“A company should limit its growth based on its ability to attract enough of the right people.”
“A culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness.”
“All companies have a culture, some companies have discipline, but few companies have a culture of discipline. When you have disciplined people, you don’t need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don’t need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don’t need excessive controls. When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great performance.”
“Bad decisions made with good intentions are still bad decisions.”
“By definition, it is not possible to everyone to be above the average.”
“Comparison, a great teacher once told me, is the cardinal sin of modern life. It traps us in a game that we can’t win. Once we define ourselves in terms of others, we lose the freedom to shape our own lives.”
“Creativity dies in an undisciplined environment.”
“Faith in the endgame helps you live through the months or years of buildup.”
“Far more difficult than implementing change is figuring out what works, understanding why it works, grasping when to change, and knowing when not to.”
“For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.”
“Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great.”
“Great vision without great people is irrelevant.”
“Greatness is an inherently dynamic process, not an end point. The moment you think of yourself as great, your slide toward mediocrity will have already begun.”
“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.”
“If you have more than three priorities, then you don’t have any.”
“Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to all the right people, as they inevitably find themselves compensating for the inadequacies of the wrong people. Worse, it can drive away the best people.”
“Mediocrity results first and foremost from management failure, not technological failure.”
“Resiliency, not perfection, is the signature of greatness.”
“The good-to-great companies did not focus principally on what to do to become great; they focused equally on what not to do and what to stop doing.”
“The idea that leading in a “fast world” always requires “fast decisions” and “fast action” – and that we should embrace an overall ethos of “Fast! Fast! Fast!” – is a good way to get killed. 10X leaders figure out when to go fast, and when not to.”
“The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a hiring mistake. The best people don’t need to be managed. Guided, taught, led – yes. But not tightly managed.”
“The only way to deliver to the people who are achieving is to not burden them with the people who are not achieving.”
“The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline.”
“The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconstancy. The signature of greatness is a disciplined and consistent focus on the right things.”
“There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away. ”
“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.”
“To create an effective envisioned future requires a certain level of unreasonable confidence and commitment.”
“Visionary companies are so clear about what they stand for and what they’re trying to achieve that they simply don’t have room for those unwilling or unable to fit their exacting standards.”
“What separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.”
“When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great performance.”
“When you marry operating excellence with innovation, you multiply the value of your creativity.”
“You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts.”
“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”