Pithy Sayings

Management

Don't ever fear having good and popular people around you, because they can only enhance your own performance. The more you can play to these people the better the show.
[Gene Roddenberry, quoted in Star Trek Memories by William Shatner, 1994]

One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you.
[Dennis A Peer in National Enquirer]

Among you Chieftains and Huns will be those whose spirits cling to our past ways. We will show patience with you unenlightened ones. Yet, if you choose not our new course and cause dissension, you will be stricken from our ranks.
[Attila the Hun, circa 450 AD, on his new leadership style]

Effective strategy requires a deep analysis of the present, the construction of an integrated future, and a grasp of the dynamics of some social and environmental change which might connect the two.
[From A Theory of Good City Form by Kevin Lynch, 1981]

Phases of a Project
1. Exaltation
2. Confusion
3. Disenchantment
4. Search for guilty
5. Punishment of innocent
6. Distinction for the uninvolved
[Original author unknown]

Here's one way to make a Dinosaur Brain business decision:
1. Get an idea from some authority figure.
2. Tell everybody that this idea is the basis for all the changes you're going to make.
3. Do things the way you've always done them.
4. If something good happens, take credit for it. If something bad happens, point out that it just goes to show that the old ways are best.
[From Dinosaur Brains by Albert J Bernstean and Sydney Craft Rozen, 1989]

Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
[Robert Heinlein, 1907 to 1988]