Max de Pree Quotes

One should be constantly looking for the broader vision.

I think long-term, not short-term.

And Clinton was like that - he saw the whole playing field. He didn't just see the event that he was at or the circumstances of that week or that month. He saw the whole playing field all the time.

The long view counts.

I think the biggest single thing that causes difficulty in the business world is the short-term view. We become obsessed with it. But it forces bad decisions.

Early on in your career, find someone better than yourself to run the business on a day-to-day basis. Remove yourself, maybe even from the building, and from the nitty-gritty. That way, you're going to be able to see the bigger picture and think of new areas to go into.

Maturity is many things. It is the ability to base a judgment on the big picture, the long haul.

You want to be an alchemist so badly? Don't wait to react to the immediate problem. Plan ahead. Look at the big picture and you won't ever have to deal with that problem. Better to save yourself from a major catastrophe than drag your feet over a bunch of little inconveniences.

I think somehow people should be encouraged to think about a very long time horizon and I think this is true for businesses, it's true for governments and it's true for people doing things in the non-profit sector.

I think the most important thing is to take the long view on things. We live in such a 24/7, Twitter-fed, constant news cycle, and everything's a crisis, everything is terrible, everything is doomsday, everything is - if it doesn't get solved tomorrow, your presidency is going off the rails.

Long term thinking is so rare anywhere, but especially in startups. This is a huge advantage if you do it.

You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.

I think it's really important to look at the big picture instead of just one competition.

Prudence is foresight and far-sightedness. It's the ability to make immediate decisions on the basis of their longer-range effects.

It's the whole big picture that we have to look at to create an organization that wins over the long term. And to just shoot from the hip on a decision based on winning over a 10-game period. No, that doesn't make sense.

People don't look at the broader picture a lot of the time.

When you have a concept and a sport like this, you have to have a vision.

Becoming a strategic thinker is about opening your mind to possibilities. It’s about seeing the bigger picture. It’s about understanding the various parts of your business, taking them apart, and then putting them back together again in a more powerful way. It’s about insight, invention, emotion and imagination focused on reshaping some part of the world.

The ablest administrators do not merely draw logical conclusions from the array of facts of the past which their expert assistants bring to them, they have a vision of the future.

The point is to explore whatever may be helpful for thinking, understanding, and acting responsibly over long periods of time.

The man of action has the present, but the thinker controls the future.

If you just think exclusively about what would be the best tasting or the most profitable, you're just not seeing the big picture.

Focus on where you're going and you'll know what steps to take. Focus on the steps you're taking and you won't know where you're going.

Prepare for the difficult while it is still easy. Deal with the big while it is still small. Difficult undertakings have always started with what easy. Great undertakings always started with what is small. Therefore the sage never strives for the great,And thereby the great is achieved.

The Congress is not willing to think about the long term. They act like activist shareholders, to use that phrase again. They're not thinking about what can we do that will make us richer, safer, and stronger next year, and the year after, and five and 10 years out.