Quotes About Commitment

Level 5 leaders are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results.

Level 5 leaders display a workmanlike diligence - more plow horse than show horse.

those who strive to turn good into great find the process no more painful or exhausting than those who settle for just letting things wallow along in mind-numbing mediocrity.

those who strive to turn good into great find the process no more painful or exhausting than those who settle for just letting things wallow along in mind-numbing mediocrity. Yes, turning good into great takes energy, but the building of momentum adds more energy back into the pool than it takes out. Conversely, perpetuating mediocrity is an inherently depressing process and drains much more energy out of the pool than it puts back in.

If you create a place where the best people always have a seat on the bus, they're more likely to support changes in direction. For

It's not how you compensate your executives, it's which executives you have to compensate in the first place. If you have the right executives on the bus, they will do everything within their power to build a great company, not because of what they will "get" for it, but because they simply cannot imagine settling for anything less. Their

businesses. We will not make unrelated acquisitions. We will not do unrelated joint ventures. If it doesn't fit, we don't do it. Period.

It's not only the audacity of the goal but also the level of commitment to the goal that counts.

It takes discipline to say "No, thank you" to big opportunities.

So, the question of Why greatness? is almost a nonsense question. If you're engaged in work that you love and care about, for whatever reason, then the question needs no answer. The question is not why, but how.

James C. Collins

You don't get a chance to adjust and finagle, and decide that you really didn't intend to do that anyway, and readjust your objectives to make yourself look better. You never just focus on what you've accomplished for the year; you focus on what you've accomplished relative to exactly what you said you were going to accomplish—no matter how tough the measure. That was a discipline learned at Abbott, and that we carried into Amgen.3

If you spend your life keeping your options open, that's exactly what you'll do . . . spend your life keeping your options open.

Hedgehog Concept—disciplined action, following from disciplined people who exercise disciplined thought.

Sustained great results depend upon building a culture full of self-disciplined people who take disciplined action, fanatically consistent with the three circles.

True leadership only exists if people follow when they would otherwise have the freedom to not follow

to create great results requires a nearly fanatical dedication to the idea of consistency within the Hedgehog Concept.

For BHAG-driven people, the extended discomfort, the enduring quest, can itself be a form of bliss. When you commit to a BHAG, it lives with you.

Leadership is the art of getting people to want to do what must be done.

The ultimate definition of success in life is that your spouse likes and respects you ever more as the years go by. By that measure, more than any other, I hope to be as successful as she is.

SEALs routinely risk their own lives to never leave a fellow SEAL behind, not because of anything financial, but because of a sacred promise to each other. Imagine being in a culture in which you know with 100 percent certainty—not 90 percent, not 95 percent, not 99 percent, but absolutely 100 percent—that no matter what happens, you'll never be left behind.

In combat deployment (where he earned a Silver Star for bravery and two Purple Hearts), Smith gained the central insight that would power Federal Express from an idea into a viable business, from a business into a great company. Like Manchester, he realized that people will do unreasonable things to come through—not for grand ideas or incentives or bosses or hierarchies or even recognition, but for each other.

Yes, a noble purpose combined with audacious goals can do a lot to inspire our efforts. But in the end, we give our best when other people depend upon us to come through, when we cannot let them down.

It all starts with disciplined people. The transition begins not by trying to discipline the wrong people into the right behaviors, but by getting self-disciplined people on the bus in the first place.