Perspectives Perspectives onon

Life, Leadership,Life, Leadership,andand

Other Important MattersOther Important Matters

Assembled by

Carl L. Harshman

Twenty percent of the people will be against anything.

-Robert KennedyUS Attorney General

The secret of managingis to keep the guys who hate youaway from the guys who are undecided.

-Casey Stengel

This taught me a lesson,but I’m not sure what it is.

-John McEnroe on losing to Tim Mayotte

in the Ebel US ProIndoor Championships

They spend their timemostly looking forwardto the past.

-John Osborn Look Back in Anger

There’s nothing I’m afraid oflike scared people.

-Robert Frost

You’re telling us that the reason things are so bad is that they are so good,and they will get betteras soon as they get worse?

-John Sununu (then governor of New Hampshire)

You got it.

-James A. Baker(then Secretary of the Treasury)

The people who change best and fastestare the ones who have no choice.

-Robert FreyHarvard Business Review

Don’t forget, folks. . . the less you bet,the more you lose when you win.

-advice from a stickmanat the Landmark Casino, Las Vegas

(now closed)

Strangely enough, this is the pastthat somebody in the futureis longing to go back to.

-Ashleigh Brilliant

Things are more like they are now than they have ever been before.

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

Never become irritable waiting for things to get better.If you’ll be patient,you’ll find that you can wait much faster.

-Unknown

Some luck lies in not gettingwhat you thought you wantedbut getting what you have,which once you have got ityou may be smart enough to seeis what you would have wantedhad you known.

-Garrison Keillor

We hire people for their skills, but the whole person shows up for work.

-Chester I. Barnard

According to all major studies of mergers we have seen, failures have much more to do with lacking the soft skills-leadership and change management.

Rarely do failures result because hard business skills are lacking.

Michael Lombardo and Robert EichingerThe Leadership Machine

In commenting on the various approaches to understanding the process of leadership as well as the traits and behaviors of leaders, Warren Bennis, leadership guru said:

“Never have so many labored so long to say so little.”

If you have always done it that way,it is probably wrong.

-Charles Kettering

Faced with the choicebetween changing one’s mindand proving that there is no need to do so,almost everybody gets busy on the proof.

-John Kenneth Galbraith

Things will get better . . .despite our efforts to improve them.

-Will Rogers

The pure and simple truthis rarely pure

and never simple.

-Oscar Wilde

More than anytime in history,mankind faces a crossroads.One path leads to despairand utter hopelessness,the other to total extinction.

Let us pray that we have the wisdomto choose correctly.

-Woody Allen

Pick battles big enough to matter,small enough to win.

-Jonathan Kozol

As you’re the only oneyou can really change,the only one who can really useall your good advice is yourself.

-John-Roger and Peter McWilliams

The trouble with the futureis that it usually arrivesbefore we’re ready for it.

-Arnold H. Glasow

Convincing yourselfthat a bad ideais a good ideais a bad idea.

-Texas Bix Bender

Our problems are mostly behind us . . .what we have to do now is fight the solutions.

-Stult’s Situation Report The Chicago Tribune

July 11, 1975

You think you understand the situation,but what you don’t understandis that the situation just changed.

-Putnam Investments advertisement

The certainty of misery is better thanthe misery of uncertainty.

-Pogo

It’s a question of whetherwe’re going to go forward into the future,or past to the back.

-Vice President Dan Quayle

(You may want to read it again.)

The person who does not apply new remedies must expect new evils.

-Francis BaconEnglish Philosopher

The person at the top of the mountaindidn’t just fall there!

-Anonymous

Success or failureis caused more by mental attitudethan by mental capacity.

-Sir Walter Scott

Never have we had so little timein which to do so much!

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

Strategy without Leadership goes nowhere;

Leadership without Strategyhas nowhere to go.

C. L. Harshman

“A leader is a man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don’t want to do and like it.”

-Harry Truman

"The ship he commanded was running deeper and deeper into an enveloping fog of lies told by functionaries whose careers would be destroyed by the truth."

Tom ClancyThe Cardinal of the Kremlin

Like values, the search for the definitive solution to leadership problems has proved to be another endless quest for the Holy Grail in organization theory.

Charles Handy

. . . the higher one is in the hierarchy, the less appropriate authoritarian behaviors become in gaining the loyalty and dedication of independent-thinking and talented people.

Management Research GroupLeadership Effectiveness Analysis

“Developing Followership”

We’re all in this alone.

-Lily Tomlin

“There are many leaders, not just one. Leadership is distributed. It resides not solely in the individual at the top, but in every person at every level who, in one way or another, acts as a leader to a group of followers— wherever in the organization that person is, whether shop steward, team head, or CEO.”

Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee

Assembled by:Dr. Carl L Harshman

www.iwaminstitute.comwww.harshman.com