Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?
Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.
A manager is an assistant to his men.
All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.
Don't make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up.
Every time we've moved ahead in IBM, it was because someone was willing to take a chance, put his head on the block, and try something new.
If you aren't playing well, the game isn't as much fun. When that happens I tell myself just to go out and play as I did when I was a kid.
If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good.
If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.
Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.
Once an organization loses its spirit of pioneering and rests on its early work, its progress stops.
Really big people are, above everything else, courteous, considerate and generous - not just to some people in some circumstances - but to everyone all the time.
The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas and enthusiasm.
The toughest thing about the power of trust is that it's very difficult to build and very easy to destroy. The essence of trust building is to emphasize the similarities between you and the customer.
The way to succeed is to double your error rate.
THINK. Think about your appearance, associations, actions, ambitions, accomplishment.
Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.
Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.
You don't hear things that are bad about your company unless you ask. It is easy to hear good tidings, but you have to scratch to get the bad news.
If a man goes to work in the right spirit, work is no hardship.
If we do not take advantage of our opportunities, it is our own fault.
There is more real need for the pioneering spirit today than ever before.
We must all take time to do enough thinking to formulate our own conclusions.
Business is a game, the greatest game in the world if you know how to play it.
It is better to aim at perfection and miss, than to aim at imperfection and hit it.
All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think.
What we need in this country today is more courage and more belief in the things that we have.
The man who does not take pride in his own performance performs nothing in which to take pride.
You work the first eight hours of each day for survival. Anything after that is an investment.
Don't make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up.
We must all consider ourselves as assistants, regardless of the titles we carry in our official capacities.
Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.
None of us can hope to get anywhere without character, moral courage and the spiritual strength to accept responsibility.
Put First Things First! These four words cover an entire philosophy which can be applied with profit by every business leader, by every executive and by every employee.
The man who bases his actions on independent thought; who reflects and considers before doing anything, and whose judgments are arrived at through logic, is the man who will go farthest today.
Point out to the men working with you and around you that we forgive thoughtful mistakes - that it is only the thoughtless mistakes that cause trouble. Tell them first to be sure they have thought about each proposition, then to go ahead.
I believe in getting behind the individual and backing him up, helping him to strengthen himself, making him feel that there is someone endeavoring to help him, trying to be an assistant to him, and bringing out the best there is in him-in other words, teaching him to teach himself, and in that way strengthen the entire organization.
Within us all there are wells of thought and dynamos of energy which are not suspected until emergencies arise. Then oftentimes we find that it is comparatively simple to double or treble our former capacities and to amaze ourselves by the results achieved. Quotas, when set up for us by others, are challenges which goad us on to surpass ourselves. The outstanding leaders of every age are those who set up their own quotas and constantly exceed them.
All great questions of politics and economics come down in the last analysis to the decisions and actions of individual men and women. They are questions of human relations, and we ought always to think about them in terms of men and women-the individual human beings who are involved in them. If we can get human relations on a proper basis, the statistics, finance and all other complicated technical aspects of these questions will be easier to solve.
We are willing to spend any reasonable amount of money on education in our organization, because we have a group of men and women in our business who are constantly seeking knowledge, knowing that is the way to make themselves more valuable to the company and, automatically, more valuable to themselves. We are working out a plan that is going to take in everybody in the organization. We are going to have post graduate schools for our men in the field, and post graduate schools for our executives-and many of them.
In order to be a success in business, there is one thing you must do. You cannot be successful without it. That is WORK. I have not told you anything new. Everyone knows that you cannot be successful in anything without work. Why does not everyone work? Because some lack the one thing that makes men want to work - ENTHUSIASM. That is something no one can give you. You must acquire it yourself, and the only way that you can become enthusiastic about anything is to have a thorough KNOWLEDGE of it. You have never seen an enthusiastic man who was lazy.
It is my personal opinion that we are going to recover from this depression and establish on a sounder and better basis, and we are going to reach greater heights of prosperity than ever before in this country. Now, that is just my personal opinion, but it is based on history, because that is what has happened following every depression. As we read the history of the various depressions we find that the people all felt about them just as we do about this one. One of the reasons we go ahead rapidly after coming out of a depression is that inventive genius and business talents have been put to a test, and they have always devised new and better ways to do things.
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