Danny > Danny's Quotes

“Hit the ground running; consolidate control; ask questions of everyone wherever you go; manage by wandering around; determine the basic problems of each organization and hit them head-on; when attacked, counterattack; stick to your guns; spend your political capital to reach your goals; and then when your work is stymied or done, find a way out.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, Leadership: In Turbulent Times

“They have typically been supported by a few wealthy individuals who have become persuaded—by a Frederick Vanderbilt Field, or an Anita McCormick Blaine, or a Corliss Lamont, to mention a few names recently prominent, or by a Friedrich Engels, to go farther back.”
― Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom

“Vision and Priorities In the press of day-to-day activities, leaders often fail to adequately communicate their vision to the organization, and in particular, they don’t communicate it in a way that helps their subordinates determine where to focus their own efforts. How often do I communicate a vision for my business? Have I identified and communicated three to five key priorities to achieve that vision? If asked, would my employees be able to articulate the vision and priorities?”
― Harvard Business School Press, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself

“Nike: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.” *If you have a body, you are an athlete. Unilever: “Make sustainable living commonplace.” Tesla: “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transport.” Whole Foods: “To nourish people and the planet.” Zappos: “Delivering Happiness.” ING Financial Group: “Empowering people to stay a step ahead in life and in business.” U.S. Humane Society: “Celebrating animals, confronting cruelty.” NPR: “To create a more informed public—one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures.” TED: “Spread Ideas.”
― John Mackey, Conscious Leadership: Elevating Humanity Through Business

“In Conversation, Resist the Temptation to Reflexively Add Value: The most important part of creating vulnerability often resides not in what you say but in what you do not say. This means having the willpower to forgo easy opportunities to offer solutions and make suggestions. Skilled listeners do not interrupt with phrases like Hey, here’s an idea or Let me tell you what worked for me in a similar situation because they understand that it’s not about them. They use a repertoire of gestures and phrases that keep the other person talking. “One of the things I say most often is probably the simplest thing I say,” says Givechi. “ ‘Say more about that.”
― Daniel Coyle, The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

“key point about a one-on-one: It should be regarded as the subordinate’s meeting, with its agenda and tone set by him. There’s good reason for this. Somebody needs to prepare for the meeting. The supervisor with eight subordinates would have to prepare eight times; the subordinate only once. So the latter should be asked to prepare an outline, which is very important because it forces him to think through in advance all of the issues and points he plans to raise. Moreover, with an outline, the supervisor knows at the outset what is to be covered and can therefore help to set the pace of the meeting according to the “meatiness” of the items on the agenda. An outline also provides a framework for supporting information, which the subordinate should prepare in advance. The subordinate should then walk the supervisor through all the material.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“In the beginning, nearly fourteen billion years ago, all the space and all the matter and all the energy of the known universe was contained in a volume less than one-trillionth the size of the period that ends this sentence.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

“One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. Once people get used to a certain luxury, they take it for granted. Then they begin to count on it. Finally they reach a point where they can’t live without it.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“The Effects of Personal Bias and Hiring Urgency There are other types of cognitive biases that affect the hiring process. Another harmful one is personal bias, the basic human instinct to surround yourself with people who are like you. People have a natural desire to hire those with similar characteristics: educational background, professional experience, functional expertise, and similar life experiences. The middle-aged manager who holds a degree from the University of Michigan, worked at McKinsey, lives in the suburbs with a partner and kids, and plays golf will tend to be attracted to candidates with similar attributes.”
― Colin Bryar, Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon

“According to advocates, such as Princeton professor Gerard O'Neill, such commerce could then provide the economic foundation for the development of large colonies, literally cities in space, in high Earth orbits, and this vision has served to motivate many space entrepreneurs, notably Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos.”
― Robert Zubrin, Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility

“In the old days of enterprise computing, companies typically paid millions of dollars to license a package of software, millions more to buy the hardware and to get the software installed properly, and then more money for yearly maintenance contracts. Think Oracle. Then came Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS. The customer negotiated a price with the software supplier and paid monthly to use software that ran in the cloud. Think Salesforce. Now, we have the utilization model, with payments based on consumption. You buy credits and use them when you need them. Think Amazon’s AWS and Snowflake. We believe it’s a superior model and that someday most enterprise software will be purchased and delivered this way.”
― Frank Slootman, Rise of the Data Cloud

“Hey Pete, I'm trying to make desk & office rental less of a pain for new businesses (vision). We’re just starting out and don’t have anything to sell, but want to make sure we’re building something that actually helps (framing). I’ve only ever come at it from the tenant’s side and I’m having a hard time understanding how it all works from the landlord’s perspective (weakness). You’ve been renting out desks for a while and could really help me cut through the fog (pedestal). Do you have time in the next couple weeks to meet up for a chat? (ask)”
― Rob Fitzpatrick, The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you