David Harewood Quotes

I watched '12 Angry Men' when I was a kid. It blew me away definitely.

'Twelve Angry Men' was done with an intermission, and I took that out. I really wanted an audience to feel like they had no break, just like those jurors, and you're not going to get out of that room until you come to a decision.

Discussion is just a tool. You have to aim; the final goal must be a decision.

Many CEOs and leaders think that silence is indeed golden, that consensus is bliss. It is - sometimes. But more often what it signifies is that there are no respected processes for surfacing concerns and dissent.

Too many problem-solving sessions become battlegrounds where decisions are made based on power rather than intelligence.

There is no way I could discuss things with Jimmy in an intelligent way if I didn’t attend cabinet meetings

If you really wish to be independent and make your own judgements about everything important, it is difficult to be a good team player —because a team has different criteria for making judgements about an issue.

When we come into the NSC, everybody has different opinions. At the end of the day, we present the president with all the facts. We let him make the decision. And we all, as a team, go out and support that decision.

Meetings are usually terrible, but they shouldn't be.

I looked around. As flock leader, everyone was expecting me to make a decision. Jeb's presence here would bring uncertainty, chaos, probably danger. It would perk up my day.

Broken Horses is an artistic triumph. Beautifully written, acted and imaged, this film wraps slowly around you like a king snake and squeezes.

The important thing about groupthink is that it works not so much by censoring dissent as by making dissent seem somehow improbable.

Our civilization has decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

When I was research head of General Motors and wanted a problem solved, I'd place a table outside the meeting room with a sign: "Leave slide rules here." If I didn't do that, I'd find someone reaching for his slide rule. Then he'd be on his feet saying, "Boss, you can't do it."

I know the difference between right and wrong, and I can tell good from bad. But I also know that the more difficult decisions come when we have to choose between good and better. The toughest calls of all are those we have to make between bad and worse.

The complexity of the situation of having a war going on around you and what that delivers to you is that you have to figure out which side to take.

Additional problems are the offspring of poor decisions. When inquiry and advocacy are combined, the goal is no longer 'to win the argument', but to find the best argument.

One key to successful group decisions is getting people to pay much less attention to what everyone else is saying.

Life is filled with problems to be solved and tensions to be managed. Sometimes it helps to know which is which.

When you're put in a position where you're having to decide, Is this a good decision? Is this the right decision for everybody involved? - it makes me feel a little unsteady, unsure.

Leadership is solving problems.

I'm a very good decision maker because I have core set of principles and so I can make decisions. Decisions can be very hard and you have to wrestle with them, but I'm able to get all the data on the table and figure out what would be the best decision because decisions mean ill for some people and mean positives for others.

With problems and issues groups face- there is an enormous disconnect between understanding and doing.

Three people marooned on a desert island would soon reinvent politics.

Throughout history, one of the biggest problems is that the correct course of action is not always obvious, and the obvious course of action is not always correct.