books.
Living the 80/20 Way. By Richard Koch
•Axiom: Only excited people can excite customers over the long haul. Corollary: to cause our colleagues to be excited we must putand keepthe maintenance of their well-being and their opportunity structure at the top of our agenda.
•Hang out Axiom: We are unequivocallywho we hang out with. Hang out with interestingget more interesting. Hang out with dullbecome more dull.
•You become like the five people you associate with the most.
•Do one thing every day that scares you. Eleanor Roosevelt
•Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. Helen Keller
•Do you authorize/encourage everyone (100%) to break the rules a little bit so as to stretch for the customer?
•At every upper management group meeting, set aside a 15 minute block of time to discuss a dumbest thing weve done lately iteminsist that members bring very recent cases along for discussion.
•Have you in the last 30 days examined in detail your calendar to evaluate the degree to which time actually spent mirrors you espoused priorities?
•Take a look at tomorrows calendar. Find and underscore somethinganythingon that calendar that represents a small step toward something extreme. Something big. Something monumental. (And worry like hell if theres nothing!)
•Time is your only true resource. Manage your calendar religiously and rigorously. Nothing is of greater strategic importance.
•Have you invested as much this year in your career as your car?
•I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living, or get busy dying. Tim Robbins from The Shawshank Redemption
•You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not. Isabel Allende
•The two most powerful things in existence: a kind word and a thoughtful gesture. Ken Langone, founder of Home Depot
•Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Steve Jobs, Apple
oDo those served grow as persons?
oDo they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?
•The 4 most important words in management areWhat do you think?
•The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated. William James
•I regard apologizing as the most magical, healing, restorative gesture human beings can make. It is the centerpiece of my work with executives who want to get better. Marshall Goldsmith
•Success = consult everyone, on everything. Thank everyone, all the time.
•Sucking down is more important than sucking upthe idea is to have the entire underbelly of the organization working for you.
•What you decide not to do is probably more important than what you decide to do.
•Bizarre but true: Our most loyal customers are ones who had a problem with us and then marveled when we went the Extra 10 Miles at the Speed of Light to fix it!
•Business opportunity Number 1 = Irate customers converted into outspoken fans.
•Experiment fearlessly! Develop a culture of relentless experimenting.
•Blame no one. Expect nothing. Do something. Locker room sign posted by football coach Bill Parcels
•There are 3 flavors of leaders:
oThe Visionary: lives/embodies the projects scintillating promise and sells it 24/7
oThe Networker: creates and oversees the political ecosystem and actually knits people together in order to make things happen
oThe Mechanic: loves and lives for the budget, the schedule and the 1,000 admin details that are the lifeblood of day to day team efficiency.
•Definition of a boss: Chief Hurdle Removal Officer
•Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission. Peter Drucker
•Great leaders move us. They ignite our passion and inspire the best in us. When we try to explain why they are so effective, we speak of strategy, vision or powerful ideas. But the reality is much more primal: Great leadership works through the emotions. Daniel Goleman
•Development can help great people become even betterbut if I had a dollar to spend, Id spend 70 cents getting the right person in the door. Googles VP of Leadership & Development
•The principal determinant of worker satisfaction goes hands down towhether or not the employee gets along with his or her first-line supervisor.
•HRs Big Three
oHiring = most important business decisions
oTwo promotion decisions per year = Leaders Legacy
oFirst-line supervisors = Keystone to employees morale and satisfaction and productivity
•He or she who tries the most stuffwins!
•The signature of our work and the vitality of our network will determine our professional fate.
•Distinct or extinct!
•Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.
•I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. Michael Jordan
•The Best Story Wins! In life, in business, in front of the jury, in front of the congregation; he who has the best/ most compelling, most resonant story wins.
•I never give presentations. I do tell stories. Give up presentationstell more stories.
•If you cant describe your position in eight words or less, you dont have a position. Seth Godin
•You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Dale Carnegie
•Success key #1: make friends. Pointedlythat is, consciously and measurably and carefullytrack your investments in friend-making; think about friend-making in the same way you would think about any investment process.
•He who writes the Agenda and Summary document wields incredible power. The agenda is in and of itself a group to-do list. Concocting the agenda/summary is typically a crappy task, unwanted by one and almost all. My message: grab it!
•The business of leaders at all levels is to help those in their charge develop beyond their dreamswhich in turn almost automatically leads to all that other stuff, such as happy customers, happy stockholders, happy communities.
•What did I specifically do today to be of service to members of my group? Was I truly a servant to them?
•Here are two exam questions that Robert Greenleaf urges leaders to ask concerning the people on their teams:
Ways to Pursue Excellence
Our most loyal customers are ones who had a problem with us and then marveled when we went the Extra 10 Miles at the Speed of Light to fix it!
