Leadership Quotes

They say President Wilson has blundered. Perhaps he has, but I notice he usually blunders forward.

The very first thing an executive must have is a fine memory. Of course it does not follow that a man with a fine memory is necessarily a fine executive. But if he has the memory he has the first qualification, and if he has not the memory nothing else matters.

My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.

It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.

Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could.

If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don't have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.

Strategy is figuring out what not to do.

If you want to hire great people and have them stay, you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy. The best ideas have to win.

You've got to have a problem that you want to solve; a wrong that you want to right.

I'm not dismissing the value of higher education; I'm simply saying it comes at the expense of experience.

Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

You have to be burning with "an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right." If you're not passionate enough from the start, you'll never stick it out.

Manage the top line: your strategy, your people, and your products, and the bottom line will follow.

Find people who are competent and really bright, but more importantly, people who care exactly about the same things you care about.

You cannot mandate productivity, you must provide the tools to let people become their best.

We've got to make the small things unforgettable.

Companies must have a noble cause, and it's the leaders job to transform that noble cause into such an inspiring vision, that it will attract the most talented people in the world to want to join it.

My job is to make the whole executive team good enough to be successors, so that's what I try to do.

Ask for feedback from people with diverse backgrounds. Each one will tell you one useful thing. If you're at the top of the chain, sometimes people won't give you honest feedback because they're afraid. In this case, disguise yourself, or get feedback from other sources.