Quotes About Growth

A wise man is capable of determining his weaknesses and working to address them

We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.

People are not being reached in the context of the body of Christ--they're like newborn babies being left on a doorstep somewhere to feed and care for themselves.

There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.

Effectiveness must be learned.

Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institution. Training and development must be built into it on all levels—training and development that never stop.

The focus on contribution by itself supplies the four basic requirements of effective human relations: communications; teamwork; self-development; and development of others.

You should not change yourself, but create yourself, that mean build around your strengths and removing bad habits

The one man to distrust, however, is the man who never makes a mistake, never commits a blunder, never fails in what he tries to do. He is either a phony, or he stays with the safe, the tried, and the trivial.

People in general, and knowledge workers in particular, grow according to the demands they make on themselves. They grow according to what they consider to be achievement and attainment. If they demand little of themselves, they will remain stunted. If they demand a good deal of themselves, they will grow to giant stature—without any more effort than is expended by the nonachievers.

We know very little about self-development. But we do know one thing: People in general, and knowledge workers in particular, grow according to the demands they make on themselves. They grow according to what they consider to be achievement and attainment. If they demand little of themselves, they will remain stunted. If they demand a good deal of themselves, they will grow to giant stature--without any more effort than is expended by the non-achievers.

Of all the important pieces of self-knowledge, understanding how you learn is the easiest to acquire.

Entrepreneurs, by definition, shift resources from areas of low productivity and yield to areas of higher productivity and yield. Of

An organization, a social artifact, is very different from a biological organism. Yet it stands under the law that governs the structure and size of animals and plants: The surface goes up with the square of the radius, but the mass grows with the cube. The larger the animal becomes, the more resources have to be devoted to the mass and to the internal tasks, to circulation and information, to the nervous system, and so on.

For every organization needs performance in three major areas: It needs direct results; building of values and their reaffirmation; and building and developing people for tomorrow.

If leaders are unable to slough off yesterday, to abandon yesterday, they simply will not be able to create tomorrow.

Any existing organization, whether a business, a church, a labor union, or a hospital, goes down fast if it does not innovate. Conversely, any new organization, whether a business, a church, a labor union, or a hospital, collapses if it does not manage. Not to innovate is the single largest reason for the decline of existing organizations. Not to know how to manage is the single largest reason for the failure of new ventures.

The brilliant insight is not by itself achievement

Actually, IBM went through a severe identity crisis. It almost missed the computer opportunity. It became capable of growth only through a palace coup which overthrew Thomas J. Watson, Sr., the company's founder, its chief executive, and for long years the prophet of "data processing.

taking pride in such ignorance is self-defeating.

It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence

The idea that growth is by itself a goal is altogether a delusion. There is no virtue in a company's getting bigger. The right goal is to become better. Growth, to be sound, should be the result of doing the right things. By itself, growth is vanity and little else.

Success always makes obsolete the very behavior that achieved it. It always creates new realities. It always creates, above all, its own and different problems. Only the fairy tale ends, "They lived happily ever after.

The top man who concludes that his company needs to grow but who also then realizes that he does not want to change himself and his behavior has, in conscience, only one line of action open to him. He has to step aside. Even if he legally owns the company, he does not own the lives of other people. A company is not a child—and even with a human child, the time comes when the parent has to accept that the child has grown up and needs to be independent and on his own.