Stephen Covey Quotes

Take care of what is difficult while it is still easy, and deal with what will become big while it is yet small.

We must solve problems before they occur, rather than scrambling to deal with crises after they erupt..

If the crisis lasts moments, rapid action is critical. But if it's simply the beginning of a broader issue, especially one where the root cause isn't known yet, the worst thing a leader can do is act immediately.

This is something that baffles me about managers: if you know the formation that you will revert to if you are in trouble, why not start with it?

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.

Leadership matters and solving things before a crisis is important.

Don't wait until you're in a crisis to come up with a crisis plan.

The way you continue to be a successful business is you don't wait for the car to go off the cliff. You have to manage yourself. And make sure you do it in the right way so you are not making decisions in crisis.

Some think that by preparing to deal with crises you make them more likely. I think the wiser judgment is the contrary. In this area at least, if you want peace or stability, it's better to prepare for war or instability.

Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.

Incentives are not strategy, they are tactics. Defensive measures.

It is axiomatic in politics that the earlier one addresses a problem, the more the alternatives and the easier the solutions.

The art of government is to deal with threats before they become overwhelming.

Crisis management … is the worst type of policy because you will miss things.

Over the years, I've been involved in many business crises. I qualify this, since my crises have never involved life and death or the survival of the human race. But they are still crises.

Look several months ahead, see where the obstacles lie, and figure out ways to overcome them.

Bishops need to resist the defensiveness that institutions often fall back on in crisis moments.

It's difficult when you're an appointee of any administration to publicly come out and say before a crisis occurs to say that we need to do X, Y and Z to avoid a crisis, because you probably wouldn't be around very long if you did that.

But I think the bottom line right now is to take the constructive criticism and use that to build toward, as I say, the hurricane season that is 100 days away. And we don't have a lot of time to waste before we start to address that next set of challenges.

Well, you know, any defense force worth its salt has to be able to deal with uncertainty, has to be able to deal with events that we may not have planned for.

Foresight turns out to be a critical adaptive strategy for times of great stress.

As part of our renewal - we need to fight problems, not just wait for them to take place.

We must be part of the general staff at the inception, rather than the ambulance drivers at the bitter end.

Good leaders need a positive agenda, not just an agenda of dealing with crisis.

There aren't that many policy changes you can do, so I'd say you ride the wave and hope that maybe some of the external events help you.