10 Highlights

Ed Batista, an executive coach and instructor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, explains that part of the reason feedback doesn’t stick is that the recipient often views the conversation as a threat, so his adrenaline-fueled fight-or-flight instinct kicks in. When feedback is given, Batista writes, the listener’s “heart rate and blood pressure are almost certain to increase, [accompanied by] a cascade of neurological and physiological events that impair the ability to process complex information and react thoughtfully. Zhuo, Julie. The Making of a Manager (p. 96). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Nobody thinking rationally intends to say numbers one or two, but it happens. We get upset or emotional. Someone says something that pisses us off and all of a sudden, we’re seeing red and want to give them a piece of our mind. The best advice for prevention? Don’t engage when you are upset.

A 2014 report of hundreds of public companies found that those with the greatest ethnic and racial diversity in their management ranks were 35 percent more likely to have financial returns higher than average. A study of 2,400 companies found that organizations with at least one female board member had better outcomes than organizations with no women.

Plans are worthless, but planning is everything,

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Effort doesn’t count; results are what matter.

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.

Steve Jobs

Worry about what’s in front of you—don’t worry yet about what’s months or years ahead. Then work with your team to set realistic and ambitious target dates for each milestone.

There is always a way to break down what seems like an impossible journey into a series of days, miles, and finally steps. By putting one foot in front of the other over and over again, eventually we’ll scale mountains.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.

Heraclitus

An organization’s culture is best understood not from reading what’s written on its corporate website but from seeing what it’s willing to give up for its values.