Ron Williams Quotes

I think many start-ups make mistakes because they are focusing on things that are farther ahead, and they haven't done the work that has built the foundation to support it.

I never had a plan. I have to say, I'm very shocked when people start a company and say, 'In five years I want to launch a perfume, or in 10 years I want to have this.' How can you know?

A business like an automobile, has to be driven, in order to get results.

Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.

Strategic planning is worthless - unless there is first a strategic vision.

It's important to have a really clear strategy so when you are in business, you only have to make micro-strategy changes.

Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term.

You can't grow long-term if you can't eat short-term. Anybody can manage short. Anybody can manage long. Balancing those two things is what management is.

This is a business that is much easier planned than executed.

Successful strategic vision lay in the fact that we visualized the retail business to be much bigger, ahead of what others thought it to be.

Management always has a big influence on your success, no matter how good or how bad the business is itself.

You cannot change strategy due to a trend.

Leaders of companies of any size, at any stage of development spend a lot of time focused on growing the business. We develop our game plan and ensure that we are optimally executing on our objectives. We concentrate on looking forward.

The entrance strategy is actually more important than the exit strategy.

In business, there's a constant focus on developing strategies, reviewing executive performance against those strategies each year, engaging with opposing or different points of view, and having intellectual dialogue.

In the organization of any major sporting event or the planning of a building, long-term thinking is key.

I'm trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.

I think three-to-five years ahead minimum. I have a short-term plan, a five-year plan and a decade plan.

We need to make sure that the things we are already working on turn out to do the things we believe they can do and creating value both for the world and ultimately for Google.

If you're going to be successful, you better have a goal, you better find really good people, better understand where all the money's coming from. And you better measure the living daylights out of it.

For me, the winning strategy in any start-up business is, 'Think big but start small.'

One thing I've learned about his business is this whole 'plan thing' - it doesn't work.

I've been head of strategy at IBM and together with my colleagues built our five-year plan. My priorities are going to be to continue to execute on that.

Think ahead. Don't let day-to-day operations drive out planning.

Our ultimate goal is to stay in business. We are not here with a specific plan. That's kind of how our entire career has evolved. We will figure things out as we go along.