Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Archives for November 2013

Inspirational Quotations #503

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I cannot sleep for dreaming; I cannot dream but I wake and walk about the house as though I’d find you coming through some door.
—Arthur Miller (American Playwright)

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

The man who does not take pride in his own performance performs nothing in which to take pride.
—Thomas J. Watson (American Businessperson)

Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out of his conscience, thus helping to bring the collective conscience to life.
—Norman Cousins (American Journalist)

As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

Lost time is like a run in a stocking. It always gets worse.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh (American Author, Aviator)

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Better to Quit While You’re Ahead // Leadership Lessons from Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer

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If you are the CEO of a large public company and the news of your exit causes your company’s market cap to swell by $24 billion on the morning of this announcement, you’ve made the right call.

On 23-Aug-2013, Microsoft’s shares gained 8.9% in pre-market trading when the company announced that Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer would retire within the next twelve months. During Ballmer’s 13-year tenure as CEO, Microsoft continued its dominance over the traditional segments of computing, but could not grasp changing consumer preferences. Despite stellar profitability, strategic missteps have forced Microsoft to play catch-up as Apple, Google, and other competitors dominated the new world of mobile devices, social media, search, and internet advertising.

In interviews with Wall Street Journal, Ballmer admitted: “Maybe I’m an emblem of an old era, and I have to move on … As much as I love everything about what I’m doing, the best way for Microsoft to enter a new era is a new leader who will accelerate change.”

Successful professionals know when to make the move: While they are ahead

There is a time limit to success at any leadership position. If a leader is any good, after the initial rush of process improvements, business turnarounds, organizational transformations, and program initiations, familiarity sets into his job. At that point, diminishing returns set in: established routines, processes, and employee networks take over the execution of the change the leader might have initiated.

There is a natural cycle of rapid growth and sustenance to most leadership roles. Stay as long as you need to establish direction, put your ideas into action, and institute the momentum of change. Then, undertake new challenges in your existing job or explore new career opportunities. Plan ahead—the right opportunity may not emerge quickly.

Don’t Hang on

Another lesson from the imminent transition at Microsoft: when you find yourself in trouble and can’t seem to make an impact despite persistent attempts at change, do not wait to get the push. It may be difficult to let go, but don’t hang on.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Microsoft’s Resurgence Story // Book Summary of CEO Satya Nadella’s ‘Hit Refresh’
  2. Are You Ready for a Promotion?
  3. A Little Known, but Powerful Technique to Fast Track Your Career: Theo Epstein’s 20 Percent Rule
  4. Book Summary of Nicholas Carlson’s ‘Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!’
  5. Beware of Key-Person Dependency Risk

Inspirational Quotations #502

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Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.
—Isaac D’Israeli

The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started.
—Norman Cousins (American Journalist)

The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

Dreams are great. When they disappear you may still be there, but you will have ceased to live.
—Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor (American-born British Politician)

Inspirational Quotations #501

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Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.
—Thomas Browne (English Christian Author)

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

To find fault, is easy; to do better may be difficult.
—Plutarch (Ancient Greek Historian)

A word spoken in season, at the right moment, is the mother of ages.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

We hear the haunting presentiment of a dutiful middle age in the current reluctance of young people to select any option except the one they feel will impinge upon them the least.
—Gail Sheehy (American Journalist)

If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.
—T. S. Eliot (American-born British Poet)

Be happy with what you have and are, be generous with both, and you won’t have to hunt for happiness.
—William Ewart Gladstone (British Head of State)

Inspirational Quotations #500

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Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.
—Denis Diderot (French Philosopher)

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

Friendship is the privilege of private men; for wretched greatness knows no blessing so substantial.
—Nahum Tate

People say they love truth, but in reality they want to believe that which they love is true.
—Robert Ringer (American Entrepreneur)

I do not like heroes; they make too much noise in the world. The more radiant their glory, the more odious they are.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.
—Norman Cousins (American Journalist)

One cannot weep for the entire world, it is beyond human strength. One must choose.
—Jean Anouilh

Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.
—Martin Luther (German Protestant Theologian)

Happiness is not a reward—it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment—it is a result.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)