You don't get points for predicting rain. You get points for building arks.
Interpretation
Taking proactive action is more valuable than merely recognizing or predicting challenges.
This quote by Lou Gerstner emphasizes the importance of being proactive and solution-oriented in the face of challenges, rather than simply foreseeing problems. It suggests that true value lies in taking concrete actions to address potential difficulties, akin to building an ark to prepare for a flood rather than just predicting that it will rain.
In practice
This quote could be shared at a team meeting to encourage proactive planning.
Vision is easy. It's so easy to just point to the bleachers and say I'm going to hit one over there. What's hard is saying, OK, how do I do that? What are the specific programs, what are the commitments, what are the resources, what are the processes we need in play to go implement the vision, turn it into a working model that people follow every day in the enterprise. That's hard work.
You can’t mandate [cultural change], can’t engineer it. What you can do is create the conditions for transformation. You can provide incentives. You can define the marketplace realities and goals. But then you have to trust. In fact, in the end, management doesn’t change culture. Management invites the workforce itself to change the culture.
In the end an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.
If life was so easy that you could just go buy success, there would be a lot more successful companies in the world. Successful enterprises are built from the ground up.
Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure.
There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.
Create a vision of who you want to be, and then live into that picture as if it were already true.
If you embrace possibility thinking, your dreams will go from molehill to mountain size, and because you believe in possibilities, you put yourself in position to achieve them.
Every time I feel tired while I am exercising and training, I close my eyes to see that picture, to see that list with my name. This usually motivates me to work again.
Let me draw your attention to one thing which unfortunately we always forget: that is - "O man, have faith in yourself."
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