Quotes About Performance

Secure early wins. Early wins build your credibility and create momentum.

Mission is about what will be achieved, vision is about why people should feel motivated to perform at a high level, and strategy is about how resources should be allocated and decisions made to accomplish the mission.

Focus, too, on understanding the operating model, planning and performance evaluation systems, and talent management systems, because they often powerfully influence how you can most effectively have an impact.

Studies have found that more than 40 to 50 percent of senior outside hires fail to achieve desired results.

start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, and sustaining success. The STARS model

Finally, when your relationship with your boss has matured a bit (roughly the 90-day mark is a good rule of thumb), begin to discuss how you're doing.

I want to operate on a 90-day time frame, starting with 30 days to get on top of things," he told her. "Then I will bring you a detailed assessment and plan with goals and actions for the next 60 days." Michael updated her regularly on his progress. Pressed by her to make a call on a major systems purchase after three weeks, Michael held firm to his schedule. At the end of 30 days, he delivered a strong plan that pleased his new boss.

The expectations conversation. Your goal in this conversation is to understand and negotiate expectations. What does your new boss need you to do in the short term and in the medium term? What will constitute success? Critically, how will your performance be measured? When?

Underpromise and Overdeliver Whether you and your boss agree on expectations, try to bias yourself somewhat toward underpromising achievements and overdelivering results. This strategy contributes to building credibility. Consider how your organization's capacity for change might affect your ability to deliver on the promises you make. Be conservative in what you promise. If you deliver more, you will delight your boss.

They put me in the job because of my skills and accomplishments," the reasoning goes. "So that must be what they expect me to do here." This thinking is destructive, because doing what you know how to do (and avoiding what you don't) can appear to work, at least for a while. You can exist in a state of denial, believing that because you're being efficient, you're being effective. You may keep believing this until the moment the walls come crashing down around you.

If you want to sustain excellence over a long time, you'd better come up with a system that works well. Anyone can sprint for a little while, but you can't sprint for forty years.

It's not enough to hire to fill a job. It's not even enough to hire on the basis of one's talents. You have to hire based upon a candidate's potential to grow and develop.

These boots were made for dancing"(260)

Competitive forces = the underlying drivers of profitability P.25

High rivalry limits the profitability of an industry P.32

Managers must clearly distinguish operational effectiveness from strategy.

How to create competition on results throughout the system, and the kinds of information that need to be measured, analyzed, and disseminated, appear as recurring themes throughout this book.

Competing on results requires that results be measured and made widely available. Only by measuring and holding every system participant accountable for results will the performance of the health care system ever be significantly improved.

Hustling, the action, the performance, is embraced because it often provides the only relief from economic misery. The hustler is determined not to suffer silently and turns distress to opportunity.

The lecturer should give the audience full reason to believe that all his powers have been exerted for their pleasure and instruction.

Tests that take too long to run end up not being run.

94 per cent of us think we do above-average work.

I would define a Coarse Actor as one who can remember the lines but not the order in which they come. it is perhaps not an entirely satisfactory definition, and a close friend whom I regard as easily the most desperately bad actor in West Bromwich suggests that a Coarse Actor is one who can remember the pauses but not the lines.

Ralph Fiennes