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| A coach's job is to put players in positions where they can succeed. | Bill Parcells, football coach | People's value and their achievement varies greatly based on what they are asked to do. When they can achieve, they become happy and confident and achieve more. So rather than ask people to do things they manifestly cannot, restructure to put them where they are doing things they can. |
| The great prince issues commands, founds states, vests families with fiefs; inferior people should not be employed. | Nick Danger, third eye (the Firesign Theater, "O How Can You Be in Two Places At Once..." |
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| You can observe a lot just by watching. | Yogi Berra, baseball great | When analyzing a problem, start with what you know, not what you think -- observations, not prejudices. |
| It ain't over 'til it's over. | Yogi Berra, sage | A task is not finished, a transaction is not closed, a result is not achieved, until it is completed. 90% completion is 0% success. |
| Watch the feet, not the hands. | Basketball maxim on playing defense | People often suggest they might do this or that, but you can derive their motives from what they actually do or start to do. |
| When you commit a major crime you got fifty ways you can fuck up, and if you can think of 25 of them you're a genius, and -- counselor? -- you ain't no genius. | Petty arsonist (Mickey Rourke), BODY HEAT | Any new challenging endeavor is enormously complicated and you are doing it for the first time, so seek out someone who has had extensive experience doing. |
| Don't get mad, don't get tired, don't go away. | Bill Russell, basketball great, explaining Moses Malone's approach to rebounding | In any sustained campaign of persuasion, you must be rational in your pursuit, consistently unflagging in your approach and commitment, and persistent for the whole duration. |
| You can't teach height. | Bill Russell, on rebounding talent | While everyone can be trained, employees either have aptitude (intelligence) or they do not. When in doubt, hire the talent rather than the polish. |
| It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the facts. | Sherlock Holmes, "The Adventure of the Second Stain" | It is tempting to design solutions before you have all elements of the problem. Time spent scoping assignments is always worth while. Scope the assignment before quoting the fee. |
| Only one thing matters in this life -- get them to sign on the line which is dotted! | Sales manager (Alec Baldwin), GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS | Talk is cheap; what counts are contracts or agreements. Until you have the prospect at the signature point, you cannot find out how genuinely interested the prospect is. Drive to a point where you find out if the prospect is real. |
| A-B-C: Always Be Closing. | Sales manager (Alec Baldwin), GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS | Make sure you know what your goal is and are always moving toward it. |
| History is made at night; character is what you are in the dark! | Lord John Whorfin (John Lithgow), THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI | Everyone is a good person when times are easy; people's true mettle is revealed under stress. |
| We'll get it back. We'll get it back. | Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller), BUCKAROO BANZAI | The leader must convey calm and confidence especially when things have just gone wrong. |
| Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time it's enemy action. | Auric Goldfinger, billionaire, GOLDFINGER | Three observations of the same fact pattern or insight signal a trend, and trends should guide your decision-making. |
| The whole point of a doomsday device is lost, if you keep it a secret! | Dr. Strangelove, presidential advisor | In situations where you have potential negotiating leverage, you are best off displaying what you know or have early. If it is a bluff, the sooner you know that, the better; if it is not a bluff, the sooner they know that, the better. |
| Open covenants openly arrived at. | Woodrow Wilson, proposal for international dealing | In your dealings with others, the more truth you tell, the better, especially in decision-making, because an open process has more legitimacy and therefore generates buy-in from the participants even if the decision goes against them. |
| Sincerity is the key; if you can fake that, you've got it made. | George Burns (or Jean Giraudoux) | Negotiation is predicated on trust and that in turn is predicated on candid conversation. So essential is sincerity that, notwithstanding the joke, if you cannot summon it up, do not start the dialog. |
| Do or do not; there is no try. | Yoda, Jedi master, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK | When called upon for a task, either say Yes (and meet your deadline) or No (you cannot achieve it), but to say Yes and then not achieve it is much worse than saying No before you start. |
| Politics is about not the best possible result but the best result possible. | Hoary maxim heard in Washington, D.C. | Strategies must always be tested against their implementability. Some brilliant strategies will fail because they demand too much from those called upon to execute them. Better is to design the most sophisticated strategy still within the executors' capabilities. |
| No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. | Von Moltke (Prussian general) | No matter how well we plan our strategy, other participants will behave in unexpected ways. Any strategy planned in advance will necessarily require changes on the fly. |
| What major issues influenced your decisions? "Events, dear boy, events." | Harold Macmillan, British prime minister | Surprises always happen, and the longer the gestation period, the more certain there will be some surprises. |
| When the facts change, sir, I change my mind. What do you do? | John Maynard Keynes, economist (testifying before Congress) | Make sure you properly appreciate new information or changed circumstances because they often change the optimal answer. |
| Tell the truth. It's easier to remember. | Attributed to Groucho Marx | Business dialog can function only when there is genuine communication, which is impaired either when some facts are withheld, or worse, when they are mis-stated. It may take some doing to find the right way to tell the truth, but it is the sole basis for enduring business relations. |
| Words matter. If you cannot say what you mean, then you cannot possibly mean what you say, and a gentleman always means what he says. | Delivered with exquisite stately pacing by Mr. Johnson (Peter O'Toole), tutor to young emperor Pu Yi, THE LAST EMPEROR | What is there to add? The true basis of clarity -- and if it makes you be thoughtful about what you say, all the better, because then you know you mean it. |
| Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. | The Red Queen, to Alice, in Through the Looking-Glass | Creating new things or doing anything hard requires some leap of faith. If you stop to test your faith, you never make the leap. Thus, in brainstorming, when you face a huge imponderable, you may need to make 'necessary' assumptions, quickly, and then see where they lead you. Then you can come back to the assumption and decide whether you want to believe in it. |
| If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly. | Macbeth, Macbeth, Act I, Scene 7 | Once you have determined that something unpleasant is inevitable, then (a) figure out what you need to do it completely ("If it were done when 'tis done"), and (b) do it promptly. Seldom do unpleasant tasks get easier when deferred -- and in fact, the longer you carry the unacted-upon secret, the more it distorts your other decision-making. |
| Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. | Small print on a rear-view mirror | Everyone is the hero of his own life. Our position distorts our perception, making things seem larger or smaller than they are. Before reaching a judgment, always take a moment to ask yourself whether your weighting of events is a function of your perspective. |
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He gives the kids free samples, because he knows full well, that today's young innocent faces, will be tomorrow's clientele. Doing well by doing good. |
Tom Lehrer, composer, THE OLD DOPE PEDDLER | Often the best way to attract business is to do some of the business for free. And in a related matter, giving away information, especially static compilations, can establish credibility and visibility, and reputation (deserved or undeserved) for good citizenship and being a helping hand. (And if it is true, so much the better.) It also makes you feel good, which is part of the reason we work. |
| My troubles come not in spies but in battalions. | Napoleon Bonaparte | Almost invariably, when a thing goes wrong it is connected to other things that will also go wrong. This has two consequences: (1) always correct problems early, before they spread, and (2) if you are trying to solve a complicated mess, it is sometimes very effective to start by making progress on the small things that can be immediately corrected. |
| If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there. | Lawrence Ferlinghetti | Meaningful in contrapositive: Unless you have a clear view of your destination, you have no means of choosing a course and you will not know when you have arrived there. Decide a vision of the goal before you start action. |
| Follow the money. | Deep Throat | Money proves intent and defines relationships, so when it changes hands, it shows genuine commitment. |
| And the dead were judged by what out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. | Book of Revelations, 20:12 | In any dispute adjudicated after the fact, the most persuasive evidence is contemporaneous writing. Control the case files, control the meeting notes, control the correspondence, and you win the downstream adjudication. |
| Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud, hatch out. | Emperor Claudius, I, Claudius | Transactions have a way of being a day of reckoning, when long lurking feuds are settled. You can avoid judgment only so long as you do not need someone else's consent ... and when you do, that long-forgotten slight will be remembered, with advantages. |
| Trust no one -- no one. | Herod Agrippa, I, Claudius | Business is not about trust but about well-defined relationships, functional contracts, and mutual benefit. |
| You trust your mother but you cut the cards. | Rabblerouser reformer Mother Jones | In negotiation, when told something hopeful or surprising, accept it for discussion ... and then verify it later before making any binding commitments. |
| Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. | Barry Goldwater | Agreements that are not enforced will be ignored and are worse than useless. |
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"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many things." "The question is which is to be master -- that's all." |
Humpty Dumpty, Alice in Wonderland | Not only do words matter, they can easily mean different things to different people, unless their definitions are agreed upon. Before embarking on any complicated, contentious, or difficult dialog, make sure all terms are defined ahead of time. |
| We ain't in the coke business, we're in the cash business. | Kidnappers, MIAMI VICE | Organizations succeed when they recognize their area of specialization and stay within it, not being distracted by out-of-strike zone possibilities, no matter how tempting. |
| Hear one, see one, do one. | Medical school approach to teaching surgery | An excellent method of teaching: (1) describe it to the student, (2) demonstrate it before the student, and (3) have the student try it. |
| Never up, never in. | Golf, putting maxim | You never accomplish something difficult unless you give yourself a genuine chance, so give it a real try. |