Government is like an onion. To understand it, you have to peel through many different layers. Most outsiders never get beyond the first or second layer.
Warren G. BennisRead
The ability to plan for what has not yet happened, for a future that has only been imagined, is one of the hallmarks of leadership.
Interpretation
Effective leadership involves foresight and the ability to envision future possibilities.
This quote emphasizes the importance of planning and foresight in leadership. It suggests that a true leader is distinguished by their ability to strategically envision and prepare for future scenarios that have not yet materialized, highlighting the critical role of imagination in guiding teams toward success.
In practice
During a team meeting, one might say, 'As leaders, we must embrace the ability to plan for what has not yet happened.'
Government is like an onion. To understand it, you have to peel through many different layers. Most outsiders never get beyond the first or second layer.
Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.
To be authentic is literally to be your own author... to discover your own native energies and desires, and then to find your own way of acting on them.
The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.
Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work.
People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out.
If, for instance, you put in a Malay officer who's very religious and who has family ties in Malaysia in charge of a machine gun unit, that's a very tricky business. We've got to know his background... I'm saying these things because they are real, and if I don't think that, and I think even if today the Prime Minister doesn't think carefully about this, we could have a tragedy.
As the personal trajectories of Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi diverge, so too does the focus of their leadership. While Mr. Trump is obsessed with building walls, Mr. Xi is busy building bridges.
Managing innovation will increasingly become a challenge to management, and especially to top management, and a touchstone of its competence.
You can buy a person's hands but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is.
Many CEOs and leaders think that silence is indeed golden, that consensus is bliss. It is - sometimes. But more often what it signifies is that there are no respected processes for surfacing concerns and dissent.
Holding individuals accountable for corporate wrongdoing isn't ideological; it's good law enforcement.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.