Warren Bennis Quotes

Grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the present battle and calculating ahead. Focus on your ultimate goal and plot to reach it.

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

I think long-term, not short-term.

It is the very essence of intelligence to coordinate means with a view to a remote end, and to undertake what it does not feel absolutely sure of carrying out.

It means being able to resist the urge for immediate gratification and opt for the course of action that will pay off later.

I think the most important thing is to take the long view on things. We live in such a 24/7, Twitter-fed, constant news cycle, and everything's a crisis, everything is terrible, everything is doomsday, everything is - if it doesn't get solved tomorrow, your presidency is going off the rails.

The only people who have the long view are some scientists and some science fiction writers.

I think you have to see two steps ahead of things. That's just the way I roll.

I think in terms of 20-year horizons.

Short-termism is no good: plans must be carried through to the end.

I don't do anything unless I think about it six months in advance.

When I plan ahead, I don't just plan what I'm doing tomorrow. I also plan what I'm doing five years from now.

A fool with a plan can outsmart a genius with no plan.

The one characteristic more essential than any other is foresight... It should be the growing nation with a future which takes the long look ahead.

Anticipation forward points the view.

I think the biggest single thing that causes difficulty in the business world is the short-term view. We become obsessed with it. But it forces bad decisions.

Always, Always have a plan

Those who plan do better than those who do not plan, even should they rarely stick to their plan.

My job is to think beyond the immediate.

When schemes are laid in advance, it is surprising how often the circumstances will fit in with them.

A Fool with a Plan is better off than a Genius without a Plan!

Hence the saying: The enlightened ruler lays his plans well ahead; the good general cultivates his resources.

Train up a fig tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade of it.

It is sound planning that invariably earns us the outcome we want; without it, even the gods are unlikely to look with favour on our designs.

A short term view will lead to a partial and perhaps twisted view of the whole picture. A crucial element may be missing. We may not be running the entire race. A friend of mine described a colleague as great at running the "ninety-five yard dash." That is a distinction I can do without. Lacking the last five yards makes the first ninety-five pointless. In fact, serious runners thing of it as a 110 yard dash so that no one will best them in the last few yards. You've got to think beyond the whole.