Thomas Sowell Quotes

If we have as a clear certainty with which to plan, total uncertainty, then that would be helpful.

Strategy is, at some level, the ability to predict what's going to happen, but it's also about understanding the context in which it is being formulated. And then you have to be open-minded to the fact that you're not going to get it right at the very beginning.

If you have to forecast, forecast often.

How do Ferrari know what I'm doing next year when I don't know what I'm doing next week?

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.

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.

We cannot assume that past successes will insure future successes.

It is most difficult to deal with. There are so many plans, so many schemes, and so many reasons why there should be neither plans nor schemes.

We necessarily operate in an environment in which there's a great deal of uncertainty. In such an environment, it makes sense to use a risk-management approach to identify and avoid the big mistakes. That's one reason I favor a cautious approach.

The best policymakers know that in start-ups, as in politics, not everything works out exactly as planned.

You don't know what's going to happen in our business a year from now... so you have to be flexible and adaptable, and that's what we try to do.

Being a Navy SEAL and sniper taught me all about risk management. Take away all the risk variables under your control and reduce it to an acceptable level. The same fundamentals apply in business.

Nobody can really guarantee the future. The best we can do is size up the chances, calculate the risks involved, estimate our ability to deal with them and then make our plans with confidence.

It's bad policy to speculate on what you'll do if a plan fails when you're trying to make a plan work.

You have to make smart decisions, but you never know what will happen in the future.

Whatever future you're building, don't try to program everything.

Plan B. You've always got to have a Plan B.

There's nothing wrong with a plan, but remember Von Moltke's famous dictum that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. The danger is a plan that seduces us into thinking failure is impossible and adaptation is unnecessary - a kind of ‘Titanic' plan, unsinkable (until it hits the iceberg).

The question that faces the strategic decision maker is not what his organisation should do tomorrow. It is, what do we have to do today to be ready for an uncertain tomorrow?

It's a very wise thing for people to rationally sit down and look at what the risks are not only on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, on a yearly basis, on a lifetime basis, and then plan one's life accordingly.

Make a game plan and stick to it. Unless it's not working.

If there's one thing that's certain in business, it's uncertainty.

Uncertainty is a permanent part of the leadership landscape. It never goes away.

But I don't bet the farm on any of those possibilities, either. I'm also preparing, intelligently, to walk away from this, and walk away from it happy to have had the experience.

It doesn't always happen according to the way you have planned things out but I feel if you have covered most of the aspects, it does help out there in the middle.