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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Robert Iger
Read between
February 12 - February 17, 2025
People committing honest mistakes deserve second chances, and judging people too harshly generates fear and anxiety, which discourage communication and innovation. Nothing is worse to an organization than a culture of fear.
If you believe that something can be made better, put in the effort to do it. If you’re in the business of making things, be in the business of making things great.
His mantra was simple: “Do what you need to do to make it better.” Of all the things I learned from Roone, this is what shaped me the most. When I talk about this particular quality of leadership, I refer to it as “the relentless pursuit of perfection.”
It’s a delicate thing, finding the balance between demanding that your people perform and not instilling a fear of failure in them.
In your work, in your life, you’ll be more respected and trusted by the people around you if you honestly own up to your mistakes.
true integrity—a sense of knowing who you are and being guided by your own clear sense of right and wrong—is a kind of secret weapon.
They were also tremendously generous with their time and always accessible. Because of this, executives working for them always had a clear sense of what their priorities were, and their focus enabled us all to be focused, too.
My instinct throughout my career has always been to say yes to every opportunity.
they believed in putting people in roles that required more of them than they knew they had in them.
they “bet on brains,” as they put it, and trusted that things would work out if they put talented people in positions where they could grow, even if they were in unfamiliar territory.
you can’t let humility prevent you from leading.
True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else.
a delicate balance is required between management being responsible for the financial performance of any creative work and, in exercising that responsibility, being careful not to encroach on the creative processes in harmful and counterproductive ways.
if you want innovation—and you should, always—you need to give permission to fail.
As a leader, you should want those around you to be eager to rise up and take on more responsibility, as long as dreaming about the job they want doesn’t distract them from the job they have.
do the job you have well; be patient; look for opportunities to pitch in and expand and grow; and make yourself one of the people, through attitude and energy and focus, that your bosses feel they have to turn to when an opportunity arises.
good leadership isn’t about being indispensable; it’s about helping others be prepared to possibly step into your shoes—giving
optimism in a leader, especially in challenging times, is so vital. Pessimism leads to paranoia, which leads to defensiveness, which leads to risk aversion.
A company’s culture is shaped by a lot of things, but this is one of the most important—you have to convey your priorities clearly and repeatedly.
This is where we want to be. This is how we’re going to get there. Once those things are laid out simply, so many decisions become easier to make, and the overall anxiety of an entire organization is lowered.
Don’t let your ego get in the way of making the best possible decision.
A little respect goes a long way, and the absence of it is often very costly.
If you approach and engage people with respect and empathy, the seemingly impossible can become real.
PEOPLE SOMETIMES SHY AWAY from taking big swings because they assess the odds and build a case against trying something before they even take the first step.
Nothing is a sure thing, but you need at the very least to be willing to take big risks. You can’t have big wins without them.
The worst thing you can do when entering into a negotiation is to suggest or promise something because you know the other person wants to hear it, only to have to reverse course later. You have to be clear about where you stand from the beginning.
there’s a difference between communicating that you share their stress—that you’re in it with them—and communicating that you need them to deliver in order to alleviate your stress.
you have to look past whatever the commercial losses are and be guided, again, by the simple rule that there’s nothing more important than the quality and integrity of your people and your product.
