Gary Hamel Quotes

People are governed with the head; kindness of heart is little use in chess.

Learning options will indeed mushroom for business students and leaders, but it will take prudence and shrewdness to find and utilize the best option.

This is a business. Be smart. Choose wisely.

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

In a period of economic downturn, the overwhelming instinct is to pare back, cut costs, and lay off. If you do that, do so with your strategy in mind. The worst mistake is to cut across the board. Instead, reconnect and recommit to a clear strategy that will distinguish yourself from others.

Effectiveness comes from those qualitative things that give you the ability to network, communicate, and lead people toward an outcome they can't see.

Leadership is all about emotional intelligence. Management is taught, while leadership is experienced.

A good leader... maintains a balance between emotional drive and sound thinking.

The next move is always the test.

Sometimes you have to lose a piece to win a game.

Hating clouds the mind. It gets in the way of strategy. Leaders cannot afford to hate

In business, three things are necessary: knowledge, temper, and time.

Strategy is a pattern in a stream of decisions

If the metrics you are looking at aren't useful in optimizing your strategy - stop looking at them.

Strategy is about shaping the future.

It's not about the long ball or the short ball, it's about the right ball.

Data is great, but strategy is better

In life and business, there are two cardinal sins, the first is to act precipitously without thought, and the second is to not act at all. Unfortunately the board of directors and top management of Times Warner already committed the first sin by merging with AOL, and we believe they are currently in the process of committing the second; now is not a time to move slowly and suffer the paralysis of inaction.

Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point.

If the kids get a good grasp of what the main lessons are for chess after two or three years of staying with the game, then you've given them brain food and you've given them a skill that can last them a lifetime.

A good general not only sees the way to victory; he also knows when victory is impossible.

Paradigms power perception and perceptions power emotions. Most emotions are responses to perception - what you think is true about a given situation. If your perception is false, then your emotional response to it will be false too. So check your perceptions, and beyond that check the truthfulness of your paradigms - what you believe. Just because you believe something firmly doesn't make it true. Be willing to reexamine what you believe.

A leader knows what's best to do; a manager knows merely how best to do it.

That's why I want you there, he said. You're unpredictable, and that can be the difference between success and failure. Most people make decisions in anger, fear, love, or obligation. You make decisions to irritate people.

The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions, for life is a kind of chess.