Jmac > Jmac's Quotes

“You can't change mental models until you change mental models.”
― Aidan McCullen, Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life

“When we realise obstacles are a rite of passage on the journey towards success, we see the them as mile stones rather than mill stones.”
― Aidan McCullen, Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life

“You leave the meeting feeling energised, only to be sucked into your inbox's zombie tractor beam, and 28 days later you all find yourselves looking for excuses to postpone the meeting. Which you do. But when the momentum is lost, it rarely recovers.”
― Elvin Turner, Be Less Zombie: Transform Your Business Through Innovation, Digitization, and Forward Thinking

“Your company is likely to be set up to deliver repeatable certainty. There is a range of well-known products and services, an established business model to protect and a well-understood customer base to serve. That context is perfect for incremental innovation; there are plenty of known cause-and-effect relationships where investment risks are low and tolerance for failure is scant. And so it should be if we're doing a good job in a well-understood context. But try dropping an idea for a brand new proposition into that climate. This fledgling idea kind of makes sense on paper but it uses emerging technology that we don't really understand, serves a category of customer that we're not too familiar with, would require some support capabilities that we don't have, and would be driven by a business model that is hard to predict. That idea, 99 times out of 100, will die fast or drown by death of a thousand watering-down committees. And yet it might have been an important new revenue stream.”
― Elvin Turner, Be Less Zombie: Transform Your Business Through Innovation, Digitization, and Forward Thinking

“Every time we add a lens, it modifies how we experience the world. The difference between that contraption and a world view is that each time a new lens is added to our world view, the lenses remain in place. We must be vigilant about the lenses we admit, because they colour our view of the world, sometimes to our disadvantage. They can limit us, encourage us to seek to confirm evidence and make us hold on to mental models, business models and convictions even when they no longer serve us.”
― Aidan McCullen, Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life

“You Are Not Your Jersey
“Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.” - Colin Powell
The New Zealand All Blacks (national rugby team) have a mantra: “Leave the jersey in a better place”. It means, this is not your jersey, you are part of something bigger but do your best while you wear the jersey. It provides a valuable lesson about enjoying your moment in the sun but letting go to pursue another one once your time ends. When I played in Toulouse they had the same mindset. The club only contracted a certain number of players each year and there was a set number of locker spaces. Each locker was numbered in such a way that was not associated with a jersey number and that was also the number you wore on your club sportswear. Some numbers were 00, others were 85 and mine was 71. When I joined the coach explained to me in French that this was not my number, but I was part of a tradition that spanned decades. My interpretation still remains, “You are not your jersey.”
― Aidan McCullen, Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life

“it is our responsibility to take charge of our own personal and professional growth.”
― Aidan McCullen, Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life

“the creation of any new value brings the destruction of the old.”
― Aidan McCullen, Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life