Scaling Up Excellence Quotes

“People also have a greater capacity when they aren’t worn down by work and worry. When people get enough sleep, they are more adept at difficult tasks, are more interpersonally sensitive, make better decisions, and are less likely to turn nasty.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“It means constantly seeking and implementing better ways of thinking and acting across old and new corners of the system.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“when I am there to visit and get to know the people and how they work, I can’t learn much sitting in a private office.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“When someone can find some way to direct a team’s or an organization’s attention toward the people affected by what it does (and away from members’ own needs and wants), they will take greater responsibility for doing the right thing. This was certainly true for those radiologists who detected more errors in X-rays when the patient’s picture was staring back at them. It was also evident when CEO Wright Lassiter at the Alameda Health System convinced union leaders that their patients—and ultimately the workers they represented—would be better off if their members took a shuttle to and from an employee parking lot rather than to compete with patients for parking spots.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“fear of taking responsibility, especially the sense that it is safer to do nothing, or something bad, than the right thing.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“CEB’s research shows that customer loyalty has more to do with how well companies keep their “basic, even plain vanilla promises” than with how well they dazzle customers.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“They borrowed a motto from the U.S. Army: “Amateurs discuss strategy; professionals discuss logistics”—in other words, the nuances of getting things done.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“Ignorance, mediocrity, and mistakes run rampant when organizations fail to link the right people to the right information at the right time. This”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“Accountability means that an organization is packed with people who embody and protect excellence (even when they are tired, overburdened, and distracted), who work vigorously to spread it to others, and who spot, help, critique, and (when necessary) push aside colleagues who fail to live and spread it.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“We don’t think enough about the steps required to achieve those ends, and when we do we underestimate how much time and effort they will take. But thinking only about looming deadlines and short-term goals is a mixed bag as well. We focus on what is feasible, on the steps to take right now, but we forget or downplay long-term goals. So we direct our efforts toward achievable milestones even when they undermine our ability to reach our ultimate destination.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“As engineer Sanjeev Singh explained, if you keep waiting for people to tell you what to do, don’t ask for help when you get stuck, and won’t show others your work until it is perfect, “you won’t last long at Facebook.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“Effective scaling depends on believing and living a shared mindset throughout your group, division, or organization.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“The fourth big lesson is that scaling starts and ends with individuals—success depends on the will and skill of people at every level of an organization.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“Organizations that scale well are filled with people who talk and act as if they are in the middle of a manageable mess.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“He reminds them that “life is messy sometimes. Sometimes the best you can do is to accept that it is messy, try to love it as much as you can, and move forward.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“Here’s what I think we face. 2. Here’s what I think we should do. 3. Here’s why. 4. Here’s what I think we should keep an eye on. 5. Now talk to me (i.e., tell me if you [a] don’t understand, [b] cannot do it, [c] see”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“This is our company—it’s not theirs—it’s ours.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling up Excellence

“A scaling premortem works something like this: when your team is on the verge of making and implementing a big decision, call a meeting and ask each member to imagine that it is, say, a year later. Split them into two groups. Have one group imagine that the effort was an unmitigated disaster. Have the other pretend it was a roaring success. Ask each member to work independently and generate reasons, or better yet, write a story, about why the success or failure occurred. Instruct them to be as detailed as possible and, as Klein emphasizes, to identify causes that they wouldn’t usually mention “for fear of being impolitic.” Next, have each person in the “failure” group read his or her list or story aloud, and record and collate the reasons. Repeat this process with the “success” group. Finally, use the reasons from both groups to strengthen your scaling plan. If you uncover overwhelming and impassable roadblocks, then go back to the drawing board.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“Spread a mindset, not just a footprint. Running up the numbers and putting your logo on as many people and places as possible isn’t enough. 2. Engage all the senses. Bolster the mindset you want to spread with supportive sights, sounds, smells, and other subtle cues that people may barely notice, if at all. 3. Link short-term realities to long-term dreams. Hound yourself and others with questions about what it takes to link the never-ending now to the sweet dreams you hope to realize later. 4. Accelerate accountability. Build in the feeling that “I own the place and the place owns me.” 5. Fear the clusterfug. The terrible trio of illusion, impatience, and incompetence are ever-present risks. Healthy doses of worry and self-doubt are antidotes to these three hallmarks of scaling clusterfugs. 6. Scaling requires both addition and subtraction. The problem of more is also a problem of less. 7. Slow down to scale faster—and better—down the road. Learn when and how to shift ears from automatic, mindless, and fast modes of thinking (“System 1”) to slow, taxing, logical, deliberative, and conscious modes (“System 2”); sometimes the best advice is, “Don’t just do something, stand there.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling up Excellence

“If you want to make good decisions as the day wears on, watch for signs of fatigue. Even seemingly trivial levels damage performance. Build in ways for yourself and others to take breaks, whether it’s getting a bite to eat or taking a few minutes to stretch your legs.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“If you can’t bring yourself to encourage employees to lie down on the job, at least give them plenty of breaks. The ordinary fatigue most of us feel during the workday makes us grouchier—and dumber—as the hours go by.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“The lesson from the Big Mac story is that innovations that ought to be scaled won’t happen everywhere but can happen anywhere.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling up Excellence

“Accountability means that an organization is packed with people who embody and protect excellence (even when they are tired, overburdened, and distracted), who work vigorously to spread it to others, and who spot, help, critique, and (when necessary) push aside colleagues who fail to live and spread it. The trick—and it is a difficult trick—is to design a system where this tug of responsibility is constant, strong, and embraced by everyone, and where slackers, energy suckers, and selfish soloists have no place to hide.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“crucial decisions that shape how scaling unfolds. One of these universal decisions is whether and when to take a more “Catholic” or a more “Buddhist” path.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less

“organizations that spread and sustain excellence are infused with a “relentless restlessness”—that often uncomfortable urge for constant innovation, driven by the nagging feeling that things are never quite good enough.”
― Robert I. Sutton, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less