QUOTES: My take on some of the profound quotes from great leaders.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
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Leadership
In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
This quote is attributed to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in World War II and a two-time US president.
Planning is critical for success in an organizational context, whether leading a company team or a program.
The best of plans go haywire during execution. What comes in handy is the months of preparation, endless hours of thinking, weighing various options, and getting the teams behind the mission.
Steve Jobs
1985
Management
You know who the best managers are?They're the great individual contributors, who never ever want to be a manager, but decide they have to be a manager because no one else is going to be able to do as good a job as them.
A high-performing individual needs to be surrounded by like-minded people and led by a competent manager who can earn the respect of others and be viewed as a role model.
Take any one ingredient out, and you are looking at a sub-optimal team.
Steve Jobs
2008
Self - Improvement
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
Unsurprisingly, many great visionaries have exhorted us to discover our true selves.
Stephen Covey alludes to finding the paradigm while describing principles of personal vision.
Sadhguru's fundamental premise has been to discover oneself and not be driven either by the physical body or the mind.
Steve Jobs
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CX
You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.
This is profound. If Steve Jobs had been conducting user interviews of MP3 player users, we would never have had an iPod.
I encourage current UX/CX designers to apply common sense, execute the change, and then fine-tune it based on user feedback.