Jan1: The question that faces the strategic decision-maker is not what his organization should do
tomorrow. It is: “What do we have to do today to be ready for an uncertain tomorrow?”
Jan2: The future will not just happen if one wishes hard enough.
Jan3: The long range is largely made by short-run decisions.
Jan4: Fish see the bait, but not the hook; men see the profit, but not the peril.
Jan5: Everything that is “planned” becomes immediate work and commitment.
Jan6: Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
Jan7: Abandonment must be practiced systematically.
Jan8: Fitting in is the greatest barrier to belonging.
Jan9: When five frogs are sitting on the log, and one decides to jump, how many frogs are now sitting on the log? Still five, if course, because deciding and acting are not the same thing.
Jan10: In looking for a husband for your daughter, says an old proverb, don’t ask: “Who’ll make the best husband for her?” Ask instead: “For which kind of a man would she make a good wife”?
Jan11: “Control” is an ambiguous word. Self-control means stronger motivation: a desire to do the best rather than just enough to get by. It means higher performance goals and broad vision.
Jan12: Objectives are not fate; they are direction. If objectives are only good intentions, they are worthless. They must degenerate into work.
Jan13: It is a sound principle that authority be commensurate responsibility.
Jan14: Equality is just a consequence of the Christian concept of human dignity. But the rewards graduated according to unequal performance and unequal responsibility.
Jan15: Organization is a tool. As with any tool, the more specialized its given task, the greater its performance capacity.
Jan16: Think globally, act locally.
Jan17: Knowledge without skill is unproductive.
Jan18: There can be winners only if there are losers.
Jan19: Above all our works require a habit of continuous learning.
Jan20: Some of the greatest impediments to effectiveness are the issues of yesterday, which still confine our vision.
Jan21: The challenge to executive is to coordinate efforts of all categories of workers.
Jan22: People are a resource and not just a cost.
Jan23: In knowledge work, the how only comes after the what has been answered.
Jan24: Spend sufficient time on the definition of a problem prior to making a decision.
Jan25: Information-based organizations require clear, simple, common objectives that translate into particular actions.
Jan26: Traditional organizations rest on hierarchy (command authority). Information-based organizations rest on responsibility.
Jan27: Accept responsibility for yourself and your team, including your goals, your relationships, and your communications.
Jan28: People continue to do in their new assignment what made them successful in the old one. then they suddenly become incompetent.
Jan29: “What do you want to be remembered for?” It pushes you to see yourself as a different person – the person you can become.
Jan30: The important thing is not that you have rank, but that you have responsibility. Everything else flows from that.
Jan31: “Where do I belong as a person?” Place yourself in the right organization.
Feb1: The devil finds work for idle hands.
Feb2: Provide dignity to everyone you work with simply because they are human beings.
Feb3: Those who perform love what they are doing.
Feb4: Pianists said that I practice until I have my life in my fingers.
Feb5: It is the purpose of the organizations to make human strength productive.
Feb6: The nonprofits are, of course, still dedicated to “doing good.” But they also realize that good intentions are no substitute for organization and leadership, for accountability, performance, and results.
Feb7: A clear, simple, and penetrating theory of organization, rather than intuition, characterizes the truly successful entrepreneur, the person who builds an organization that can endure and grow long after he or she is gone.
Feb8: Assumptions about environment, mission, and core competencies must fit reality, and all three areas have to fit one another.
Feb9: Some theories are si powerful that they last for a long time, but eventually every theory become obsolete and then invalid.
Feb10: A degenerative disease will not be cured by procrastination. It requires decisive action.
Feb11: What are the few things that your organization does superbly well? Stay focusedbon them.
Feb12: Eliminate activities that do not create value.
Feb13: Identify your organization’s core competencies. Determine whether they are improving or getting weaker.
Feb14: Keep support staff small and few.
Feb15: The problem is not wit technology. It is with mentality.
Feb16: Benchmarking for competitiveness.
Feb17: Faith enables man to die, but it also enables him to die.
Feb18: To describe the need is not to satisfy it. But describing the need gives specification for the desirable results.
Feb19: What is lacking to make effective what is already possible?
Feb20: Information is what holds an organization together.
Feb21: All organizations need a discipline that makes them face up to reality.
Feb22: Eventually every activity becomes obsolete.
Feb23: If leaders are unable to slough off yesterday, to abandon yesterday, they simply will not be able to create tomorrow.
Feb24: Knowledge Workers: Asset Not Cost.
Feb25: Knowledge work requires both autonomy and accountability.
Feb26: Decision makers need to factor into their present decisions the “future that has already happened.”
Feb27: As a rule, theory does not precede practice. Its role is to structure and codify already proven practice, so practice comes first.
Feb28: The efficiency and productivity of the human resources is not primarily skill; it is, first and foremost, an attitude.
Feb29: By their fruits ye shall know them.
Feb30: Organizations do not exist for their own sake.
Feb31: To know one’s strengths, to know how to improve them, and to know what one cannot do ㅡare the keys to continuous learning.
Mar1: A knowledge worker becomes obsolescent if he or she does not go back to school every three or four years.
Mar2: The educated person needs to bring knowledge to bear on the present, not to mention molding the future.
Mar3: Precisely because change is a constant, the foundations have to be extra strong.
Mar4: All have to think through what they owe to othersㅡand make sure that others understand.
Mar5: You never miss the water till the well runs dry.
Mar6: For some reason the ones we hurt the most are usually the ones we love the most.
Mar7: Above all, the bystander sees differently from the way actors and audience see. Bystanders reflect, and reflection is a prism rather than mirror; it refracts.
Mar8: Freedom is never a release and always responsibility.
Mar9: What matters is whether the leader leads in the right direction or misleads, NOT charisma.
Mar10: Provide room for failure.
Mar11: The most effective way to manage change successfully is to create it.
Mar12: Innovative ideas are like frogs’ egg: of a thousand hatched, only one or two survive to maturity.
Mar13: Prediction of future events is futile.
Mar14: It is not “risk-focused”; it is “opportunity-focused.”
Mar15: Create a true whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Mar16: When it rains manna from heaven, some people put up an umbrella. Others reach for a big spoon.
Mar17: Today’s certainties always become tomorrow’s absurdities.
Mar18: A change is something people do; a fad is something people talk about.
Mar19: Don’t dismiss something because this is not what you had planned.
Mar20: Everything new gets into trouble. And then it needs a champion.
Mar21: If we want to know what a school is, we have to start with its purpose: to recruit a student, and is meeting the needs of our students. (Byeong’s paraphrasing)
Mar22: The best plan is only good intentions unless it degenerates into work.
Mar23: The entrepreneurial disciplines are not just desirable; they are conditions for survival today.
Mar24: Any institutions must organize for systematic, continuing improvement to be successful.
Mar25: In the long run we are all dead. It is a total fallacy that optimizing the short term creates the right long-term future. So manage for the short term and as well long term.
Mar26: It is a valuable question whether an organization should be run for short-term results or for “long run.”
Mar27: Selling is tied no longer to production but to distribution.
Mar28: Major changes always start outside an organization.
Mar29: In some cases the best way to strengthen the system may be to weaken a part ㅡ to make it less precise or less efficient.
Mar30: In respect to short-term phenomenon, there is no system. There is only chaos.
Mar31: The responsible worker has a personal commitment to getting results.
Apr1: The purpose of an organization is to enable common men to do uncommon things.
Apr2: I always ask myself; would I want one of my sons to work under that person?
Apr3: Leadership is the lifting of man’s vision to higher sights.
Apr4: A person sould never be appointed to a managerial position if his vision focuses on people’s weakness rather than on their strengths.
Apr5: No organization can do better than the people it has.
Apr6: The first sign of decline of an organization is loss of appeal to qualified, able, and ambitious people.
Apr7: Don’t hire a person for what they can’t do; hire them for what they can do.
Apr8: The lessen is to focus on their strengths.
Apr9: The most important thing is that the person and the assignment fit each other.
Apr10: The leader must accept responsibility for any fails. To blam others is a cop-out.
Apr11: The succession to the top decision is the most difficult because every such decision is a gamble.
Apr12: If we didn’t spend four hours on placing a man and placing him right, we’d spend four hundred hours on cleaning up after our mistake.
Apr13: Authority without responsibility is illegitimate, but so is responsibility without authority.
Apr14: Do not separate personal values of what is right and wrong from the values you put into practice at work.
Apr15: Primum non nocereㅡ First not knowingly to do harm. (Hippocratic)
Apr16: Volunteers have to get more satisfaction from their work than paid employees, precisely because they don’t get a paycheck. They need, above all, challenges.
Apr17: The best way to predict the future is to create it.
Apr18: There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Apr19: Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
Apr20: Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
Apr21: Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Apr22: The best way to predict your future is to create it.
Apr23: If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.
Apr24: The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.
Apr25: Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.
Apr26: No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.
Apr27: Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.
Apr28: Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.
Apr29: There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.
Apr30: The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.
Apr31: What’s measured improves.
May1: Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.
May2: Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.
May3: Make meetings productive
May4: People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.
May5: Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.
May6: Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you.
May7: This defines entrepreneur and entrepreneurship – the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
May8: There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
May9: The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong question.
May10: Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
May11: Without an action plan, the executive becomes a prisoner of events.
May12: Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship…the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.”
May13: So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.”
May14: Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.”
May15: Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window. ”
May16: When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.
May17: Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.”
May18: The problem in my life and other people’s lives is not the absence of knowing what to do but the absence of doing it.”
May19: It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem – which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday.”
May20: A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all.”
May21: Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results.”
May22: Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves – their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.”
May23: A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge. ”
May24: Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.”
May25: Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.”
May26: Entrepreneurship is “risky” mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing.”
May27: There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”
May28: “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”
May29: Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective.”
May30: Energy, resources, and time should go instead to making a competent person into a star performer
May31: Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institution. Training and development must be built into it on all levels—training and development that never stop.”
Jun1: The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”
Jun2: There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”
Jun3: Values, in other words, are and should be the ultimate test.
Jun4: Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time.”
Jun5: These apparently low-level decisions are extremely important in a knowledge-based organization.
Jun6: Effective executives know that their subordinates are paid to perform and not to please their superiors.”
Jun7: We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.”
Jun8: If there is any one “secret” of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time.”
Jun9: Problems have to be taken care of, of course; they must not be swept under the rug.
Jun10: Effectiveness must be learned.”
Jun11: Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
Jun12: Like so many brilliant people, he believes that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.
Jun13: The computer is a moron.
Jun14: When a change in perception takes place, the facts do not change. Their meaning does.
Jun15: The focus on contribution by itself supplies the four basic requirements of effective human relations: communications; teamwork; self-development; and development of others.
Jun16: Listen first, speak last.
Jun17: Plan, organize, integrate, motivate, and measure.
Jun18: The knowledge that we consider knowledge proves itself in action. What we now mean by knowledge is information in action, information focused on results.
Jun19: I soon learned that there is no “effective personality.
Jun20: A decision without an alternative is a desperate gambler’s throw,
Jun21: The one man to distrust, however, is the man who never makes a mistake, never commits a blunder, never fails in what he tries to do. He is either a phony, or he stays with the safe, the tried, and the trivial.
Jun22: The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement.
Jun23: Exploiting opportunities produces results.
Jun24: Keep your eye on the task, not on yourself. The task matters, and you are a servant.
Jun25: It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.
Jun26: Spellman often said that during his waking hours he was alone only twice each day, for 25 minutes each time.
Jun27: You should not change yourself, but create yourself, that mean build around your strengths and removing bad habits.
Jun28: One cannot hire a hand—the whole man always comes with it.
Jun29: Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.
Jun30: The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
Jun31: We need far too many leaders to depend only on the naturals.
Jul1: Managing yourself requires taking responsibility for relationships.
Jul2: Its five business principles are “respect for humans,” “customer satisfaction,” “social responsibility,” “value creation,” and “innovation orientation.
Jul3: A well-managed factory is boring. Nothing exciting happens in it because the crises have been anticipated and have been converted into routine.
Jul4: The less an organization has to do to produce results, the better it does its job.
Jul5: Good follow-up is just as important as the meeting itself.
Jul6: There is no such thing as a “good man.” Good for what? is the question.
Jul7: History has been written not by the most talented but by the most motivated.
Jul8: He knows that the test of organization is not genius. It is its capacity to make common people achieve uncommon performance.
Jul9: People, I realized, were what I valued, and I saw no point in being the richest man in the cemetery.
Jul10: Many brilliant people believe that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.
Jul11: The question is: how to be useful!” A great teacher can change your life in thirty seconds.
Jul12: I read a lot of history, biographies, science, and novels,’ he says, ushering a reporter out the door with a hint of relief. ‘I do not read management or economics.’
Jul13: Of all the important pieces of self-knowledge, understanding how you learn is the easiest to acquire.
Jul14: Two hundred people, of course, can do a great deal more work than one man. But it does not follow that they produce and contribute more.
Jul15: Effectiveness as an executive demands doing certain—and fairly simple—things.
Jul16: Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.
Jul17: Effective executives build on strengths.
Jul18: Schools everywhere are organized on the assumption that there is only one right way to learn and that it is the same way for everybody.
Jul19: Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two—and only these two—basic functions: marketing and innovation
Jul20: The responsibility is always mine, but the decision lies with whoever is on the spot.
Jul21: Staffing the opportunities instead of the problems not only creates the most effective organization, it also creates enthusiasm and dedication.
Jul22: Abandon what is about to be obsolete, develop a system to exploit your successes, and develop a systematic approach to innovation.
Jul23: But there seems to be little correlation between a man’s effectiveness and his intelligence, his imagination or his knowledge.
Jul24: And productivity for the knowledge worker means the ability to get the right things done. It means effectiveness.
Jul25: Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.
Jul26: There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Jul27: Entrepreneurs, by definition, shift resources from areas of low productivity and yield to areas of higher productivity and yield.
Jul28: Managers are action-focused; they are not philosophers and should not be.
Jul29: Effective executives, finally, make effective decisions.
Jul30: Entrepreneurship, then, is behavior rather than personality trait. And its foundation lies in concept and theory rather than in intuition”
Jul31: Effective executives do not race. They set an easy pace but keep going steadily.
Aug1: The important thing is to identify the “future that has already happened.”
Aug2: Identify your organization’s core competencies. Determine whether they are improving or getting weaker.
Aug3: Every organization needs one core competence: innovation.
Aug4: It raises rather than answers questions, but it raises the right questions.
Aug5: People will not forgive a lack of integrity in the leader.
Aug6: Trees die from the top.
Aug7: Change leaders should starve problems and feed opportunities.
Aug8: Continuous improvements in any area eventually transform the operation.
Aug9: Successful entrepreneurs do not wait until the “the Muse kisses them” and gives them a bright idea; they go to work.
Aug10: Innovation needs monitoring four sources for opportunity: 1.Unexpected success or failure, 2.Incongruity between reality as it actually is and assumed to be, 3.Process need, 4.Changes in organization structure.
Aug11: Our effect would be multiplied if we converged with opportunities that were already
looking to expand.
Aug12: Timing is everything.
Aug13: We need to use our energy where we can get result.
Aug14: This is not good a little donation here, and a little donation there…
Aug15: An organization begins to die it begins to be run for the benefits of the insiders.
Aug16: With people, you focus on performance, not potential.
Aug17: Tell me what you are not doing.
Aug18: It is not what we do, but what we have done, accomplished, result.
Aug19: We need linking together big and small, practical and philosophical, micro and macro.
Aug20: The important thing is not that you have rank, but that you have responsibility.
Aug21: With opportunity comes responsibility.
Aug22: It is a latent insecurity about being a big fish in a small pond.
Aug23: The goal is to “help people get the best” out of themselves for their own benefits as well as the benefits of others.
Aug24: Power is a byproduct of effort, skill, energy, and time.
Aug25: Make their tree grow, its fruit is yours.
Aug26: It was like changing the engine in a sports car to make it faster, but it was spinning its wheels in the mud. (‘organizational culture’)
Aug27: Don’t neglect or reject unexpectedly success. Identify it, absorb it, and learn from it.
Aug28: It takes an effort to perceive unexpected success as one’s own best
Aug29: Failure should always be considered a symptom of an innovative opportunity, and taken seriously as such.
Aug30: Change leaders exploit some incongruities to the organization’s advantage.
Aug31: Once we understand our limits, we will be able to manage our energy more effectively.
Sep1: Necessity is the mother of invention.
Sep2: Opportunity driven and Process need.
Sep3: There can be winners only if there are losers.
Sep4: Never stop asking yourself, “What is our business?”
Sep5: Specialized knowledge by itself produces nothing.
Sep6: Knowledge without skill is unproductive.
Sep7: If general perception changes from seeing the glass as “half-full” to seeing the glass as “half-empty,” there are major innovation opportunities.
Sep8: Only when knowledge is used as a foundation for skill does it become productive.
Sep9: The potential for failure as well as success.
Sep10: In the theory and practice of innovation, the bright-idea innovation belongs in
the appendix.
Sep11: Most innovations in public-service institutions are imposed on them either by outsiders or by catastrophe.
Sep12: Qualities that society needs: initiative, ambition, and ingenuity.
Sep13: The public-service institution needs a clear definition of its mission and a
realistic statement of goals, so it should be attainable.
Sep14: Very few people can do three things well, or even two things well. Most people
can only do one thing really well.
Sep15: To aim at is not the maximum but the optimum.
Sep16: “Think globally, act locally.”
Sep17: In cost control an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Sep18: Volunteers have to get more satisfaction from their work than paid employees.
They need, above all, satisfying challenges.
Sep19: Well begun is half done.
Sep20: Would the roof cave in if we stopped doing this work altogether?
Sep21: First do no harm.
Sep22: Good intentions are not enough; always measure the results of your efforts.
Sep23: The essential ingredient of success is a steady stream of innovation.
Sep24: Authority without responsibility is illegitimate; but so is responsibility without
authority.
Sep25: The less diverse a ministry, the more manageable it is.
Sep26: An organization that is the wrong size is an organization that does not have the right niche to survive and prosper.
Sep27: The spirit of an organization is created from the top.
Sep28: Growth that results only in volume and does not produce higher overall productivities is fat – it should be sweated.
Sep29: Every new project is an infant and infants belong in the nursery.
Sep30: Cannibalize your own products before your competitor does
Oct1: Make decisions on people your top priority.
Oct2: If we didn’t spend four hours on placing a man and placing him right, we’d spend four
hundred hours on cleaning up after our mistake.
Oct3: Any well-functioning organization is neither centralized nor decentralized but a wonderful
combination of both.
Oct4: Often a prescription drug designed for a specific ailment sometimes ends up being used for
some other quite different ailment.
Oct5: By and large, people who are willing and able to make a decisions don’t stay in the
assistant role very long.
Oct6: New major assignments should mainly go to the people whose behaviors and habits are
well known and who have already earned trust and credibility. Oct7: You know it when you see it.
Oct8: No organization can do better than the people it has.
Oct9: The first step toward starting a new project is to write a one-page statement of purpose.
Oct10: Eighty percent of success is showing up.
Oct11: Growth is not our principal goal. Our goal is to be a quality organization.
Oct12: The more successful a new venture is, the more dangerous the lack of financial foresight.
Oct13: All key activities need to be covered by someone who has proven ability in performance.
Oct14: Opportunity is where you find it, not where it finds you.
Oct15: Finding and realizing the potential of an organization is psychologically difficult.
Oct16: Convert the vulnerabilities of your enterprise into opportunities.
Oct17: Opportunities have to be reflected against the experience of organization and against its
past success and failures.
Oct18: They have a relationship with their people that is most difficult to break into.
Oct19: The first sign of decline of the ministry is loss of appeal to able people.
Oct20: First with the Most.
Oct21: When you develop a new process, ministry, or service, protect your flank.
Oct22: Ideas begins with problem. If people don’t see the problem, they won’t be thinking about
how to solve them.
Oct23: Ministry has to maintain the dynamic equilibrium between change and continuity.
Oct24: Effective leaders start with their time.
Oct25: All that effective leaders have in common is the ability to get the right things done.
Oct26: The focus on contribution is the key to effectiveness.
Oct27: It takes far less energy to move from first-rate performance to excellence than it does to
move from incompetence to mediocrity.
Oct28: Performance is not hitting the bull’s-eye with every shot — that is a circus act.
Oct29: If there is any conflict between your values and strengths, always choose values.
Oct30: At the same time, result should be meaningful. They should make a difference.
Oct31: The more the ministry grows, the more the individual can grow.
Nov1: This requires self-discipline and responsibility. The alternative is decline.
Nov2: Ministries are built on trust, and trust is built on communication and mutual
understanding.
Nov3: Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge.
Nov4: The probability of an event’s being meaningful is a much more important datum
than the event itself.
Nov5: No organization can do better than the people it has.
Nov6: Don’t hire people based on your instincts.
Nov7: A leader must, so to speak, keep his nose to the grindstone while lifting his eyes
to the hills – quite an acrobatic feat.
Nov8: Keep your eye on the task, not on yourself. The task matters.
Nov9: Pursue perfection in your work, however elusive.
Nov10: The right answer to the wrong problem is very difficult to fix.
Nov11: Pursue perfection in your work, however elusive.
Nov12: A decision, to be effective, needs to satisfy the boundary conditions.
Nov13: It will be concerned mainly with the present and immediate future rather than
with basic policy.
Nov14: Just pray and hope is not enough.
Nov15: Give people maximum responsibility by organizing according to the its principle.
Nov16: Put a plan in place today to solve these problems.
Nov17: The task matters, and you are a servant.
Nov18: Leadership is a foul-weather job.
Nov19: The Four Competencies of a Leader: listening, communicating, reengineering
mistakes, and subordinating your ego to the task at hand.
Nov20: Record the key values that are operative in your organization.
Nov21: The important thing is to identify the “future that has already happened.”
Nov22: Not just hoping for the best, but working toward it.
Nov23: The most effective way to manage change successfully is to create it.
Nov24: Four groups of activities: 1.result-producing activities; 2.support activities; 3.no
relationship~housekeeping so on; 4.top-management activities….so, give
result-producing activities highly visibility in our organization.
Nov25: To improve communications, work not on the utterer but the recipient. (P.360)
Nov26: Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge.
Nov27: Ministries are built on trust, and trust is built on communication and mutual
understanding.
Nov28: This requires self-discipline and responsibility. The alternative is decline.
Nov29: People see more things than they can describe in words.
Nov30: Fish discover water last.
Nov31: Society is only meaningful if its purpose and ideals make sense in terms of the individual’s purposes and ideals.
Dec1: A change is something people do; a fad is something people talk about.
Dec2: Loot out every window.
Dec3: It is a vague question whether a ministry should be run for short-term results or for “the long run.”
Dec4: To obtain profit today, they tend to undermine the future.
Dec5: Do not be too righteous, and do not be too wicked; Do not act too wise, and do not be a fool. Ecc. 7:16-17
Dec6: There is service waiting to be born.
Dec7: The right answer to the wrong problem is a very difficult to fix.
Dec8: The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
Dec9: Context is everything.
Dec10: Until the definition of a problem explains and encompasses all observable facts, the definition is incomplete or wrong. But once the problem has been correctly defined, the decision itself is usually pretty easy.
Dec11: Getting Others to Buy The Decision: If you wait until you have made the decision and
then start to “sell” it, it’s unlikely to ever become effective. Unless the organization has
“bought” the decision, it will remain ineffectual; it will remain only a good intention.
Dec12: Decisions are made by people. People are fallible; at their best, their works do not last long.
Dec13: Executives should be high enough to have the authority needed to make the decisions
and low enough to have the detailed knowledge.
Dec14: The profit motive alone gives fulfillment through power over things.
Dec15: Easy choices, hard life; Hard choices easy life.
Dec16: Converting Good Intentions into Results.
Dec17: The nonprofit institution uses a service to bring about a change in human beings.
Dec18: Nobody trusts you if you offer something for free.
Dec19: The nonprofit institution has to raise money from people who want to participate in the cause but who are not beneficiaries.
Dec20: Membership on the board is not power; it is responsibility.
Dec21: Fleas can jump many times their own hight, but not elephants.
Dec22: The law of organization is concentration.
Dec23: Erroneous assumptions ca be disastrous.
Dec24: We have to turned the data into information – and had decided what action to take long before that action became necessary.
Dec25: “One prays for miracles but works for result,” Saint Augustine said.
Dec26: There is an old saying that good intentions don’t move mountains, bulldozers do.
Dec27: Strategies tell you what you need to have by way of resources and people to get the results.
Dec28: If at first you don’t succeed, try once more. Then do something else.
Dec29: There is only so much time and so many resources, and there is so much work to be done.
Dec30: Most of the people who persist in the wilderness leave nothing behind but bleached bones.
Dec31: Strategic planning deals with the future of present decisions.