Andy Stanley Quotes

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

The goal of leadership is not to eradicate uncertainty but rather to navigate it.

The cardinal responsibility of leadership is to identify the dominant contradiction at each point of the historical process and to work out a central line to resolve it.

An important part of leadership is being able to hold two things in your mind at once: Dealing with the reality, whatever it may be, and focus on hope for the future. Any leader helping an organization through challenges needs to be able to do both.

People with military experience seem to do very well in these situations. They've been taught that they can control their destiny, which is half the battle. They also have some experience in getting out of bad situations even if just through training. They know they have to make a plan and follow it and execute it.

Anyone can lead when the plan is working. The best lead when the plan falls apart.

Leadership is solving problems.

I have the experience we need to make the changes we want and I think that's a winning case.

You can judge a leader by the size of the problem he tackles. Other people can cope with the waves, it's his job to watch the tide.

There's a time that may come in an organization where leading by influence is not enough. When things are not going the way they need to go, there's a time when one has to step up... to set the organization back on the right direction.

Good leaders need a positive agenda, not just an agenda of dealing with crisis.

Twenty-eight years in business and you understand the importance of problem solving and the importance of efficiency, because if you don't become efficient, you don't run a business well, and you are out of business. And I think some of those principles could be applied to leadership in Washington.

Leaders of the future will have to be visionary and be able to bring people in - real communicators. These are things that women bring to leadership and executive positions, and it's going to be incredibly valuable and incredibly in demand.

Let me define a leader. He must have vision and passion and not be afraid of any problem. Instead, he should know how to defeat it. Most importantly, he must work with integrity.

One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.

As a first-time CEO, I wasn't sure if I would scale to run IronPort long-term. But I wanted a legitimate shot at it.

It’s not the man; it’s the plan.

I’ve worked as a leader for many years and I’ve always trained myself to be prepared for the worst.

One of the biggest challenges we face today is finding managers who can sense and respond to rapid shifts, people who can process new information very quickly and make decisions in real time. It's a problem for the computer industry as a whole - and not just for Dell - that the industry's growth has outpaced its ability to create managers.

Father was bold, and Mother was cautious. They never shouted at each other but argued constantly about strategy, and they taught me very early that before taking big risks, one must carefully figure the odds.

The essence of leadership is essentially taking the responsibility of trying to interpret the future to the present.

You have to have an idea of what you need to do, what needs to be fixed, what can be improved, what we should now imagine together which we didn't previously imagine. And having thought of it, decide to go it. And that's the government's role.

That may be one of the qualities a lot of owners have. They thrive on times that are challenging and changing because you have to grasp the big picture.

Voters should absolutely know that a future president has the instincts to react to real-life and unrehearsed situations.

If you're on a bus and going down a snowy mountain like in Tahoe, and the bus loses its brakes, where do you want to be sitting? Immediately, you all think, 'In the back.' But in the front would be the correct answer. As a quarterback, you want to take control of it.