Recent quotes:

Research: Adding Women to the C-Suite Changes How Companies Think

Our study begins to explore those mechanisms, finding that when women are appointed to the C-suite, they catalyze fundamental shifts in the top management team’s risk tolerance, openness to change, and focus on M&As versus R&D.

When there's an audience, people's performance improves -- ScienceDaily

When participants knew an audience was watching, a part of the prefrontal cortex associated with social cognition, particularly the thoughts and intentions of others, activated along with another part of the cortex associated with reward. Together these signals triggered activity in the ventral striatum, an area of the brain that motivates action and motor skills. In essence, the presence of an audience, at least a small one, increased people's incentive to perform well, Chib said, and the brain scans validated this by showing the neural mechanism for how it happens. While people were watching, participants were an average of 5 percent better at the video game -- and as much as 20 percent better. Only two participants didn't perform better in front of others.

Blah!

Stumping the Palmetto State a day after his campaign announced staff reductions and pay cuts, Bush dismissed critics who said the changes reflect a struggling campaign that is losing ground to any number of rivals. "Blah, blah, blah," Bush said. "That's my answer — blah, blah, blah."

How not to engage with protestors

Apple designs with consensus

Each project has a lead designer, but almost everyone contributes to every project, and shares the credit. (Who had this or that idea? “The team.”) Ive describes his role as lying between two extremes of design leadership: he is not the source of all creativity, nor does he merely assess the proposals of colleagues. The big ideas are often his, and he has an opinion about every detail. Team meetings are held in the kitchen two or three times a week, and Ive encourages candor. “We put the product ahead of anything else,” he said. “Let’s say we’re talking about something that I’ve done that’s ugly and ill-proportioned—because, believe you me, I can pull some beauties out of the old hat. . . . It’s fine, and we all do, and sometimes we do it repeatedly, and we have these seasons of doing it—”
RUDY GIULIANI (3/3/2014): Putin decides what he wants to do, and he does it in half a day. ... He makes a decision, and he executes it, quickly.  Then everybody reacts.  That's what you call a leader. THAT'S NOT WHAT YOU CALL A LEADER!!!  Makes a quick decision and everybody reacts?  That's what you call a toddler!
“People are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil,” Palin said to Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Monday night. “They look at our president as one who wears mom jeans and equivocates and bloviates.”
A focused leader is not the person concentrating on the three most important priorities of the year, or the most brilliant systems thinker, or the one most in tune with the corporate culture. Focused leaders can command the full range of their own attention: They are in touch with their inner feelings, they can control their impulses, they are aware of how others see them, they understand what others need from them, they can weed out distractions and also allow their minds to roam widely, free of preconceptions.
Whether Bezos decides to make any of these changes to the Post remains to be seen — but I for one hope that he tries to implement at least one or two of them, because it would make for a fascinating experiment in building a truly next-generation digital newspaper.
As one of the backup singers finds out when she tries to make that walk: it can be paralyzing. What should you focus on? What sound should you create? What opportunities should you pass and which ones should you jump on? Same is true for being a leader – you have many opportunities and only limited time and resource; you have imperfect information and a lot of advisors emphatically giving you conflicting opinions. It’s tempting to wish you had someone telling you what to do. You don’t – they are looking to you – now the leader – to look out into the marketplace, create a vision, and then stick to it as you lead people there. Yes, you have to vision. And part of having vision – of being able to make that “long walk” – is your ego. Yes, I said it, ego. As a lead singer, as a star, you need the ego to think that you can make a difference, that you can hold the stage, entertain and inspire people. The same is true with you as a leader. You need the ego – the inner will – to believe you can make a difference, that you have a vision that others will want to get on board with and that you have enough personal power to lead people.