it’s possible to replace a genuine motivation with a synthetic one. This phenomenon is also known as ‘motivation crowding’: if you attach a financial reward to ideas, it can interfere with or even eliminate people’s genuine creative energy and ambition.

It’s an unfortunate reality of life that things that are easy to do are also very easy not to do.

The building, workforce and equipment was unchanged. The philosophy was new and the outcome was radically different.

In the kaizen philosophy, innovation is seen as an incremental process; it’s not about making big leaps forward, but rather making small things better, in small ways, everywhere you can, on a daily basis.

This law reveals what every great entrepreneur, athlete and coach seems to instinctively know: your success will be defined by your attitude towards the small stuff – the things most people overlook, ignore or don’t care about. The easiest way to do big things is by focusing on the small things.

If you want your story to be heard, you must aggressively, passionately and provocatively design those first five seconds to be thumb-stoppingly compelling, annoyingly magnetic or emotionally engaging.

first five seconds are do or die for any great story.

When you’re thinking about storytelling, cater to your most uninterested customer first.

screams a compelling promise in his audience’s face, which holds their attention long enough for him to deliver upon that promise.