Quotes About Leadership

Jamie Mai was tall and strikingly handsome and so, almost by definition, had the air of a man in charge—until he opened his mouth and betrayed his lack of confidence in everything from tomorrow's sunrise to the future of the human race.

The people in a position to resolve the financial crisis were, of course, the very same people who had failed to foresee it:

Once, he got himself invited to a meeting with the CEO of Bank of America, Ken Lewis. "I was sitting there listening to him. I had an epiphany. I said to myself, 'Oh my God, he's dumb!' A lightbulb went off. The guy running one of the biggest banks in the world is dumb!

Who cares what other people think?" says Alexander. "It's not their team.")

She spent huge amounts of time with the public-health nurses, for instance, and treated them not as subordinates but as teachers. She insisted on seeing patients directly, which was truly odd.

The gist of all three was that the CDC, under Robert Redfield, had been disgraced. It had let itself be used by the Trump administration to lead the United States in a direction opposite to the direction the United States had once led the world.

Chris, you and I are so smart that we can leave the victory party two hours early and do the transition ourselves.

The way to stop the captain from landing the plane in the wrong airport, Amos insisted, was to train others in the cockpit to question his judgment.

At other places management says, 'Well, gee, fellas, do we really want to bet the ranch on this deal?' Lewie was not only willing to bet the ranch. He was willing to hire people and let them bet the ranch, too. His attitude was: 'Sure, what the fuck, it's only a ranch.

it became clear that Trump's approach to government management was only a part of the story, and maybe not even the bigger part. As one of my characters put it, "Trump was a comorbidity.

You have to stay ahead of the public road map." The minute investors understood what you were doing, they held you in lower estimation.

I figured out that managers do all this shit because it is safe," said Alderson. "They don't get criticized for it.

Silicon Valley is to the United States what the United States is to the rest of the world.

It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control," said President Trump. "It's going to be just fine.

Once he had identified the new new thing, all he needed was some really smart, passionate engineers to chase after it and make it happen.

is the ceding of technical and scientific leadership to China. It is the innovation that never occurs, and the knowledge that is never created, because you have ceased to lay the groundwork for it. It is what you never learned that might have saved you.

orator Isocrates: "Democracy destroys itself

We want to empower the doctors and patients to get all the other assholes out of the way,' Clark had once told me, then laughed. 'Except for us. One asshole in the middle.

Slavitt renamed the plan "Victory over COVID-19" and presented it to Kushner as his own.

As Kat DeBurgh, head of the Health Officers Association of California, put it, "To do the job of local public-health officer, you basically always need to be willing to lose your job.

the CDC, under Robert Redfield, had been disgraced. It had let itself be used by the Trump administration to lead the United States in a direction opposite to the direction the United States had once led the world.

What happens when the people in charge of managing these risks, along with the experts who understand them, have no interest in them?

The computer model gave the governor little choice but to shut down the entire state, and take responsibility for what should have been a national decision, because neither the Centers for Disease Control nor the president of the United States had the nerve to make it.

People don't understand that a bungled transition becomes a bungled presidency.