Ernest Bevin Quotes

Final-offer arbitration should have great appeal for the daring (the risk seekers) who play against the timid (the risk avoiders).

As a goalkeeper you need to be good at organising the people in front of you and motivating them. You need to see what's going on and react to the threats. Just like a good manager in business.

If there wasn't any business and it was just strictly basketball, then there would be no issue, it would probably be done by now. But the team has to protect.

The best way to make a good deal is to have the ability to walk away from it.

Early in my career, I sometimes found it difficult to make the tough people decisions - I had to learn that. In business, you want to listen. You want to learn. You want to make sure you're not proceeding without information. But if you wait too long, you can actually hurt an organization even more.

I worked with a group of people who argued day and night - professors, officials, the Minister of Finance - but there were decisions that I had to make.

The essence of good business is knowing when to step on a train and when to step off.

I didn't go in there and tell them I think you should move me, but I also understand the nature of this business.

There are certain skills that business people have that are - that are, in fact, helpful in - when it comes to being in political leadership.

As a company gets big, the information that informs decision-making gets massive. Depending upon the prism through which you view the business, your perspective will vary. If two people are in charge, this variance will cause conflict and delay.

The thorniest business problems will surface at the board meetings, and the different, sharp opinions help to better explore the poles of the arguments to make better decisions.

In civil business; what first? Boldness; what second and third? boldness.

It's much better to have a good agreement than a quick agreement.

No quarrel ought ever be converted into a policy.

In an exercise of rationalizing competing interests, nobody usually gets 100% of what they want. That’s what multiple use is all about.

You don’t just go to a summit meeting and say, ‘What do we talk about?’ These things require much planning. Each one of these meeting has consequences and we have to make sure we have the right consequences.

When the President is a moralist, he needs a process that will make up for the natural shortcomings of such a style—an inattention to second-step thinking, an allergy to detail, a tendency not to see the point of having dissenters, a habit of allowing certainty to override considerations of risk. It is the National Security Advisor’s responsibility to fill a President’s strategic gaps, not to exacerbate them.

The best messages in any given negotiation are really implied indirectly, come to the other person based on thinking that you're getting them to do - getting them to get some really solid thought behind their answers. And so a great thing to send someone in an email is, 'Have you given up on this project?'

The odds are stacked against you becoming a footballer, so my family made sure I always had a backup plan.

I can sit in the boardroom and battle it out, step up and be a project manager, take risks, and put my ideas alongside anybody's.

When you put emphasis on compromise rather than on principle, you end up with 2/3 of the principles being implemented.

You don't need a Harvard MBA to know that the bedroom and the boardroom are just two sides of the same ballgame.

By playing at Chess then, we may learn... First: Foresight. Second: Circumspection. Third: Caution.

The single and most dangerous word to be spoken in business is no. The second most dangerous word is yes. It is possible to avoid saying either.

During negotiations nothing is gained by attacking people's comfort zones.