Quotes About Performance

We had been playing our assigned roles on the office stage, but stepping down from the stage, abandoning the images that we had been projecting there, we were both just unstable, awkward lumps of flesh, warm pieces of meat kitted out with digestive tracts and hearts and brains and reproductive organs.

They both loved piano music and were convinced that Beethoven's Sonata No. 32 was the absolute pinnacle in the history of music. And that Wilhelm Backhaus's unparalleled performance of the sonata for Decca set the interpretive standard.

A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.

Too many people work in ways that are not their ways, and that almost guarantees nonperformance.

Harvard Business School Press

Of course, you shouldn't ignore the challenges that individual team members may have presented along the way. If people were repeatedly late or uncooperative, let them know that you noticed that behavior. Help them understand that they will have a better time in the future if they can mend their ways. In your final report, make it plain that you would be glad to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of individual team members with future project leaders. Take

Executives also owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs. It may not be the employees' fault that they are underperforming, but even so, they have to be removed.

But when I calculated the ratio of technical skills, IQ, and emotional intelligence as ingredients of excellent performance, emotional intelligence proved to be twice as important as the others for jobs at all levels.

But Welch also thought through another issue before deciding where to concentrate his efforts for the next five years. He asked himself which of the two or three tasks at the top of the list he himself was best suited to undertake. Then he concentrated on that task; the others he delegated. Effective executives try to focus on jobs they'll do especially well. They know that enterprises perform if top management performs—and don't if it doesn't.

You're scared because you expect a lot from yourself and you're afraid you'll underperform.

The reality is that an innovation initiative must be executed by a partnership that somehow bridges the hostilities—a partnership between a dedicated team and what we call the performance engine, the unit responsible for sustaining excellence in ongoing operations. Granted, such an arrangement seems, at first glance, improbable. But to give up on it is to give up on innovation itself.

Uhlaner put in place a Growth and Performance Planning Process that starts with agreement by Ballmer's leadership team on a set of strategic themes—major issues like PC market growth, the entertainment market, and security—that cross business-unit boundaries.

When I thought about my old friends Linus Lucas and Theo, I realized they were not really criminals either. They were like me. We were just acting out the strangest, tragic little roles, pretending to be criminals in order to get by. We gave very convincing performances.

Training is for seals

Good directing is good writing and good casting.

No one looks at your hands to see how much they shake when you are interviewed to be a surgeon. The physical skills required are no greater than for writing cursive script. If an operation requires so much skill only a few surgeons can do it, you modify the operation to make it simpler.

I sing because I love singing. I perform because I love performing. I write because I actually enjoy writing.

My sister Kim is like Lucille Ball. She's magical in terms of her performance and her writing.

With musical theatre, although there are rules, they're so different to the ones I feel like I have accidentally been ingrained with writing pop music. The main point is to tell the story. You just have to make sure the character's voice is strong and the storytelling is strong.

We bled writing these songs, we bled in the studio, and now we're out bleeding getting them right live.

Writing is a very intimate thing, especially when you write lyrics and sing them in front of someone for the first time. It's like a really embarrassing situation. To me, singing is almost like crying, and you have to really know someone before you can start crying in front of them.

I really liked writing rhyming poems and plays.

I've always been aware that probably writing songs - stupid songs or, at least, theatrical songs - is, I dunno, I certainly don't think about that, about my persona on stage. In fact, I work really hard not to address it too much in my head.

I didn't have that thing that Michael Bolton did; my star power - my charisma - was not a match to my writing ability.