Bill Gross Quotes

Are the things that now, in retrospect, with what I've seen happen to my company, would I have done some things differently? I think - I think we all would do - we would do a number of things differently.

In most organizations, change comes in only two flavors: trivial and traumatic. Review the history of the average organization and you'll discover long periods of incremental fiddling punctuated by occasional bouts of frantic, crisis-driven change.

Large organizations don't worship shareholders or customers, they worship the past. If it were otherwise, it wouldn't take a crisis to set a company on a new path.

So how does the machine work that you have a financial crisis? How does deleveraging work - what is the nature of that machine? And what is human nature, and how do you raise a community of people to run a business?

The reason why it is so difficult for existing firms to capitalize on disruptive innovations is that their processes and their business model that make them good at the existing business actually make them bad at competing for the disruption.

Whereas all particulars cannot be foreseen, nor positive instructions for such emergencies so before hand given but that many things must be left to your prudent and discreet management, as occurrences may arise upon the place, or from time to time fall out, you are therefore upon all such accidents or any occasions that may happen, to use your best circumspection and (advising with your council of war) to order and dispose of the said Army under your command as may be most advantageous for the obtaining the end for which these forces have been raised, making it your special care in discharge of the great trust committed unto you, that the liberties of America receive no detriment.

Practically every enterprise is threatened and put on the defensive as soon as it comes into existence.

They all overvalued the importance of stability.

Throughout history, the organizational evolution of the military has been inextricably linked with that of the business world.

Where there is no uncertainty, there is no longer the need for leadership. The greater the uncertainty, the greater the need for leadership. Your capacity as a leader will be determined by how well you learn to deal with uncertainty.

One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.

People with military experience seem to do very well in these situations. They've been taught that they can control their destiny, which is half the battle. They also have some experience in getting out of bad situations even if just through training. They know they have to make a plan and follow it and execute it.

It's bad policy to speculate on what you'll do if a plan fails when you're trying to make a plan work.

Technology tends toward avoidance of risks by investors. Uncertainty is ruled out if possible. People generally prefer the predictable. Few recognize how destructive this can be, how it imposes severe limits on variability and thus makes whole populations fatally vulnerable to the shocking ways our universe can throw the dice.

Managers tend to pick a strategy that is the least likely to fail, rather then to pick a strategy that is most efficient," Said Palmer. " The pain of looking bad is worse than the gain of making the best move.

In the army we are drilled into execution and then supervision, to make sure everything goes the way you planned it. But there is another thing that we do in the military, that I think perhaps isn't done enough in corporate life: As soon as you have made that decision, you start on the contingency planning. Because there is, as we like to say, a thinking, breathing enemy out there, who is not going to let you do just what you want.

In my experience of large enterprises, I have found it is often a mistake to try to settle everything at once.

The risk of a business being hit by a low probability, high impact event is far higher than most boards realize because the number of potential wild cards is so great.

That's the art of leadership. To make sure that what shouldn't happen, doesn't happen.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.

If you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely.

You sleep on a win and you'll wake up with a loss.

The goal of leadership is not to eradicate uncertainty but rather to navigate it.

The easiest period in a crisis situation is actually the battle itself. The most difficult is the period of indecision - whether to fight or run away. And the most dangerous period is the aftermath. It is then, with all his resources spent and his guard down, that an individual must watch out for dulled reactions and faulty judgment.

The most serious failure of leadership is the failure to foresee