LEADERSHIP IN BUSINESS

LEADERSHIP

Some of the best businesses and nonprofit CEOs I've worked with over a sixty-five-year consulting career were not stereotypical leaders. They were all over the map in terms of their personalities, attitudes, values, strengths, and weaknesses.

Peter Drucker

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

Steve Jobs

COMMITMENT

A commitment refers to any action taken in the present that binds an organization to a future course of action.

Entrepreneurs pursuing the same opportunity can make very different defining commitments, molding their companies in strikingly divergent ways.

Commitments that reinforce: are essential to building an efficient and disciplined company. They establish a clear corporate focus, decrease costs and help temper risks.
Commitments that transform: are Clear, Credible and Courageous

Donald N. Sull
Harvard Business Review—June 2003—OnPoint 3957
Managing by Commitments

We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little better.

Jeff Bezos

The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.

Thomas Edison

It's easy to have principles when you're rich. The important thing is to have principles when you're poor.

Ray Kroc

The only limit to your impact is your imagination and commitment.

Anthony Robbins

OPPORTUNITY

It's through curiosity and looking at opportunities in new ways that we've always mapped our path at Dell. There's always an opportunity to make a difference.

Michael Dell

Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently.

Henry Ford

I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among men the greatest asset I possess. The way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement.

Charles Schwab

ACTION

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.

Benjamin Disraeli

Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

Jack Welsh

To succeed in life in today's world, you must have the will and tenacity to finish the job.

Chin-Ning Chu

LEARNING

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

Bill Gates

I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.

Winston Churchill

One of the biggest lessons I've learned recently is that when you don't know what to do, you should do nothing until you figure out what to do because a lot of times you feel like you are pressed against the wall, and you've got to make a decision. You never have to do anything. Don't know what to do? Do nothing.

Oprah Winfrey

ENTREPRENEUR

Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that's exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking.

Anita Roddick

My son is now an "entrepreneur." That's what you're called when you don't have a job.

Ted Turner

STRENGTH AND BELIEF

If we are together nothing is impossible. If we are divided all will fail.

Winston Churchill

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

Charles Darwin

It doesn't matter who you are, where you come from. The ability to triumph begins with you. Always.

Oprah Winfrey

PARTNERSHIP AND SUCCESS

I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that, for you to gain, those you deal with should gain as well.

Alan Greenspan

There are a lot of things that go into creating success. I don't like to do just the things I like to do. I like to do things that cause my company to succeed. I don't spend a lot of time doing my favorite activities.

Twenty years and $40 billion. They seem like good round numbers.

Michael Dell

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.

Abraham Lincoln

MONEY

Grounded in sufficiency, money's movement in and out of our life feels natural. We can see that flow as healthy and true, and allow that movement instead of being anxious about it or hoarding. In sufficiency we recognize and celebrate money's power for good—our power to do good with it—and we can experience fulfillment in directing the flow toward our highest ideals and commitments. When we perceive the world as one in which there is enough and we are enough to make the world work for everyone everywhere, with no one left out, our money carries that energy and generated relationships and partnerships in which everyone feels able and valued, regardless of their economic circumstances.

Lynne Twist
The Soul of Money