Dee Hock's Quote on How Leaders Lead

"Control is not leadership; management is not leadership; leadership is leadership. If you seek to lead, invest at least 50% of your time in leading yourself—your own purpose, ethics, principles, motivation, conduct. Invest at least 20% leading those with authority over you and 15% leading your peers." — Dee Hock, Founder and CEO Emeritus, Visa

If you have ever read Dee Hock’s book One From Many, you would know that he was an amazing leader. His suggestion to spend 50% of your time leading yourself is valid. Why? At some point, most of us say and do things that are inimical to our success. Many poor decisions are derived from the inability to lead ones self and the desire to control others.

Managing yourself is not just making sure you align your thoughts and actions with your desires. You also have to constantly

How Do You Get Employees to Walk Through Fire for You?

Every manager’s dream is to lead people who will walk through fire for him or her. However, for many managers, this is not the case. Paradoxically, it is the manager who creates the dynamics of the relationship. Your people will follow your lead if you fight for them first.

As a manager gets to know his employees, he should first understand what they

Mario Andretti's Quote on High Performance

“If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” – Mario Andretti

According to Andretti, the thing many people crave impedes progress. In a world where we are obsessed with making everything predictable and controllable, we miss the possibility of

Do You Believe Being Smart Is Enough?

We have all seen very successful people who didn’t appear to be very bright. Yet, when the window of opportunity opened up, they knew what to do. What do these people have that extremely intelligent people lack?

I know a number of people who have very high IQs. In fact, I know a gentleman who was classified as a genius at the age of four. When you speak to him, you know in less than five minutes that he is super smart. However, he appears to lack

The New Economic Reality: Do We Have the Courage to Create It?

In the US, organizations have 2 gears for running a business. During good times, hire people. When the economy slows, fire people. In almost every case, this strategy results in a downward spiral for the economy. While there are infinite alternatives to this tactic, no one has taken sufficient time to explore and develop it. At the same time, in the 21^st Century, change happens faster than ever. As a result, many of the existing economic structures have become obsolete. Therefore, the time is now to explore new possibilities.

If you think about it, there has to be a

John Buchan's Quote On the Task of Leadership

"The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there." — John Buchan

One of the biggest problems leaders or managers have is their impression of what kind of person you have to be as a leader. Too often, people have the false impression that leaders have to be

Peter Drucker Quotes on True Leadership

"Leadership is not magnetic personality, that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not ‘making friends and influencing people,’ that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations." — Peter F. Drucker

More and more research shows that charismatic leaders do not run the most successful organizations. In Jim Collins’ book, Good To Great, he spent years following companies that consistently outperformed the S&P and their industry over the course of 15+ years. Of the very few that met the criteria,