How Will You Measure Your Life?

Management is the most noble of professions if it's practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team.

How can I be sure that I will live a life of integrity – and stay out of jail?

How can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse, my children, and my extended family and close friends become an enduring source of happiness?

How can I be sure that I will be successful and happy in my career?

Doing deals doesn’t yield the deep rewards that come from building up people.

In order to really find happiness, you need to continue looking for opportunities that you believe are meaningful, in which you will be able to learn new things, to succeed and be given more and more responsibility to shoulder.

I had thought the destination was what was important, but it turned out it was the journey.

Intimate, loving, and enduring relationships with our family and close friends will be among the sources of the deepest joy in our lives.

It's easier to hold your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold them 98 percent of the time.

Do Not Over Invest In Work, And Under Invest In Relationships

Resources are what he uses to do it, processes are how he does it, and priorities are why he does it.

People often think that the best way to predict the future is by collecting as much data as possible before making a decision. But this is like driving a car looking only at the rearview mirror—because data is only available about the past.

In order to really find happiness, you need to continue looking for opportunities that you believe are meaningful, in which you will be able to learn new things, to succeed, and be given more and more responsibility to shoulder.

A good theory doesn’t change its mind: it doesn’t apply only to some companies or people, and not to others. It is a general statement of what causes what, and why.

The problem is that what we think matters most in our jobs often does not align with what will really make us happy.

The art of managing this, however, is not to simply stomp out anything that was not a part of the original plan. Among those threats and opportunities that we didn’t anticipate, there are almost always better options than were contained in our original plans.

Good theory helps people steer to good decisions—not just in business, but in life, too.

True motivation is getting people to do something because they want to do it.

Compensation is a hygiene factor. You need to get it right. But all you can aspire to is that employees will not be mad at each other and the company because of compensation.

The opposite of job dissatisfaction isn’t job satisfaction, but rather an absence of job dissatisfaction.

Motivation factors include challenging work, recognition, responsibility, and personal growth.

Beyond a certain point, hygiene factors such as money, status, compensation, and job security are much more a by-product of being happy with a job rather than the cause of it.

When strategy forms in this way, it is known as emergent strategy.

In our lives and in our careers, whether we are aware of it or not, we are constantly navigating a path by deciding between our deliberate strategies and the unanticipated alternatives that emerge.

What’s important is to get out there and try stuff until you learn where your talents, interests, and priorities begin to pay off.

The resource allocation process determines which deliberate and emergent initiatives get funded and implemented, and which are denied resources.

A strategy—whether in companies or in life—is created through hundreds of everyday decisions about how you spend your time, energy, and money.

If the decisions you make about where you invest your blood, sweat, and tears are not consistent with the person you aspire to be, you’ll never become that person.

Work can bring you a sense of fulfillment—but it pales in comparison to the enduring happiness you can find in the intimate relationships that you cultivate with your family and close friends.

Capital that seeks growth before profits is bad capital.

If you defer investing your time and energy until you see that you need to, chances are it will already be too late.

What causes us to buy a product or service is that we actually hire products to do jobs for us.

Self-esteem comes from achieving something important when it’s hard to do.

How you allocate your resources is where the rubber meets the road. Real strategy—in companies and in our lives—is created through hundreds of every day decisions about where we spend our resources. As you’re living your life from day to day, how do you make sure you’re heading in the right direction? Watch where your resources flow. If they’re not supporting the strategy you’ve decided upon, then you’re not implementing that strategy at all.