Jonathan Kozol Quotes

One of the things Mr. Kennedy taught me was that in laying out a new project, you shouldn't try to cope with every little problem.

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.

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

In business, staying focused requires that you turn most opportunities down.

The effort invested in 'getting it right' should be commensurate with the importance of the decision.

Prioritization sounds like such a simple thing, but true prioritization starts with a very difficult question to answer, especially at a company with a portfolio approach: If you could only do one thing, what would it be? And you can't rationalize the answer, and you can't attach the one thing to some other things. It's just the one thing.

When I served as Prime Minister last time, I failed to prioritize my agenda. I was eager to complete everything at once and ended my administration in failure.

Strategic planning is the continuous process of making present entrepreneurial (risk-taking) decisions systematically and with the greatest knowledge of their futurity; organizing systematically the efforts needed to carry out these decisions; and measuring the results of these decisions against the expectations through organized, systematic feedback.

You gotta choose what battles you can win.

The more Strategic Work you do, the more effective, productive, and joyful the Tactical Work becomes.

Nurturing a project from the ground floor is something I've been wanting to do.

I tend to think year-by-year and tournament-by-tournament.

We know our future's not guaranteed, so every day, we have to relentlessly pursue additional actions to drive our competitiveness.

Managing through ambiguity can be difficult for even the most experienced leaders. Defining a clear set of goals for your team demonstrates that there is an end in sight. However, it's crucial during this time to move through the transition in phases.

I like incremental improvements or at least seeing where you're going to go and really being able to understand what's feasible at the time.

You can get so focused on a strategy and making it work that you lose sight of your larger mission.

I want to find the right projects. I'm not going to take just anything.

Where I get involved is that I have to sign off the money, yet when you have target one, two or three from your process I feel fine going after the No 1 target and, if it's not to be him, then number two or three.

I am the worst strategist ever.

Getting all the things down game-management wise, that's what I want to excel at.

You've got to be smart about tackling.

The fans say you can do this and that, but you have to analyse the potential of the team with your staff. Will it be enough to be at the top until the end of the season? You never know.

Planning defines the particular place you want to be and how you intend to get there. It's a responsibility rather than a technique.

We've never been good at long-term plans.

I used to spend my time more on process than strategy. Now, I prioritize my time around strategy, people, and process.