May 31, 2009

"Consumers build an image [of a brand] as birds build nests. From the scraps and straws they chance upon."

- Stephen King, WPP Group

May 30, 2009

"Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it's not going to get the business."

- Warren Buffett

May 29, 2009

"A brand should strive to own a word in the mind of the consumer."

- Al Reis

May 28, 2009

"Talent only matures when harnessed within a personality that is capable of self-improvement. And talent, ironically, has a nasty knack of protecting the talented from the urge to self-improve."

- Ed Smith

May 27, 2009

"Good leaders don't wait for official blessing to try things out. They're prudent, not reckless. But they also realize a fact of life in most organizations: if you ask enough people for permission, you'll inevitably come up against someone who believes his job is to say "no." So the moral is, don't ask. Less effective middle managers endorsed the sentiment, "If I haven't explicitly been told 'yes,' I can't do it," whereas the good ones believed, "If I haven't explicitly been told 'no,' I can." There's a world of difference between these two points of view."

- Colin Powell

May 26, 2009

"The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not a bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly."

- Jim Rohn

May 25, 2009

"Transformational leaders pick the right people, match them to the right jobs, achieve mutual clarity on the desired results, and then they get out of the way and leave the individual with maximum freedom to perform."

- Brian Tracy

May 24, 2009

"If you wish others to believe in you, you must first convince them that you believe in them."

- Harvey Mackay

May 23, 2009

"You can't run a popularity contest and be successful."

- Ara Parseghian

May 22, 2009

"Strategy equals execution. All the great ideas and visions in the world are worthless if they can't be implemented rapidly and efficiently. Good leaders delegate and empower others liberally, but they pay attention to details, every day."

- Colin Powell

May 21, 2009

"Business is dependent upon action. It cannot go forward by hesitation. Those in executive positions must fortify themselves with facts and accept responsibility for decisions based upon them. Often greater risk is involved in postponement than in making a wrong decision."

- Harry Hopf

May 20, 2009

"Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be."

- Goethe

May 19, 2009

"One of the greatest talents of all is the talent to recognize and to develop talent in others."

- Frank Tyger

May 18, 2009

"If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, we did it. If anything goes real good, you did it. That’s all it takes to get people to win football games."

- Bear Bryant

May 17, 2009

"No man ever achieved worthwhile success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure."

- Napoleon Hill

May 16, 2009

"Tolerance is the first principle of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think. No loss by flood and lightning, no destruction of cities and temples by the hostile forces of nature has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed."

- Helen Keller

May 15, 2009

"When a management team with a reputation for brilliance joins a business with poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact."

- Warren Buffett

May 14, 2009

"Any company that requires constant supervision is not a well-trained, well-managed, well-led company."

- Larry Winget

May 13, 2009

"Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives' decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake."

- Peter Drucker

May 12, 2009

"Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people."

- John D. Rockefeller

May 11, 2009

"I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism."

- Charles Schwab

May 10, 2009

It is said that little knowledge is a dangerous thing. At times, too much knowledge is even more dangerous! Many a radical and path-breaking ideas can be nipped in the bud due to too much knowledge and experience of the past. For a moment imagine the scene where a young turk diligently and passionately sells a radical and potentially path-breaking idea only to find instant rejection by a seasoned manager with over 25 years of experience. Sounds familiar?

The problem with knowledge, particularly excess of it, is that it is soaked in past. Unfortunately, what worked and did not work in past may be irrelevant to what may or may not work in future. Knowledge of the past and the experience, however rich, can help only if one is in sych with emerging trends and patterns of future.

Another problem with knowledge is that it is not permanent. It is not rigid and unchangeable. Knowledge is the nectar derived from intellectual exploration. The more exploration occurs, the more knowledge is created, at times nullifying the previous knowledge. Knowledge is a great servant if it is approached with an open and flexible mind.

So next time you feel like trashing an idea, think whether you are in sync with times or need to get your knowledge and experience updated. It is said that a Yale University management professor reacted to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service by saying "the concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than 'C', the idea must be feasible." Fred Smith went on to found Federal Express and created history!

"My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too."

- Jack Welch

May 9, 2009

"If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in yourwork. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seemingimpossibilities."

- Dale Carnegie

May 8, 2009

"People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily."

- Zig Zaglar

May 7, 2009

"Don't measure busywork. Don't measure activity. Measure accomplishment. It doesn't matter what people do as much as it matters what they get done."

- Larry Winget

May 6, 2009

"One of the surest signs of a bad or declining relationship is the absence of complaints from the customer. Nobody is ever that satisfied, especially not over an extended period of time. The customer is either not being candid or not being contacted-probably both. The absence of candor reflects the decline of trust and the deterioration of the relationship. Bad things accumulate. Impaired communication is both a symptom and a cause of trouble. Things fester inside. When they finally erupt, it's usually too late or too costly to correct the situation."

- Theodore Levitt

May 5, 2009

"The secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships."

- Leo Burnett

May 4, 2009

"A manager's task is to make the strengths of people effective and their weakness irrelevant--and that applies fully as much to the manager's boss as it applies to the manager's subordinates."

- Peter Drucker

May 3, 2009

"Before at GE, we generally used to tell people what to do. And they did exactely what they were told to do, and not one other thing. Now we are constantly amazed by how much people will do when they are not told to do by management."

- Jack Welch

May 2, 2009

"You are out of tune with the times if you are in the office more than one-third of the time."

- Tom Peters

May 1, 2009

"Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them."

- Paul Hawken