Quotes on leadership

Your brand is what other people say about you when you're not in the room.

Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.

The courage to be vulnerable is not about winning or losing, it's about the courage to show up when you can't predict or control the outcome.

I define a leader as anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential.

Lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless.

It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

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.

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Good is the enemy of great.

Begin with the end in mind.

The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement.

If there is any one "secret" of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time.

Efficiency is concerned with doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.

Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves — their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.

Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization. For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time.

There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction. Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.

It always seems impossible until it's done.

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.

Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Day by day, and at the end of the day—if you live long enough—like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve.

Don't be a know-it-all; be a learn-it-all.

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

Done is better than perfect.

What would you do if you weren't afraid?

Today's problems come from yesterday's solutions.

The true price of leadership is the willingness to place the needs of others above your own. Great leaders truly care about those they are privileged to lead and understand that the true cost of the leadership privilege comes at the expense of self-interest.

Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

Vision without execution is hallucination.