Quotes About Leadership

You're openin' a mighty big can of worms, Judson Moon!

Left! Right! Left! Right!" Dr. Carbles yelled as we marched. "Stop lagging behind, kindergarteners!" Dr. Carbles had us march around the playground a million hundred times. I thought I was gonna die.

America must be in really bad shape if you elected me president. You better get it together and find some other qualified people to run this country or we'll all be in big trouble.

the man was Mr. Klutz, the principal of

George Washington was rich in land but not in money. When he became president of the United States, he had to borrow money from a friend to make the trip to New York City for

Stonewall Jackson led our troops," he said. "Nine months later, the Battle of Chancellorsville took place not far from here. One of our guys mistook Stonewall for a Union officer and fired a volley at him. A bullet shattered his arm, and it had to be amputated just below the shoulder. Then they buried the arm in its own grave.

We had to walk a million hundred miles back to class in single file. Everybody was being really quiet. Nobody wanted to get in trouble with Mr. Klutz. I looked around for Mr. Granite, but I couldn't find him.

Come on, A.J.

leaders should be wary of common sense, which can be a poor substitute for evidence.)

Asking questions will get you the performance you are after far more than dictating demands.

Any place with a founder who brings a teddy bear to meetings," he writes, "is a step away from Jonestown.

I'm worried," I tell him. "This place seems out of control." Harvey says everything I'm describing about HubSpot is absolutely normal. "You know what the big secret of all these start-ups is?" he tells me. "The big secret is that nobody knows what they're doing. When it comes to management, it's amateur hour. They just make it up as they go along.

A lot of these new start-up founders are somewhat unsavory people. The old tech industry was run by engineers and MBAs; the new tech industry is populated by young, amoral hustlers, the kind of young guys (and they are almost all guys) who watched The Social Network and its depiction of Mark Zuckerberg as a lying, thieving, backstabbing prick—and left the theater wanting to be just like that guy.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs used to talk about a phenomenon called a "bozo explosion," by which a company's mediocre early hires rise up through the ranks and end up running departments. The bozos now must hire other people, and of course they prefer to hire bozos.

Maybe the best way to do something really innovative is to hire a bunch of young people who have no experience and therefore no preconceived notions about how to run a company.

At Newsweek I worked for Jon Meacham, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Andrew Jackson. Here I work for a guy who brings a teddy bear to work and considers it a management innovation.

Have you transformed the way you innovate?" was Benioff's big line at the 2012 Dreamforce show. Note that you can switch the two buzzwords in the sentence and it still sounds good and still means nothing.

come-to-Jesus meeting in

I tell my board as little as possible," he says. "I treat them like mushrooms, I keep them in the dark and feed them shit. I don't want them meddling in my business and telling me what to do.

I've heard that Richard Branson will not invest in any company unless the person in charge has failed at least twice.

Bernie Marcus was fired from a job as manager of the Handy Dan Improvement Center, then went on to start Home Depot.

In golf, you keep your head down and follow through. In the vice presidency, you keep your head up and follow through. It's a big difference.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

The thing is, if you control the Senate meetings, you control the gavel. And the gavel is a very important instrument... an instrument of power. An instrument that establishes the agenda.