Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.
Interpretation
Strive to embody excellence, as it can elevate the standards around you.
This quote emphasizes the importance of setting high standards of quality and excellence, as not everyone is accustomed to such expectations. It serves as a reminder that by exemplifying excellence, you can inspire others to raise their own standards and foster an environment that values and strives for quality.
In practice
In a team meeting to encourage higher performance standards.
Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.
It is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main competitor.
The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.
For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
I was never lined up outside of my bosses office saying 'Give me an opportunity; there's not a woman in primetime'... I was just trying to be so good they couldn't ignore me.
I always say three things make a writer: inspiration, obviously; perspiration, doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else, or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.
Be a warrior when it comes to delivering on your ambitions. And a saint when it comes to treating people with respect, modeling generosity, and showing up with outright love.
How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
Most real failures are due to limitations which men set up in their own minds.
Is it that your dream is unattainable or is it that you have the wrong dream?
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