Ed Woodward Quotes

I am the worst strategist ever.

You cannot afford to wait for perfect conditions. Goal setting is often a matter of balancing timing against available resources. Opportunities are easily lost while waiting for perfect conditions.

You have to be damn certain you're putting something better in its place.

In the organization of any major sporting event or the planning of a building, long-term thinking is key.

You need to decide what problems, what opportunities, what projects you're going to work on.

I want to make smart choices.

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.

Management, at every level, is about the effort to frame challenges, define end states, and allocate resources to navigate between them.

People must be realistic when evaluating their business.

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.

We also have to ask if we focusing on the most important priorities.

It's a pretty intuitive process, picking the projects that I want to get involved with.

I wait and take on projects that I think can work.

I make almost all the decisions on set and have to deal with all the financial aspects.

Part of executive functions is the ability to look to a goal deadline and assess where an organization is in meeting it.

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.

I think we have to notice that the business processes we use right now for thinking and planning and budgeting and strategy are all delivered on very tight agendas.

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.

In games, you have plans, you have strategies, and you follow them.

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

You've got to be smart about tackling.

Choice is everything. Unfortunately, we do a lot of fluff. There's three boxes - profile, money, heart - and if the project ticks two of those, you do it.

I've been mayor for five years. I've led a city. And directed a police department. I know how to use resources.

I have to do a better job of picking the spots where I want to attack and picking the right moment when I need to attack.