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Great strategy, not executed, can't possibly have any effect on performance because it doesn't actually affect anything. It's like planning for a successful surgery to remove a tumor. If no one picks up the knife and actually operates effectively, the diseases will persist.

Jeffrey Pfeffer

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Jeffrey Pfeffer
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: July 23
Academic
Business Administration Scholar
Economist
Professor
University Teacher
St. Louis
Missouri
Strategy
Effectively
Like
Picks
Persist
Effect
Surgery
Affect
Tumor
Successful
Remove
Executed
Actually
Possibly
Operates
Doesn
Planning
Diseases
Anything
Performance
Knife
Great

More quotes by Jeffrey Pfeffer

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I am increasingly convinced that people who have power are not necessarily smarter than others. Beyond a certain level of intelligence and level in the hierarchy, everyone is smart. What differentiates people is their political skill and savvy.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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Take care of your customers, and you will have a successful business. Don't, and you won't. The airlines need to figure this out - soon.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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The stories leaders and others tell, few of which are true, are a lousy foundation on which to base any sort of science, and we know how to accomplish behavioral change and the importance of priming, informational saliency, and social networks. Producing inspiration and other good feelings doesn't last very long.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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We give up and don't try. We don't take sufficient chances or risks. We aren't resilient in the face of failure. We follow the rules too much and don't push the envelope.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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Being memorable equals getting picked.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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Almost no one as I think most leadership books are a joke. They are, as I note in Leadership BS, frequently based on wishes and hopes rather than reality, on inspiring stories rather than systematic social science, and on oughts rather than is.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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Personal growth and professional development require mostly being treated like an adult, which is pretty much the opposite of what happens in most workplaces. People need to be able to make decisions. To do that effectively, they need information and training in how to use it.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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People who don't have as much power as they would like often begin by attributing their difficulties to the environment - competitors, bosses, economic circumstances, and so forth. But in reality people are customarily their own biggest impediment to being as powerful as they would like.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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Advocates of knowledge management as the next big thing have advanced the proposition that what companies need is more intellectual capital. While that is undeniably true, its only partly true. What those advocates are forgetting is that knowledge is only useful if you do something with it.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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My overall recommendation: for decades corporate policy manuals and HR departments have told people they are responsible for their own careers. It's about time people really heeded those warnings.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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Lyndon Johnson (with Abraham Lincoln close behind). Johnson was able to get things done, to read other people, and to adjust his own approach accordingly. One of the reasons he has so fascinated biographer Robert Caro over the years is Johnson's consummate skill in acquiring and using influence.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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The single most significant change has been the globalization of labor markets. Product markets - trade in goods - have been globalizing for years. But now, with the reduction in communication expenses and the building of all sorts of IT infrastructure, essentially any job can be done almost anywhere.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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Witness Donald Trump's current presidential campaign. So first people need to find the white spaces, the unexploited or underexploited niches where there is less competition and more opportunity.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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Career success depends on people's educational credentials, their length of service (job tenure), unfortunately it is still the case on their race, gender, and similarity to those in power, and of course, on their political skills. Job performance matters, but less than most people think.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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Your most important task as a leader is to teach people how to think and ask the right questions so that the world doesn't go to hell if you take a day off.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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Volumes in the series on Lyndon Johnson, including Master of the Senate and The Path Power, describe how Johnson created resources out of nothing and built a substantial power base.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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Trust is about keeping commitments, but in many instances, circumstances change and organizations therefore shed commitments, things such as retiree medical benefits, pension obligations, and even employees without much remorse or maybe even hesitation.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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Most organisations say they want creativity, but really they do not.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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I do not think anyone who ever saw Lyndon Johnson give a speech would call him charismatic, even though he was one of the most effective presidents in U.S. history. Same with Lincoln. Charisma is only one source of power, and probably not a very important one, at that.
Jeffrey Pfeffer
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People need to be ready to have truly global careers. Just as companies now face world-wide competition, so, too, do people. Therefore, individuals need to get out in the world more - some large percentage of Americans don't even have a passport - and work in different countries.
Jeffrey Pfeffer