The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.
John Foster DullesRead
The mark of a successful organization isn't whether or not it has problems, its whether it has the same problems it had last year.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Success is measured by the ability to overcome problems and evolve over time.
This quote suggests that the true indicator of a successful organization is not the absence of problems, but rather its capacity to address and resolve issues effectively. If an organization is still facing the same challenges year after year, it implies stagnation and a lack of progress, whereas overcoming past problems is a sign of growth and resilience.
Themes
SuccessOrganizationProgressProblemsGrowth
In practice
Example use cases
In a corporate training session when discussing the importance of problem-solving.
More from John Foster Dulles
All quotes βMankind will never win lasting peace so long as men use their full resources only in tasks of war. While we are yet at peace, let us mobilize the potentialities, particularly the moral and spiritual potentialities, which we usually reserve for war.
John Foster DullesRead
Economic and military power can be developed under the spur of laws and appropriations. But moral power does not derive from any act of Congress. It depends on the relations of a people to their God. It is the churches to which we must look to develop the resources for the great moral offensive that is required to make human rights secure, and to win a just and lasting peace.
John Foster DullesRead
The U.S. has no friends, only interests.
John Foster DullesRead
The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.
John Foster DullesRead
I hope the day will never come when the American nation will be the champion of the status quo. Once that happens, we shall have forfeited, and rightly forfeited, the support of the unsatisfied, of those who are the victims of inevitable imperfections, of those who, young in years or spirit, believe that they can make a better world and of those who dream dreams and want to make their dreams to come true.
John Foster DullesRead
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