Quotes About Leadership

We must not try to become large in order to become powerful. We must become powerful in order to become large.

resources are directed by a governance mechanism that is separate from any given business unit.

What we will see, increasingly, is a core of individuals who represent the long-term interests of the organization (its leaders and long-term staff) guiding the efforts of other people whose attachment is more episodic.

When competitive advantages don't last, or last for a much shorter time than they used to, the strategy playbook needs to change. Leaders

Deconstructing reward systems, processes, legacy programs, structures, networks, and other elements used to deliver to an old advantage is not going to happen by accident and calls for real leadership.

I do think that creating the right foundation for your culture allows you to make changes as you need to make changes.

aggressively and frequently change the management team, a pattern found by consultancy Accenture.2

humans are much more like sheep than cats. They're easily led and they don't look where they're going until it's too late.

You know, women used to rule the world until they got men to do it for them.

Hooray! said the Chief of the Army. Let's blow everyone up! Bang-bang! Bang-bang!

Je n'approuve pas le meurtre, dit la reine. - Mais ce sont eux-mêmes des meurtriers, fit remarquer le chef de l'armée de terre. - Ce n'est pas une raison pour suivre leur exemple, répliqua la reine, ce ne sont pas deux torts conjugués qui feront valoir le bon droit. - Et deux bons droits ne font pas un bon gauche! s'exclama le BGG.

Mr. Wonka knows exactly what he's doing.

If anybody didn't have a messiah complex, it was Jesus

Why have the writings of the prophets endured? Because they fearlessly speak truth to power. They call out the injustice and oppression of the system gone wrong. They hold those in leadership accountable for the decisions they make.

When a leader comes along who eliminates the tension and dodges the paradox and neatly and precisely explains who the enemies are and gives black-and-white answers to questions, leaving little room for the very real mystery of the divine, it should not surprise us when that person gains a large audience. Especially if that person is really, really confident.

as the king rose from his seat, Ehud reached with his left hand, drew the sword from his right thigh and plunged it into the king's belly. Even the handle sank in after the blade, and his bowels discharged. Ehud did not pull the sword out, and the fat closed in over it. (That's in the Bible. Word for word.)

If anybody didn't have a Messiah complex, it was Jesus.

So is it not only that a person has to respond, pray, accept, believe, trust, confess, and do—but also that someone else has to act, teach, travel, organize, fund-raise, and build so that the person can know what to respond, pray, accept, believe, trust, confess, and do?

Step up to red alert. Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb. - Rimmer & Kryten, Red Dwarf

This is why you shouldn't hire your friends. It's all nice and professional until the insubordination starts. She sighed.

Luther King gave people "the feeling that they could be bigger and stronger and more courageous than they thought they could be," Bayard Rustin said—in part because of the powerful new weapon, non-violent resistance, that had been forged on the Montgomery battlefield.

the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, a liberal immigration bill, some seventy different education bills—they're all passed during the 1960s by President Lyndon Johnson.

We certainly see how government can work to your detriment today, but people have forgotten what government can do for you. They've forgotten the potential of government, the power of government, to transform people's lives for the better.

Nothing he has ever done has been tainted by legality [Robert Moses quoting an anecdote about himself].