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I think that military, corporate, and non-political organizations are pretty much similar.

Colin Powell

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Colin Powell
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: April 5
Diplomat
Former United States Secretary Of State
Politician
Soldier
New York City
New York
Colin Luther Powell
Similar
Thinking
Corporate
Organization
Military
Pretty
Political
Much
Organizations
Think

More quotes by Colin Powell

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Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
Colin Powell
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Every organization needs to be introspective, transparent, and honest with itself. This only works if everyone is unified on the goals and purposes of the organization and there is trust within the team. High-performing, successful organizations build cultures of introspection and trust and never lose sight of their purpose.
Colin Powell
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I've voted for Republicans who were strong on defense, who believed in a free and open economy but who also understood that there's a place for government in our lives, that government has a responsibility to those of our citizens who are in need and those of our citizens who are needy of health care.
Colin Powell
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Give me the right people and I don’t much care what organization you give me. Good things will happen. Give me the wrong people and it doesn’t matter what you do with the organization. Bad things will happen.
Colin Powell
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Generally you should act somewhere between P40 and P70, as I call it. Sometime after you have obtained 40 percent of all the information you are liable to get, start thinking in terms of making a decision. When you have about 70 percent of all the information, you probably ought to decide, because you may lose an opportunity in losing time.
Colin Powell
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The claims made about Iraq's WMD capabilities before the invasion were inaccurate, wrong, and in some cases, deliberately misleading.
Colin Powell
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So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? I think our judgment has to be clearly not.
Colin Powell
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I was born in Harlem, raised in the South Bronx, went to public school, got out of public college, went into the Army, and then I just stuck with it.
Colin Powell
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In the military we also learn principles of war which also work in a corporate setting: How do you concentrate as much of your force as possible on a critical point and take a risk elsewhere? In business that translates into focusing your investment on marketing, sales, or R&D, whichever will give you the greatest return.
Colin Powell
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The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.
Colin Powell
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The Court is perhaps one of the last citadels of jealously preserved individualism. For the most part, we function as nine, small independent law firms.
Colin Powell
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I have never seen a good organization where the standards weren't high.
Colin Powell
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There is no such thing as an unimportant person in an organization.
Colin Powell
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Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.
Colin Powell
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The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above average effort.
Colin Powell
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That's why the army sends all its future generals to what we call charm school. As soon as you are a general, people think that you know everything. You think yourself that you have become omniscient and omnipotent. Be careful, because people want to do everything they can to please the general, and you need to guard against this.
Colin Powell
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Another rule I have is: Don't let your ego get tied up in a policy dispute. Otherwise, if things don't go your way, you can end up breaking a relationship with somebody with whom you can't afford to break.
Colin Powell
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We would like to see new leaders come forward who would be accountable and responsible, who would succeed in ending the terror and the violence. And it is up to the Palestinian people to judge who those new leaders should be.
Colin Powell
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The burden is on Saddam Hussein. And our policy, our national policy - not the UN policy but our national policy - is that the regime should be changed until such time as he demonstrates that it is not necessary to change the regime because the regime has changed itself.
Colin Powell
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When we have dealt with bin Laden and his network we will then broaden the campaign to go after other terrorists all around the world.
Colin Powell