These are the quotes I noted while reading Gung Ho! by Ken Blanchard:
- [Don’t] wait for silence before speaking, but rather, wait for the silence to end.
- Narrow minds live narrow lives.
- Squirrels work hard because their work is worthwhile… Worthwhile goes beyond important, but it starts with important…
- First, the work has to be understood as important.
- Second, it has to lead to a well-understood and shared goal.
- Third, values have to guide all plans, decisions, and actions.
- Put all three together and you’ve got worthwhile work.
- People have to understand how what they do contributes to the well-being of humankind.
- You can’t have worthwhile work unless everyone is working toward a well-understood and shared goal. But that’s not enough. It matters how you reach the goal. You must be guided by values. You have to be proud of both the goal and how you get there.
- Sometimes the best way to lead is to find out where people are going anyway and then get out front.
- Goals are marker posts you drive into the future landscape between where you are and where you want to be.
- Importance and goals get people going. It’s values that sustain the effort.
- Values are more management’s unique responsibility than goal setting is. With goals, you will have a couple of critical ones. With values, every one is critical.
- Sometimes the fastest route to where you want to get isn’t a straight line. But with values there are only straight lines.
- Values are to guide your behavior, not for you to guide others. You’re a leader, not the police.
- As mutual trust rises, support for goals will increase.
- You have to be willing to explain why the goals are important and honestly show how people benefit.
- Telling the truth and nothing but the truth is one thing. Telling the whole truth is quite another.
- Managers keep control by pretending information is sensitive and withholding it. It’s great for power trips but it doesn’t lead to trust. If you want your team to be Gung Ho, you have to tell the whole truth, and that means information belongs to everyone.
- Running a business from numbers is like playing basketball while watching the scoreboard instead of the ball.
- If you want your people to take charge, they have to be free to do it… Knowing how far you can go before you’re out of bounds has to be matched with knowing the boss isn’t about to step in and take over.
- I can program my brain to be unhappy with every eventuality, or to look forward enthusiastically to the day ahead.