John Key Quotes

Companies that grow for the sake of growth or that expand into areas outside their core business strategy often stumble. On the other hand, companies that build scale for the benefit of their customers and shareholders more often succeed over time.

In many respects, we really are trying to not run the Social Office like a business, but we do have a strategy. We do have a mission. We are trying to standardize certain things so that our time is not spent on, you know, picking flowers or linens, that we've got standards.

It's important to have a really clear strategy so when you are in business, you only have to make micro-strategy changes.

Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.

Just like a script, you need to keep a business plan to yourself.

In the private sector, there is always innovation. There's always change. There's always improving productivity, and if you're not leading that, you'll be passed and ultimately go out of business. So there's an urgency to constantly update and renew and to rethink your enterprise.

Good decisions can have bad short-term outcomes but be great for the business long-term.

Launching a start-up, you need to get a lot done quickly. Every day is different. Everyone pitches in with everything. It's easy for the founding team to say, 'We're flexible. We all help out with everything!' But when it comes to making decisions - that flexibility can spell inefficiency and disaster.

When I hear people debate the ROI of social media? It makes me remember why so many business fail. Most businesses are not playing the marathon. They're playing the sprint. They're not worried about lifetime value and retention. They're worried about short-term goals.

A business like an automobile, has to be driven, in order to get results.

Business is all about risk taking and managing uncertainties and turbulence.

Follow sound business trends, not fashion trends.

One thing I've learned about his business is this whole 'plan thing' - it doesn't work.

To try and stand outside the marriage, I'd say we have complementary capabilities. I do the hustling and the business. I do more script reading. I handle contracts.

Set a clear, easy-to-understand vision for your company, and make it be a mission people believe in.

Our ultimate goal is to stay in business. We are not here with a specific plan. That's kind of how our entire career has evolved. We will figure things out as we go along.

Business is war! Its leaders are strategic commanders, who boldly snatch victory from the jaws of defeat - and who perform other acts of derring-do. This kind of talk sounds great in the boardroom, and, for that matter, in the bookstore, where dozens of authors counsel would-be corporate warriors.

I used to think business was 50 percent having the right people. Now I think it's 80 percent.

Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation.

The margin for making mistakes has gotten much smaller. In a commodity economy, it's hard to kill off your business. You still have the mine. You still have oil wells. You can always rebuild. In a knowledge economy, if you make a mistake, you're in trouble.

We don't look at what happens in our business in six-month periods.

I don't think you should ever start a business and move in a direction where you can't see it becoming a business.

Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.

If you're running an engineering or finance company, all companies depend on ideas and ingenuity. I think the principles of creative leadership apply everywhere, whether it's an advertising company or whether you're running a hospital.

We can reorient our products and business strategy because we are an agile organisation.