Photo via Pinterest from what is clearly a long time ago.
I’ve been researching General Eric Shinseki today. His saying,
“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”
has long been one of my all-time favorites.
There’s some great quotes by him here. A few new favorites I have now are:
- “An army that fought and won a war decisively finds it even more difficult to undergo change.”
- “It’s tough never being right.”
- “More importantly, if you are in a position to hire, hire a veteran. They will be the best employees you have.”
- “In the army we do two things ever day. We train our soldiers and then we grow them into leaders, because frankly, we don’t hire out. We grow our own leaders.”
- “You don’t get many do-overs in life.”
And this is especially lovely:
- “I have spent a lifetime watching kids make mistakes because they were not trained or well led or properly motivated to do well. I never faulted the kids; rather, I saw opportunity to train, to motivate, to improve leadership – not to punish the individual.”
I re-found General Shinseki’s work by reading the biography of General Ann Dunwoody, A Higher Standard: Leadership Strategies from America’s First Female Four-Star General
- “If you compromise your integrity and principles on minor issues, it gets easier to make bad choices on the big issues.”
As I read the first thirty pages, it really made me tear up — it’s such an inspirational book! —JM
PS Design in the technology industry is undergoing a change right now as well. I posted earlier today about a 2016 article I wrote back when I was at KPCB that is related.