Stacy Brown-Philpot Quotes

Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.

A leader is the one who can outline the broad vision and the direction, and say here's where we are going to go, here's why we need to go there, and here's how we are going to get there. A manager is the one who actually gets up under the hood and tunes the carburetor.

Like most entrepreneurs, getting motivated to work has never been a problem for me; focus comes through delegating tasks to the best people you can find.

Leaders tend to focus on 'what to do,' but the real issue is more often 'how to do it.'

Leaders make things happen. Leaders will take a situation and try and figure out what is it that we're trying to do, what is the problem, what kind of priorities and resources do we need, what kind of people do I need to bring to bear on this problem, what kind of plans do we need to succeed.

Decisions are made by people who have time, not people who have talent.

The hard part of running a business is that there are a hundred things that you could be doing, and only five of those actually matter, and only one of them matters more than all of the rest of them combined. So figuring out there is a critical path thing to focus on and ignoring everything else is really important.

Leadership is working with goals and vision; management is working with objectives.

As all entrepreneurs know, you live and die by your ability to prioritize. You must focus on the most important, mission-critical tasks each day and night, and then share, delegate, delay or skip the rest.

Basically, managing is about influencing action. Managing is about helping organizations and units to get things done, which means action. Sometimes, managers manage actions directly. They fight fires. They manage projects. They negotiate contracts.

Leadership means forming a team and working toward common objectives that are tied to time, metrics, and resources.

I make a habit of asking myself, 'Is there purpose to this meeting or conversation? Do I want to build a relationship with this person or company? Is there purpose behind this meeting that aligns with my life and business strategy?' If the answer is 'No,' then I pass every time.

It's extremely instructive to realize that you cannot do everything. You need to delegate, to find experts, to consult with them. A big part of the job of directing is knowing when to take something on and when you shouldn't.

Efficiency, which is doing things right, is irrelevant until you work on the right things.

We all have many opportunities, but limited capacity to pursue them. Make choices, focus your time and energy, so that you can submit your share of masterpieces to the greater good.

You could be in the United Nations office all night every night and still feel like you were not making a sufficient dent in the world's problems. I think the key is prioritization. But every job presents the tyranny of the inbox, of allowing the urgent to crowd out the important. So we have to have our lodestars.

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.

Great entrepreneurs focus intensely on an opportunity where others see nothing. This focus and intensity helps to eliminate wasted effort and distractions. Most companies die from indigestion rather than starvation, i.e., companies suffer from doing too many things at the same time rather than doing too few things very well.

There is no real magic to being a good leader. But at the end of every week, you have to spend your time around the things that are really important: setting priorities, measuring outcomes, and rewarding them.

Turnaround or growth, it's getting your people focused on the goal that is still the job of leadership.

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

The essence of strategy is that you must set limits on what you're trying to accomplish.

I need to start honing in on projects that I want to devote my time to and not put my energies into the unattainable ones.

Management is getting people together to figure out how to transform inputs into outputs. In the process of figuring out the process of how people work together, you've got to figure out who's got what responsibilities, and how do they work together.

I could go insane if I obsessed over every little detail of all of my companies. My management philosophy is to pay attention to the vital few and ignore the trivial many.