Quotes from Scott Berkun

Look for smart ways around a problem or faster ways to resolve them. Make effective use of the people around you instead of assuming you have to do everything yourself.

It's a shockingly recent notion that work and play should be mutually exclusive things. We learn about ourselves and each other through play, which helps us work together.

an essential part of many martial arts disciplines. Staying curious and open is what makes growth possible, and it requires practice to maintain that mindset. To keep learning, we have to avoid the temptation to slide into narrow, safe views of what we do.

It should never be a surprise that progress seems to slow as the finish line approaches, even if everyone is working just as hard as they were before.

an idea is a combination of other ideas.

meetings can be used to stay ahead, flagging issues before they become blockers.

Self-discovery is the process of learning about who you are as an individual, independent from your friends, family, employer, or nation.

When a culture shifts too far into faith in data, people with great intuitions leave. They'll find employment where their judgment is valued rather than remain as an annoyance in some powerful equation maker's report.

The answer is simple: design the user interface first. This is a mandate at any organization that makes things people love to use.

Knowing how much friction is needed and when to apply it is the skill that successful leaders, from the coach of a competitive basketball team to the conductor of an orchestra, must master.

Innovating comes at a price: it might be money, time, sanity, friends, or marriages, but there will definitely be one.

But long-term commitments demand short-term sacrifices. The question is, How willing are we to make the trade?

much of the boring machinery identified as management has more value for the manager's ego than the quality of work produced.

The most dangerous tradition we hold about work is that it must be serious and meaningless.

Most people listening to presentations around the world right now are hoping their speakers will end soon. That's all they want.

There must be someone challenging ideas in ways their creators don't necessarily like in order for those creators to see the blind spots in their thinking. Breakthroughs await in those blind spots.

Avoid letting anyone in your sphere of influence flail or panic. Stay calm, help others to stay calm, and work together

The best teachers use entertainment as a way to fuel teaching, not simply to make their students laugh.

The absence of dedicated quality assurance people made every employee accountable for quality, which is rare if there are many QA people around.

Passionate people love to feel like empowered underdogs.

The responsibility of people in power is to continually eliminate useless traditions and introduce valuable ones. An organization where nothing ever changes is not a workplace but a living museum.

safeguards don't make you safe; they make you lazy. People drive faster, not more slowly, in cars with antilock brakes. American football players take more risks, not fewer, because of their padding.

For example, if you tell me my job is to cook the french fries, I will resist anything that threatens the existence of french fries, since when they go away, so does my job. But if you tell me my job is to make side dishes for customers, I'll be open to changing from fries to onion rings or other side dishes, even ones we've yet to invent, since my identity isn't tied to a particular side dish but instead to the role side dishes play.

To understand who people really are, start a fire. When everything is going fine, you see only the safest parts of people's character. It's only when something is burning that you find out who people really are. Of course, it's wrong to set a fire on purpose, but if you have a small fire already burning, let it burn and see who, if anyone, complains, runs away, or comes to help.