Jeff Ragan’s Reviews > The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You > Status Update

"Personnel determine the potential of the organization. Relationships determine the morale of the organization. Structure determines the size of the organization. Vision determines the direction of the organization. Leadership determines the success of the organization" (291).

"Once you find leaders, drawing them in can be very difficult. They are entrepreneurial and want to go their own way. If you try to recruit them, they want to know where you're going, how you plan to get there, who else you're planning to take with you - and whether they can drive! What you're doing has to be more compelling than what they're already doing without you" (270).

"Only the right action at the right time will bring success. Anything else exacts a high price. No leader can escape the Law of Timing" (257).

"One of the most harmful mind-sets of leaders is 'destination disease' - the idea that they can sacrifice for a season and then 'arrive.' Leaders who think this way stop sacrificing and stop gaining influence in their leadership" (245).

"Every year I spend about two weeks in December reevaluating my priorities. I review the previous year's schedule. I look at my upcoming commitments. I evaluate my family life. I think about my goals. I look at the big picture of what I'm doing to make sure the way I'm living aligns with my values and priorities" (223).

"If you don't believe in the vision and enthusiastically pursue it, doing all that you can to bring it to fruition, then you won't start making the small gains required to get the ball rolling to create momentum. However, if you model enthusiasm to your people day in and day out, attract like-minded people to your team, and motivate them to achieve, you will begin to see forward progress" (215-6).

"If you can deliver on small pieces of the vision while continuing to demonstrate good character and ongoing commitment, you have a chance to regain people's buy-in" (186).

"Too many leaders are like bad travel agents. They send people places they have never been. Instead, they should be more like tour guides, taking people places they have gone and sharing the wisdom of their own experiences" (173).

"The truth is that empowerment is powerful - not only for the person being developed, but also for the empowerer. Enlarging others makes you larger. Mark has made me better than I am, not just because he helped me achieve much more than I could have done on my own, but also because the whole process made me a better leader" (162).

"...when I boil leadership down to its essence, I still see twenty-one things a leader must do well to lead effectively. However, at the same time I also recognize that no single leader can do all twenty-one things well. That's why every leader needs a team of people" (137-8).