What Got You Here Won't Get You There

Stop trying to change people who don’t think they have a problem.

Among the myriad wise things I have heard Peter Drucker say, the wisest was, “We spend a lot of time teaching leaders what to do. We don’t spend enough time teaching leaders what to stop. Half the leaders I have met don’t need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.”

You failed to appreciate that every successful project goes through seven phases: The first is assessing the situation; the second is isolating the problem; the third is formulating. But there are three more phases before you get to the seventh, implementation. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t pay close attention to phases four, five, and six—t

The more you subsume your desire to shine, the more you will shine in the other person’s eyes.

If you press people to identify the motives behind their self-interest it usually boils down to four items: money, power, status, and popularity.

Stop trying to change people who are pursuing the wrong strategy for the organization.

the higher up you go in the organization, the more you need to make other people winners and not make it about winning yourself.

I tell my clients, “It’s a lot harder to change people’s perception of your behavior than it is to change your behavior. In fact, I calculate that you have to get 100% better in order to get 10% credit for it from your coworkers.”

Stop trying to change people who should not be in their job.