Sublime

gang, others follow you based on the quality of your actions rather than the magnitude of your declarations.

Years later I asked Herb why he believed in our company at a time when nobody else did. I pointed out that, at the time, Allen & Company wasn’t very involved in technology, let alone data center automation. Herb replied, “I didn’t understand anything about your business and I understood very little about your industry. What I saw was two guys c

Grove was fascinated to find that some people, with no prompting, were consistently driven to “try to test the outer limits of their abilities” and achieve their “personal best.” These employees were a manager’s dream; they were never self-satisfied. But Grove also understood that not everyone was a natural-born achiever. For the rest, “stretched”

“Here lies one who knew how to get around him men who were cleverer than himself.”

His mantra was simple: “Do what you need to do to make it better.” Of all the things I learned from Roone, this is what shaped me the most.

Al Davis at Oakland (and by default, the great Sid Gillman under whom Al had served in San Diego with the Chargers);

Nearly all of my new teammates were egotists in exactly the way Red was. Each of them knew how good he was, but each of them seemed to understand perfectly that everyone had to play his part for us to win.

he remembered a quote from Tom Landry, who coached the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys for twenty-nine years, a stint that included twenty straight winning seasons and two Super Bowl titles. “A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.” That’s w