In the absence of a great dream pettiness prevails. Shred visions foster risk taking, courage and innovation. Keeping the end in mind creates the confidence to make decisions even in moments of crisis.
Interpretation
Without a significant vision, small-mindedness takes over; having clear goals inspires bravery and innovation.
This quote emphasizes the importance of having a grand vision or dream to guide actions and decisions. Without such aspirations, individuals may fall into trivial pursuits, while clear and ambitious goals can inspire courage, innovation, and the ability to navigate through crises with confidence.
In practice
This quote can be used during a leadership workshop to inspire participants to embrace big ideas.
[Seeds Are Small.] Becoming a force of nature doesn't mean that all of our aspirations must be "grand." First steps are often small, and initial visions that focus energy effectively often address immediate problems. What matters is engagement in the service of a larger purpose rather than lofty aspirations that paralyze action. Indeed, it's a dangerous trap to believe that we can pursue onlhy "great visions."
I do not believe great organizations have ever been built by trying to emulate another, any more than individual greatness is achieved by trying to copy another 'great person'.
All human beings are born with unique gifts. The healthy functioning community depends on realizing the capacity to develop each gift.
Learning to see the structures within which we operate begins a process of freeing ourselves from previously unseen forces and ultimately mastering the ability to work with them and change them.
New insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works...images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. That is why the discipline of managing mental models - surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works - promises to be a major breakthrough for learning organizations.
The Industrial Age is not sustainable. It's not sustainable in ecological terms, and it's not sustainable in human terms.
America's leaders have to find a way to work together, rise to the challenge, and come up with solutions as bold and visionary as the people of this nation.
A great leader's courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.
No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.
Most managers were trained to be the thing they most despise - bureaucrats.
One thing my dad's always told me about leadership is when all hell's breaking loose, everyone's looking at you to see how you're handling it. If you're frantic and out of control, they're going to be frantic and out of control. If you're calm, cool and collected and doing the right things, they'll follow you.
At Facebook, we try to be a strengths-based organization, which means we try to make jobs fit around people rather than make people fit around jobs. We focus on what people's natural strengths are and spend our management time trying to find ways for them to use those strengths every day.
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