Michael Coté > Michael's Quotes

“[T]he key to winning the race is not to compete against machines but to compete with machines.”
― Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

“how teams come together to deliver value in large organizations is the first-order effect, while how individual teams work was a second-order effect.”
― Gary Gruver, Leading the Transformation: Applying Agile and DevOps Principles at Scale

“Until these fundamentals are in place, you will have limited success effectively transforming your processes.”
― Gary Gruver, Leading the Transformation: Applying Agile and DevOps Principles at Scale

“glamorous Italian supermodels being wooed by American farm boys,”
― Rita Gunther McGrath, The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business

“Without the assumption that an advantage will be long-lived, the urgency of an organization to move quickly increases.”
― Rita Gunther McGrath, The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business

“constructively paranoid”
― Rita Gunther McGrath, The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business

“We say, ‘I see what you mean,’ it’s the metaphor for clarity. But sometimes I wish people could see the pictures in my head, instead of my having to describe them with words. Words are clumsy. I wish I could communicate in pictures.”
― Warren Ellis, Gun Machine

“While everyone else is running around with a list of responsibilities a mile long—things they’re not actually responsible for—you’ve got just that one-item list. You’ve got just one thing to manage: your choices, your will, your mind. So mind it.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living

“Empowering people to effect change • Communicate a sensible vision to employees: If employees have a shared sense of purpose, it will be easier to initiate actions to achieve that purpose. • Make structures compatible with the vision: Unaligned structures block needed action. • Provide the training employees need: Without the right skills and attitudes, people feel disempowered. • Align information and personnel systems to the vision: Unaligned systems also block needed action. • Confront supervisors who undercut needed change: Nothing disempowers people the way a bad boss can.”
― John P. Kotter, Leading Change

“When faced with a challenge (be it a hurricane or a struggling business or a reluctance to start writing), we must decide to act and then we must act. We should perceive our worries as an indication that we should meet our challenges head on, cut right to the heart of them, and take action. Otherwise, we’ll be in the aftermath of the storm, sitting and staring at that old tree that’s collapsed onto our patio, and asking, “Well, what now?”
― R. Reid Wilson, Stopping the Noise in Your Head: The New Way to Overcome Anxiety and Worry

“Why on Earth would you slow a book down though? Interestingly enough, listening to books at half speed is a great way to fall asleep. Your mind will slowly drift off as the speed of your internal monologue starts to match the dialogue of the slower book. There are very few times in this book where I will advocate you messing with your senses as profoundly as I am here, but I truly believe that you can master your content overload by using your attention and time to get the most out of what technology has to offer.”
― Chris Dancy, Don't Unplug: How Technology Saved My Life and Can Save Yours Too

“Six years they’d been married. And while she sliced the bread every morning and spread the butter and poured tea, for him and for Bobi and for the maid, and sometimes for the cleaning lady… You try slicing bread and making sandwiches for four kids just once, if you’re not used to it, the way the unfortunate writer of these pages has done on occasion, it’ll drive you insane. Over time you’d probably get used to it, but dear God, over time it would also get horrifically boring if you were unfortunate enough to think about it.”
― Nescio, Amsterdam Stories

“The absolute authority of market forces would be enshrined as the ultimate source of imperative control, displacing democratic contest and deliberation with an ideology of atomized individuals sentenced to perpetual competition for scarce resources. The disciplines of competitive markets promised to quiet unruly individuals and even transform them back into subjects too preoccupied with survival to complain.”
― Shoshana Zuboff, Master or Slave? The Fight for the Soul of Our Information Civilization

“Bad things will be your only reward for this.’ ‘Things will go as they must,’ said Gunnar.”
― Anonymous, Njal's Saga

“at least in IBM’s case, when it honored and nurtured its sales force and its sales culture, it was productive and successful. That statement may sound incredibly obvious. When their values prevailed, IBM did well. But beginning shortly after the new millennium, they did not always prevail. IBM, like many other corporations, in recent years has relied increasingly on what came to be known as “financial engineering” to improve performance. It was never enough to ensure success.”
― James W. Cortada, IBM: The Rise and Fall and Reinvention of a Global Icon

“I went back to one of the motels, went into the office, turned on the light, picked a key off the desk and located a cabin by myself. The next morning it took me 20 minutes to find somebody to pay—and then I was told I wouldn’t be welcome there in the future because my car had a license plate from Louisville. They don’t care much for city boys, specially when they’re roamin’ around late at night.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time

“As I came over the brink of the cliff, a few children laughed, an old hag began screeching, and the men just stared. Here was a white man with 12 Yankee dollars in his pocket and more than $ 500 worth of camera gear slung over his shoulders, hauling a typewriter, grinning, sweating, no hope of speaking the language, no place to stay—and somehow they were going to have to deal with me.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time

“the CTO is there to guide the board away from making decisive calls that are logical to people with a limited understanding of technology and the market conditions associated with it, but are clearly dangerous to somebody in the know. For example, buying a new proprietary HR and finance system on a five-year deal from a supplier that the department has already worked with for ten years might seem sensible to a non-technologist. The fact that the system is a complete pain to use (and ruinously expensive) may just about crop up on the leadership radar. What may not is the fact that systems like this are likely to become commoditised–which is to say, cheap and easily swapped with similar alternatives–in less than five years. Through a combination of ignorance and inertia, the department would be locking itself into the wrong deal, and constraining itself strategically as a result. A CTO stops this kind of mistake.”
― Andrew Greenway, Digital Transformation at Scale: Why the Strategy Is Delivery

“A good strategy is not a plan; it’s a framework that helps you make decisions. Product strategy connects the vision and economic outcomes of the company back to product portfolio, individual product initiatives, and solution options for the teams. Strategy creation is the process of determining the direction of the company and developing the framework in which people make decisions. Strategies are created at each level and then deployed across the organization.”
― Melissa Perri, Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value

“In a nervous society where a man’s image is frequently more important than his reality, the only people who can afford to advertise their drug menus are those with nothing to lose.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time

“There’s a word for “people who are in their heads too much”: thinkers.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts

“(Finland is a famously introverted nation. Finnish joke: How can you tell if a Finn likes you? He’s staring at your shoes instead of his own.)”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Remarkable, but perhaps not surprising. Psychologists are trained to heal, so their research naturally focuses on problems and pathology.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“An Inconvenient Truth—a film whose most stirring action scenes involve the solitary figure of Gore wheeling his suitcase through a midnight airport.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“The key to flow is to pursue an activity for its own sake, not for the rewards it brings. Although flow does not depend on being an introvert or an extrovert, many of the flow experiences that Csikszentmihalyi writes about are solitary pursuits that have nothing to do with reward-seeking: reading, tending an orchard, solo ocean cruising. Flow often occurs, he writes, in conditions in which people “become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself.” In a sense, Csikszentmihalyi transcends Aristotle; he is telling us that there are some activities that are not about approach or avoidance, but about something deeper: the fulfillment that comes from absorption in an activity outside yourself. “Psychological theories usually assume that we are motivated either by the need to eliminate an unpleasant condition like hunger or fear,” Csikszentmihalyi writes, “or by the expectation of some future reward such as money, status, or prestige.” But in flow, “a person could work around the clock for days on end, for no better reason than to keep on working.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“But Edgar is an avowed introvert. “I’d much rather sit and read and think about things than talk to people,” he says.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Introverts should ask themselves: Will this job allow me to spend time on in-character activities like, for example, reading, strategizing, writing, and researching? Will I have a private workspace or be subject to the constant demands of an open office plan? If the job doesn’t give me enough restorative niches, will I have enough free time on evenings and weekends to grant them to myself?”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“the way we characterize our past setbacks profoundly influences how satisfied we are with our current lives. Unhappy people tend to see setbacks as contaminants that ruined an otherwise good thing (“ I was never the same again after my wife left me”), while generative adults see them as blessings in disguise (“ The divorce was the most painful thing that ever happened to me, but I’m so much happier with my new wife”). Those who live the most fully realized lives—giving back to their families, societies, and ultimately themselves—tend to find meaning in their obstacles. In a sense, McAdams has breathed new life into one of the great insights of Western mythology: that where we stumble is where our treasure lies.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Cross the street to avoid making aimless chitchat with random acquaintances.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“it’s not the customer’s job to solve their own problems. It’s your job to ask them the right questions.”
― Melissa Perri, Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value