Quotes About Teamwork

Your people give their days (and sometimes their nights) to you. They give their hands, brains, and hearts. Sure, the company pays them. It fills their wallets. But as a leader, you need to fill their souls. You can do that by getting in their skin, by giving the work meaning, by clearing obstacles, and by demonstrating the generosity gene. And you can do it, perhaps most powerfully, by creating an environment that's exciting and enjoyable.

Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence.

RULE 2. Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.

The boss would be present at the beginning of each session, laying out the rationale for the Work-Out. He or she would also commit to two things: to give an on-the-spot yes or no to 75 percent of the recommendations that came out of the session, and to resolve the remaining 25 percent within thirty days. The boss would then disappear until the end of the session, so as not to stifle open discussion, returning only at the end to make good on his or her promise.*

From my days in the Pit, I learned that the game is all about fielding the best athletes. Whoever fielded the best team there won. Reuben Gutoff reinforced that it was no different in business. Winning teams come from differentiation, rewarding the best and removing the weakest, always fighting to raise the bar. I was lucky to get out of the pile and learn this my very first year at GE—the hard way, by nearly quitting the company.

Los líderes existen, en gran medida, para dar sentido —propósito— a sus equipos; para, de manera incansable, apasionadamente, explicar: «Vamos hacia allí. Por tal y tal motivo. Así es como vamos a llegar. Así es como encajas tú. Y esto es lo que vas a ganar con todo esto».

to try to get it all done before you came.' 'Can't I help? I'm absolutely

work in tandem—and that means we pedal in different directions, most

The general rule in the case where a TEM can choose to take a project is simply to avoid toxic projects. Teams that are unwilling to be equal partners in quality should be left on their own to do their own testing. Teams unwilling to commit to writing small tests and getting good unit-level coverage should be left to dig their graves in peace.

A) TRY TO GET THE PEOPLE WORKING FOR YOU TO BE MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN YOU

When I was running a software company, we always knew it would take one great programmer to solve a hard problem in one night versus 10 mediocre programmers taking a month to screw up a problem even worse.

It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don't know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.

The good-to-great companies made a habit of putting their best people on their best opportunities, not their biggest problems. The comparison companies had a penchant for doing just the opposite, failing to grasp the fact that managing your problems can only make you good, whereas building your opportunities is the only way to become great. There is an important

Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people. The management team

You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit. —

Second, if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away.

A true BHAG (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals) is clear and compelling, serves as a unifying focal point of effort, and acts as a catalyst for team spirit. It has a clear finish line, so the organization can know when it has achieved the goal; people like to shoot for finish lines. A BHAG engages people—it reaches out and grabs them. It is tangible, energizing, highly focused. People get it right away; it takes little or no explanation.

The best people don't need to be managed. Guided, taught, led—yes. But not tightly managed.

if I start with the right people, ask them the right questions, and engage them in vigorous debate, we will find a way to make this company great.

When you have disciplined people, you don't

Consensus does not equal unanimity! Too many managers have interpreted consensus to mean 100% unanimity. Not every person must agree with the decision for there to be consensus; there only needs to be general agreement. General agreement is significantly higher than a 51% majority, but usually falls short of 100% unanimity. It is something that is sensed, rather than quantified. Once a consensus is reached, those who disagreed during the process must agree or get off the ship.

In general, the most effective leaders tend to make extensive use of participative decision making. The best decisions are made with some degree of participation—no one is brilliant or experienced enough to have all the answers. No one.

the primary challenge you face is not in increasing creativity per se, but in making your company receptive to the vast amounts of creativity that already exist. The point is not to build a company that depends on you for its innovation, but to continually work towards an organization that is as receptive to new ideas as if those ideas had come from you.

The "yes-men" problem is mentioned here. The author says that even though "yes-people" can be pleasing to a leader, they will be disastrous in the long term because they serve to obscure the real problems. The