The following is Part 2 of the leadership quotes and insights series from Donald Keough’s incredible book The Ten Commandments for Business Failure. You can read Part 1 by clicking here.
- “The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.” – Burrhus Frederic Skinner
- “Show me a dozen ties and I’m confused. Show me three and I usually pick the blue one.”
- “It ain’t so much the things we know that get us into trouble. It’s the things we know that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain
- “We seek to confirm our preconceived views rather than see what might be wrong with those views.”
- “‘Let’s build the best car we can. And let’s keep improving that car.’ Obvious. And brilliant.” – on the Japanese car industry
- “All the research in the world doesn’t mean anything if you aren’t asking the right questions.”
- “We saw the same furniture everyone else did, but we knew the sofa could be moved.”
- “Time to think is not a luxury. It is a necessity.”
- “We pay homage to reason, but we are held hostage to emotion.”
- “It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.” – James Thurber
- “The expertise of some experts has been disproved so many times that you would think they would wear out their welcome.”
- “They are constantly ‘reengineering’ – mainly they’re reengineering the language.”
- “You simply cannot put numbers on everything. It is, to my way of thinking, a failure of imagination.”
- “If you want to get nothing done, make sure that administrative concerns take precedence over all others!”
- “The geometrically elegant machinery of the organization should not get in the way of the human creativity and productivity of individuals.”
- “They go home at night complaining of how hard they work and in reality no single productive event has taken place all day.”
- “I always described myself as a high-priced janitor. My job was to keep the aisles clear so that our brightest associates could get their jobs done.”
- “Very early in my business career I came to the not so startling conclusion that every business is mainly about serving present customers effectively and creating new ones.”
- “If there were any criticims to be leveled, I wanted them aired in a room when everybody was looking at each other. I also tried to discourage people from giving me information or posing a question in the hallway.”
- “A committee is a group of men who individually can do nothing, but as a group decide that nothing can be done.” – Fred Allen
- “I moved the sofa! And the house did not collapse.”
- “There are many things in life more important than money, and they all cost money.” – Fred Allen
- “The reality of the motion picture business is that you could not develop a guaranteed stream of income from it.”
- “Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.” – Michael Pritchard
- “In the modern scientific age, in the industrialized Western world, perpetual fear of the future is irrational.”
- “Worst case scenarios rarely happen.”
Which of these quotes speaks to you the most? And do not forget, check back tomorrow for Part 3 of the quotes and lessons from Keough’s book. We will also unveil his Top Ten Commandments for Business Failure.
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