Never ask your employees to do something you wouldn't be willing to do yourself.
Interpretation
Leaders should set an example by being willing to undertake the same tasks they ask of others.
This quote emphasizes the importance of leading by example in a leadership role. It suggests that a leader should demonstrate the same commitment and willingness to engage in the work expected of their employees, fostering a culture of shared responsibility and respect within the organization.
In practice
During a company meeting, a manager quotes this to emphasize the company's values.
We'll have a sales leader go run engineering. A lawyer go run business development. A business development leader go run our consumer operations. We're going to train a generalist group of leaders who know how to learn and operate in collaboration teamwork. I think that's the future of leadership.
Our success at Cisco has been defined by how we anticipate, capture, and lead through market transitions. Over the years, I've watched iconic companies disappear - Compaq, Sun Microsystems, Wang, Digital Equipment - as they failed to anticipate where the market was heading.
There are two types of companies: those that have been hacked, and those who don't know they have been hacked.
It's connectivity that really makes the industrial Internet work: it's giving the right information at the right time to the right person or right machine to make the right decision.
Widening the talent pipeline sufficiently will require a generational commitment to teaching math and science, providing technical training, and mentoring young people of all backgrounds so they understand the full range of possibilities that a career in technology affords.
Those who purify your water, inspect your meat, and test your kids toys, as well as a huge number of nurses, teachers, and our soldiers, are public employees. The firefighters who don't hesitate to rush toward danger while you run away from it - they are all public employees.
An orchestra knows during the first two minutes of the first rehearsal whether or not they are going to enjoy the person on the podium.
Never forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity.
The worker is not the problem. The problem is at the top! Management!
I will only hire someone to work directly for me if I would work for that person. It's a pretty good test.
No doubt we have to have bigger projects, bigger industries, basic industries, but it is a matter of the highest importance that we look to the common man, the weakest element in the society.
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