leadership

  • It may seem odd to talk about something as soft and fuzzy as “passion” as an integral part of a strategic framework. But throughout the good-to-great companies, passion became a key part of the Hedgehog Concept. You can’t manufacture passion or “motivate” people to feel passionate. You can only discover what ignites your passion and the passions of those around you.

    The good-to-great companies did not say, “Okay, folks, let’s get passionate about what we do.” Sensibly, they went the other way entirely: We should only do those things that we can get passionate about.

    — Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t by Jim Collins

  • Do you cling to the idea that you the leader are the one who sets the vision and drives your people to pursue new and useful solutions? Or do you see yourself as someone who creates a place that elicits people’s slices of genius and turns them into collective genius?

    — Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation by Linda A. Hill, Greg Brandeau, et al.

  • The goal of business should not be to do business with anyone who simply wants what you have. It should be to focus on the people who believe what you believe. When we are selective about doing business only with those who believe in our WHY, trust emerges.

    — Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek

  • Change for the better is not just possible, but absolutely necessary. A good leader cannot sit and watch things carry on as usual without sorting out how transformation can occur. In all of my years in this industry, across companies large and small, I have never seen a team that doesn’t need to change and evolve over time.

    — Engineering Management for the Rest of Us by Sarah Drasner

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