Ken > Ken's Quotes

“The choice to worry about why we are doing something more than how we do something is risky business.”
― Peter Block, The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters

“Raise the question of what do we want to create together, even for an established institution.”
― Peter Block, The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters

“The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions. —Claude Levi-Strauss”
― Jack Canfield, Coaching for Breakthrough Success: Proven Techniques for Making Impossible Dreams Possible DIGITAL AUDIO

“A boss might give instructions and bark orders, a consultant would analyze data and give advice, but a coach would use curiosity to ask, listen and draw out the best from people.”
― Jack Canfield, Coaching for Breakthrough Success: Proven Techniques for Making Impossible Dreams Possible DIGITAL AUDIO

“If one person tells you you’re a horse, they’re crazy. If three people tell you you’re a horse, there’s a conspiracy afoot. If 10 people tell you you’re a horse, it’s time to buy a saddle.” The point is that if several people are telling you the same thing, there is probably some truth in it.”
― Jack Canfield, Coaching for Breakthrough Success: Proven Techniques for Making Impossible Dreams Possible DIGITAL AUDIO

“When team members trust one another, when they know that everyone on the team is capable of admitting when they don’t have the right answer, and when they’re willing to acknowledge when someone else’s idea is better than theirs, the fear of conflict and the discomfort it entails is greatly diminished. When there is trust, conflict becomes nothing but the pursuit of truth, an attempt to find the best possible answer. It is not only okay but desirable.”
― Patrick Lencioni, The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business

“On a cohesive team, leaders are not there simply to represent the departments that they lead and manage but rather to solve problems that stand in the way of achieving success for the whole organization. That means they’ll readily offer up their departments’ resources when it serves the greater good of the team, and they’ll take an active interest in the thematic goal regardless of how closely related it is to their functional area.”
― Patrick Lencioni, The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business

“What sustains this “win-lose” mindset is a sense of scarcity, the fear that there is just not enough to go around, so we need to look out for ourselves even at the expense of others.”
― William Ury, Getting to Yes with Yourself:

“If there is a single lesson I have learned, it is this: in life, we are destined to lose many things. That is the nature of life. Never mind. Just don’t lose the present. Nothing is worth it.”
― William Ury, Getting to Yes with Yourself:

“God-sized visions may sound similar to big, audacious goals advocated by secular writers. But there is one big difference. God-sized visions can be accomplished only with the power of the Holy Spirit. When they are fulfilled, the church responds not with congratulatory praise of its organizational ability or depth of commitment, even though these are necessary.”
― Lovett H. Weems Jr., Bearing Fruit: Ministry with Real Results

“The fool tries to adjust the truth so he does not have to adjust to it.”
― Henry Cloud, Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward

“Creating a vision requires ideas, ideally intriguing and refreshing ideas that trigger people’s interest, curiosity, and excitement. It requires engagement with your imagination and an ability to think outside the clichéd box. It requires an open mind and willingness to listen to others’ unconventional ideas and, in a responsible way, incorporate these ideas into your own perspectives. It requires clarity of thought on what you fundamentally stand for: the values you maintain, the beliefs that are dear to you, the enduring commitments you have set out for yourself.”
― Rob-Jan De Jong, Anticipate: The Art of Leading by Looking Ahead

“What we see is often determined by what we are prepared to see. —PAUL SCHOEMAKER AND GEORGE DAY”
― Rob-Jan De Jong, Anticipate: The Art of Leading by Looking Ahead

“We’re supposed to learn from the past, but short-term success appears to shield our willingness to accept long-term implications.”
― Rob-Jan De Jong, Anticipate: The Art of Leading by Looking Ahead

“A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be. —WAYNE GRETZKY”
― Rob-Jan De Jong, Anticipate: The Art of Leading by Looking Ahead

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader. —JOHN QUINCY ADAMS”
― Rob-Jan De Jong, Anticipate: The Art of Leading by Looking Ahead

“In popular culture, the term “butterfly effect” is almost always misused. It has become synonymous with “leverage”—the idea of a small thing that has a big impact, with the implication that, like a lever, it can be manipulated to a desired end. This misses the point of Lorenz’s insight. The reality is that small things in a complex system may have no effect or a massive one, and it is virtually impossible to know which will turn out to be the case.”
― Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

“Fast-forward to March 17, 2014, when the Los Angeles Times was the first news company to break a story about a nearby earthquake. Their edge? The article was written entirely by a robot—a computer program that scans streams of data, like that from the U.S. Geological Survey, and puts together short pieces faster than any newsroom chain of command could. This program earned the paper a few minutes of lead time at most, but today, those minutes are critical.”
― Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

“As the world grows faster and more interdependent, we need to figure out ways to scale the fluidity of teams across entire organizations: groups with thousands of members that span continents, like our Task Force. But this is easier said than done.”
― Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

“Idea flow” is the ease with which new thoughts can permeate a group. Pentland likens it to the spread of the flu: a function of susceptibility and frequency of interaction. The key to increasing the “contagion” is trust and connectivity between otherwise separate elements of an establishment. The two major determinants of idea flow, Pentland has found, are “engagement” within a small group like a team, a department, or a neighborhood, and “exploration”—frequent contact with other units. In other words: a team of teams.”
― Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

“If I told you that you weren’t going home until we win—what would you do differently?”
― Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

“The heroic “hands-on” leader whose personal competence and force of will dominated battlefields and boardrooms for generations has been overwhelmed by accelerating speed, swelling complexity, and interdependence. Even the most successful of today’s heroic leaders appear uneasy in the saddle, all too aware that their ability to understand and control is a chimera.”
― Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

“Receiving feedback sits at the intersection of these two needs—our drive to learn and our longing for acceptance.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“Nothing affects the learning culture of an organization more than the skill with which its executive team receives feedback. And”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“Candor, collaboration, and cooperation are almost impossible to establish in environments where turf wars and one-upsmanship exist.”
― Judith E. Glaser, Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust & Get Extraordinary Results

“To get to the next level of greatness depends on the quality of the culture, which depends on the quality of the relationships, which depends on the quality of the conversations. Everything happens through conversations!”
― Judith E. Glaser, Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust & Get Extraordinary Results

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“Communication through interaction is less about the words spoken than it is about the interaction dynamics that take place at the nonverbal level; it is at this level that trust is established—or not.”
― Judith E. Glaser, Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust & Get Extraordinary Results

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart… Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. —CARL JUNG”
― Judith E. Glaser, Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust & Get Extraordinary Results

“Trust is the glue that holds an organization together in the face of enormous challenges. Trust primes the pump so that people can get intimate and feel open enough to be inclusive, interactive, and intentional.”
― Judith E. Glaser, Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust & Get Extraordinary Results