Marcin > Marcin's Quotes

“He believed, as I do, that it is precisely by acting on our intentions and staying true to our values that we change the world.”
― Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc.: an inspiring look at how creativity can - and should - be harnessed for business success by the founder of Pixar

“A foreigner could be excused for thinking that to know set is to know English.”
― Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

“If there is one thing certain about English pronunciation it is that there is almost nothing certain about it. No other language in the world has more words spelled the same way and yet pronounced differently.”
― Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

“At a minimum the name should puzzle foreigners—this is a basic requirement of most British institutions—and ideally it should excite long and inconclusive debate, defy all logical explanation, and evoke images that border on the surreal. Among”
― Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

“It follows that in order to change an existing imagined order, we must first believe in an alternative imagined order.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Whatever path we take, the first step is to acknowledge the complexity of the dilemma and to accept that simplistically dividing the past into good guys and bad guys leads nowhere. Unless,”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Still, humans have a wonderful capacity to believe in contradictions. So it should not come as a surprise that millions of pious Christians, Muslims and Jews manage to believe at one and the same time in an omnipotent God and an independent Devil. Countless”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“If a religion is a system of human norms and values that is founded on belief in a superhuman order, then Soviet Communism was no less a religion than Islam.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Consumerism has worked very hard, with the help of popular psychology (‘Just do it’) to convince people that indulgence is good for you, whereas frugality is self-oppression. It has succeeded. We”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Prophets, poets and philosophers realised thousands of years ago that being satisfied with what you already have is far more important than getting more of what you want. Still, it’s nice when modern research – bolstered by lots of numbers and charts – reaches the same conclusions the ancients did.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“If “improve collaboratively” is about how change is driven, then “evolve experimentally” is about how it is conducted.”
― Mike Burrows, Kanban from the Inside: Understand the Kanban Method, connect it to what you already know, introduce it with impact

“Managers don’t determine how the system behaves; they merely interact with it.”
― Mike Burrows, Kanban from the Inside: Understand the Kanban Method, connect it to what you already know, introduce it with impact

“Is Kanban, in the words of the manifesto, a way of developing software? No. We”
― Mike Burrows, Kanban from the Inside: Understand the Kanban Method, connect it to what you already know, introduce it with impact

“Any information that isn’t public will cause suspicion (why else would someone go through the trouble to keep it secret?), and suspicion is toxic for organizational trust.”
― Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness

“Evolution is a formidable process that brings forth unfathomable beauty and complexity not through a grand design, but by means of relentless, small-scale, parallel experimentation. Evolution”
― Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness

“CNNMoney calculates that in 2011, the CEOs of Fortune 50 companies took home on average a staggering 379 times the median pay of employees in their company65 (the multiple would be even higher when compared to the lowest paid employee).”
― Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness

“It is often a devastating question to ask oneself, but it is sometimes important to ask it—‘In saying what I have in mind will I really improve on the silence?’” (”
― Lyssa Adkins, Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition

“If you have a problem and to solve it you need someone else to change, you don’t understand your problem yet”
― Lyssa Adkins, Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition

“To be full of love and enthusiasm for your work is a prerequisite for collaboration, a professional obligation;”
― Lyssa Adkins, Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition

“Because self-control requires energy, which means we have less energy available for the next thing we need to do. And that’s why resisting temptation, making hard decisions, or taking initiative all seem to draw from the same well of energy. So willpower isn’t something that we just exercise – it’s something we deplete.”
― David Eagleman, The Brain: The Story of You

“A leader doesn’t need imposed or structural authority. In fact, it may get in the way, if you’re not careful.”
― Alex Harms, The Little Guide to Empathetic Technical Leadership

“A well organized, well-facilitated meeting leaves room for paying attention to everybody’s needs, including the very human desire to contribute, to be heard, and to create something meaningful.”
― Alex Harms, The Little Guide to Empathetic Technical Leadership

“When anger gets replaced by understanding, conflicts are resolvable.”
― Alex Harms, The Little Guide to Empathetic Technical Leadership

“the team structure works well for us because it is well-aligned with our culture, our technical architecture and platform, our product, and even our workspace.”
― Jutta Eckstein, Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy: Survive & Thrive on Disruption

“You can’t “implement” culture change.”
― Nicole Forsgren, Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations

“Asking what is the cause, is just as bizarre as asking what is the cause of not having an accident. Accidents have their basis in the real complexity of the system, not their apparent simplicity.”
― Sidney Dekker, The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error

“For over a century, we’ve focused too much on relentless execution and depended too much on fear to get things done. That era is over.”
― Amy C. Edmondson, Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy

“anyone who identifies him/herself publicly as a “change agent” is self-convicted of incompetence. Changes will certainly occur as a result, but they are not likely to be the changes desired.”
― John Gall, SYSTEMANTICS. THE SYSTEMS BIBLE