Quotes About Leadership

Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni.

What got worked on was based on who yelled the loudest or most often, who could engineer the best side deals with the expediters, or who could get the ear of the highest ranking executive.

She wonders what is happening: Too many promises to the market? Bad engineering leadership? Bad product leadership? Too much technical debt? Not enough focus on architectures and platforms that enable developers to be productive?

As someone wise once told me, 'Messiahs are good, but scripture is better.

Before, I was merely worried that it Operations was under attack by Development, Information Security, Audit, and the business. Now, I'm starting to realize that my primary managers seem to be at war with each other, as well. What will it take for us to all get along?

There's a chain of command: gripes go up, not down.

For the last decade, like clockwork, new CIOs would come and go every two years. They stay just long enough to understand the acronyms, learn where the bathrooms are, implement a bunch of programs and initiatives to upset the apple cart, and then they're gone. CIO stands for "Career Is Over." And VPs of IT Operations don't last much longer.

Erik then grows still and merely says, "To fix your problem, you need to do a lot more than just learning how to say no. That's the tip of the iceberg.

Psychological safety slips away so easily, like when the leader micromanages, can't say 'I don't know,' or acts like a know-it-all, pompous jackass. And it's not just leaders, it's also how one's peers behave.

By removing blame, you remove fear; by removing fear, you enable honesty; and honesty enables prevention.

the Fourth Ideal of Psychological Safety. No one will take risks, experiment, or innovate in a culture of fear, where people are afraid to tell the boss bad news,

the leader's role is to create the conditions so their team can discover greatness in their daily work.

I need you to say no! We cannot afford to have this leadership team be order takers. We pay you to think, not just

Leaders are responsible for the design and operation of processes at a higher level of aggregation where others have less perspective and authority.

Picture this scenario: You are in an organization where everyone is making decisions, solving important problems every day, and teaching others what they've learned," Erik says. "Your adversary is an organization where only the top leaders make decisions. Who will win? Your victory is inevitable.

While we're dreaming big dreams here, let me say this," he continues. "In ten years, I'm certain every COO worth their salt will have come from IT. Any COO who doesn't intimately understand the IT systems that actually run the business is just an empty suit, relying on someone else to do their job.

Psychological safety slips away so easily, like when the leader micromanages, can't say 'I don't know,' or acts like a know-it-all,

this is what an effective network is all about—when you can assemble a group of motivated people to solve a big problem, even though the team looks nothing like the official org chart.

He said he thought it was important to think through problems clearly, and for him, writing things down enforced a logical rigor that he thought was very important for leaders to have.

now some of the best engineers in the company are working on making everyone else more productive. That's the way it should be, she thinks.

Doing this requires disruption and innovation, which puts us at odds with groups who are currently responsible for daily operations and the internal bureaucracies, and who will almost always win.

I've figured out that the trick to a long career in it Operations management is to get enough seniority to get good things done

but to keep your head low enough to avoid the political battles that make you inherently vulnerable. I have absolutely no interest in becoming one of the vps who just give each other PowerPoints all day long.

I had seen of Gus and the astronauts indicated that they had the "right stuff.