate high levels of trust.” 

-- Bill Alexander ”Good Governance: Impacting Your Bottom Line”

Quote of the week . . .

In a world of uncertainty, our guiding philosophy is: Take Charge. If nobody knows what the future will hold, your vision of how to navigate it is as good as anyone's. The future may as well belong to you."
-- Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian MacMillan, authors of The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty.

Quote of the week

“Bo Burlingham reminds us of a vital truth: big does not equal great, and great does not equal big.”
--Jim Collins, coauthor of Built to Last and author of Good to Great.

Quote of the week

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”
--Dwight Eisenhower

Quote of the week

“There is no such thing as a perfect leader, either in the past or present, in China or elsewhere. If there is one, he is only pretending, like a pig inverting spring onions into his nose in an effort to look like an elephant.”
—Liu Shao-Chi, Chinese politician

Quote of the week

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

--George S. Patton

Quote of the week

“Rare is the company that truly understands what its competitors and their decision makers care about most, how they perceive their assets and capabilities, and what all this means for their strategies.”

--Hugh Courtney, John T. Horn and Jayenti Kar, Getting into your competitor’s head, The McKinsey Quarterly, February 2009

Quote of the week

“When companies do make talent a priority, they often fall into another trap: focusing narrowly on HR systems and processes, which divert attention from the place where most of the obstacles lie: people’s heads. ‘Habits of mind are the real barriers to talent management,’ one financial-services executive confided.”

--Matthew Guthridge, Asmus B. Komm, and Emily Lawson, "Making Talent a Strategic Priority," The McKinsey Quarterly 2008, Number 1

Quote of the week

“For many companies . . . people are the prime source of competitive advantage. Talented people, in the right kind of culture, have better ideas, execute those ideas better – and even develop other people better. As Larry Bossidy, the CEO of Allied Signal told us, 'At the end of the day, we bet on people, not strategies.'”

-- Charles Fishman, the War for Talent

Quote of the week

“Done well, however, managing the boss becomes an essential platform for then leading the boss. Once the chief knows that a manager brings judgment and gets results, the way is clear for the manager to help lead the chief. But what that requires is a boss who wants it and a manager who can deliver it. Leading up requires an ability to work in two directions at once, of both stepping into the breach and listening to those below you before you step off a cliff yourself."

--Michael Useem, “Leading Your Boss,” The Economic Times, India, November 13, 2003

Quote of the week

“Unhappy customers don’t always complain-to you. Complaining customers are a godsend; they offer the opportunity to rectify the situation. Customer feedback-complaints and compliments are invaluable."

--Sam Geist, "What is your best item? Is it your 'best selling item' or your 'best-return-on-investment' item."

Quote of the week

“Recent history is filled with instances of family companies that failed to make it to the next generation because family members couldn’t resolve their differences and communicate successfully with one another. In a 1995 survey of 800 heirs of failed family businesses, conflict with family members in and out of the business and with non-family employees was viewed as a major cause of business failure."

--Joseph H. Astrachan, Ph.D. and Kristi S. McMillan, Conflict and Communication in the Family Business, 2003

Quote of the week

“In a family firm, the strands of the family system are so tightly interwoven with those of the business system that they cannot be distinguished without seriously disrupting one or both systems.”

--Elaine Kepner, “The Family and the Firm: A Coevolutionary Perspective.” Organizational Dynamics, Summer 1983