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Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility QUOTES

Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility QUOTES

1 " Most of us feel that we can't tell the people who work for us or with us the truth because (a) they're not smart enough to understand it, (b) they're not mature enough to understand it, or (c) it wouldn't be nice. We want to treat one another well, and we think that means making one another feel good. But this desire to make people feel good is often as much a desire to make ourselves feel good as to do the right thing. It often leads to people actually feeling worse, because they're not correcting a problem in the way they're working, and eventually come home to roost. Part of being an adult is being able to hear the truth. "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

2 " Great teams are not created with incentives, procedures, and perks. They are created by hiring talented people who are adults and want nothing more than to tackle a challenge, and then communicating to them, clearly and continuously, about what the challenge is. "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

3 " Excellent colleagues, a clear purpose, and well-understood deliverables: that’s the powerful combination. "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

4 " True and abiding happiness in work comes from being deeply engaged in solving a problem with talented people you know are also deeply engaged in solving it, and from knowing that the customer loves the product or service you all have worked so hard to make. "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

5 " Trust is based on honest communication, and I find that employees become cynical when they hear half-truths. Cynicism is a cancer. It creates a metastasizing discontent that feeds on itself, leading to smarminess and fueling backstabbing. "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

6 " QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER • As you survey your company-wide policies and procedures, ask: What is the purpose of this policy or procedure? Does it achieve that result? • Are there any approval mechanisms you can eliminate? • What percentage of its time does management spend on problem solving and team building? • Have you done a cost-benefit analysis of the incentives and perks you offer employees? • Could you replace approvals and permissions with analysis of spending patterns and a focus on accuracy and predictability? • Is your decision-making system clear and communicated widely? "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

7 " Here is my radical proposition: a business leader’s job is to create great teams that do amazing work on time. That’s it. That’s the job of management. "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

8 " The Greatest Motivation Is Contributing to Success "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

9 " The typical approach to growth in business is to add more people and structure and to impose more fixed budgetary goals and restraints. But my experiences at fast-growth companies that successfully scaled showed me that the leanest processes possible and a strong culture of discipline were far superior, if for no other reason than their speed. "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

10 " trying new things, making mistakes, beginning again, and seeing good results. "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

11 " Most companies are clinging to the established command-and-control system of top-down decision making but trying to jazz it up by fostering “employee engagement” and by “empowering” people. "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

12 " Many people feel hesitant to speak so openly, but the truth is that most people really appreciate the opportunity to get a better understanding of their behavior and how it’s being perceived, as long as the tone of delivery isn’t hostile or condescending. "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

13 " There’s a dangerous fallacy that data constitutes the facts you need to know to run your business. "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

14 " When engineers start to whine about a process you’re trying to implement, you want to really dig into what’s bothering them, because they hate senseless bureaucracy and stupid process. "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

15 " Retention is not a good measure of team-building success; having a great person in every single position on the team is the best measure. "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

16 " what people most want from work: to be able to come in and work with the right team of people— colleagues they trust and admire—and to focus like crazy on doing a great job together. "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

17 " understood that part of the reason large teams are crippled in their ability to innovate and move fast is that because it’s hard work to manage them, companies build infrastructure to make sure people are doing the right things. But the teams I saw that accomplished great stuff just knew what they most needed to accomplish; they didn’t need elaborate procedures, and certainly not incentives. "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

18 " Part of being an adult is being able hear the truth. And the corollary is that you owe the adults you hire the truth. That is actually what they want most from you. "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

19 " Are we limited by the team we have not being the team we should have? "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility

20 " We decided to use the metaphor that the company was like a sports team, not a family. Just as a great sports teams are constantly scouting for new players and culling others from their lineups, our team leaders would need to continually look for talent and reconfigure team makeup. "

― Patty McCord , Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility