Quotes About Impact

Two hundred people, of course, can do a great deal more work than one man. But it does not follow that they produce and contribute more.

bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.

Knowledge work is not defined by quantity. Neither is knowledge work defined by its costs. Knowledge work is defined by its results.

The truly important events on the outside are not the trends. They are changes in the trends.

3. Finally, don't try to innovate for the future. Innovate for the present! An innovation may have long-range impact; it may not reach its full maturity until twenty years later.

The greatest wisdom not applied to action and behaviour is meaningless data

Profit is not the purpose of a business, but rather the test of its validity.

An organization is not, like an animal, an end in itself, and successful by the mere act of perpetuating the species. An organization is an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makes to the outside environment.

He looks up from his work and outward toward goals. He asks: "What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?" His stress is on responsibility.

Knowledge workers who do not ask themselves, "What can I contribute?" are not only likely to aim too low, they are likely to aim at the wrong things. Above all, they may define their contribution too narrowly.

They are, therefore, not overly impressed by speed in decision-making. Rather they consider virtuosity in manipulating a great many variables a symptom of sloppy thinking. They want to know what the decision is all about and what the underlying realities are which it has to satisfy. They want impact rather than technique, they want to be sound rather than clever.

Anyone who knows Western businesses, government agencies, or educational institutions knows that their managers make far too many small decisions as a rule. And nothing causes as much trouble in an organization as a lot of small decisions.

I have called "executives" those knowledge workers, managers, or individual professionals who are expected by virtue of their position or their knowledge to make decisions in the normal course of their work that have significant impact on the performance and results of the whole.

An organization is an organ of society and fulfills itself by the contribution it makes to the outside environment.

The question is: how to be useful!" A great teacher can change your life in thirty seconds.

And you seem to spend a lot of energy on the question of how to be successful. But that is the wrong question." He paused, then like the Zen master thwacking the table with a bamboo stick: "The question is: how to be useful!" A great teacher can change your life in thirty seconds.

The focus on contribution counteracts one of the basic problems of the executive: the confusion and chaos of events and their failure to indicate by themselves which is meaningful and which is merely "noise." The focus on contribution imposes an organizing principle. It imposes relevance on events.

Effective executives concentrate on the few major areas where superior performance will produce outstanding results.

These apparently low-level decisions are extremely important in a knowledge-based organization.

The effective executive knows that it is easier to raise the performance of one leader than it is to raise the performance of a whole mass.

What does the situation require? Given my strengths, my way of performing, and my values, how can I make the greatest contribution to what needs to be done? And finally, What results have to be achieved to make a difference?

THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME will always be controversial.

The words of history are also the words of war.

I strongly suspect that if we saw all the difference even the tiniest of our prayers to God make, and all the people those little prayers were destined to affect, and all the consequences of those effects down through the centuries, we would be so paralyzed with awe at the power of prayer that we would be unable to get up off our knees for the rest of our lives.