Professional is not a label you give yourself - it's a description you hope others will apply to you.
David MaisterRead
A true professional feels no pressure to run up a client's bill, knowing that any reduction in revenues caused by being efficient will be more than recompensed by the reputation earned for being honest and trustworthy.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A true professional prioritizes honesty and efficiency over maximizing profits, valuing their reputation.
This quote emphasizes the importance of integrity in professional practice. It suggests that true professionals operate with a sense of ethics and accountability, understanding that their reputation as honest and trustworthy provides long-term benefits that outweigh short-term gains from inefficient practices. By prioritizing the client's best interests, they build lasting relationships that ultimately lead to greater success.
Themes
ProfessionalismIntegrityTrustEfficiencyReputation
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a business seminar discussing ethics in the workplace.
More from David Maister
All quotes →Believe passionately in what you do, and never knowingly compromise your standards and values. Act like a true professional, aiming for true excellence, and the money will follow.
David MaisterRead
What you do with your billable time determines your current income, but what you do with your non-billable time determines your future.
David MaisterRead
Similar quotes
In such doubtful matters, where you have to work as a pioneer, you must be able to put some trust in your intuition and follow your feeling even at the risk of going wrong.
Carl JungRead
Honesty has a beautiful and refreshing simplicity about it. No ulterior motives. No hidden meanings. An absence of hypocrisy, duplicity, political games, and verbal superficiality. As honesty and real integrity characterize our lives, there will be no need to manipulate others.
Charles R. SwindollRead
You must train your intuition - you must trust the small voice inside you which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide.
Ingrid BergmanRead
If you are an effective manager of your self, your discipline comes from within; it is a function of your independent will. You are a disciple, a follower, of your own deep values and their source. And you have the will, the integrity, to subordinate your feelings, your impulses, your moods to those values.
Stephen CoveyRead
I'm a scientist, not a theologian. I don't know if there is a God or not. Religion requires certainty. Revere and respect Gaia. Have trust in Gaia. But not faith.
James LovelockRead
No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.
Erich Maria RemarqueRead