Quote

We're not in cultures which support learning we're in cultures that give us the message consistently: Don't mess up, don't make mistakes, don't make the boss look bad, don't give us any surprises. So we're asking for a kind of predictability, control, respect, and compliance that has nothing to do with learning.

Walter Wriston

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Walter Wriston
Age: 85 †
Born: 1919
Born: August 3
Died: 2005
Died: January 19
Banker
Middletown
Connecticut
Walter Bigelow Wriston
Looks
Learning
Boss
Giving
Control
Mess
Kind
Mistake
Message
Make
Support
Messages
Predictability
Culture
Mistakes
Compliance
Give
Surprise
Surprises
Look
Asking
Cultures
Nothing
Respect
Consistently

More quotes by Walter Wriston

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All the Congress, all the accountants and tax lawyers, all the judges, and a convention of wizards all cannot tell for sure what the income tax law says.
Walter Wriston
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When you retire you go from Who's Who to Who's That?
Walter Wriston
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Information is a business in itself. It is also something that has made control impossible ... you cannot get customers to accept prices in one place when they know there's a better deal elsewhere. It's a whole new world.
Walter Wriston
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Capital goes to where it can escape taxation and be used to pay employees in sacks of rice.
Walter Wriston
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The information revolution has changed wealth. Intellectual capital is far more important than money.
Walter Wriston
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There'll be a growing disparity between economics and politics. An economy that grows so rapidly is intractably global. On the other hand, the current political system is intractably national. So there is a growing dichotomy between a global economy and locally based politics.
Walter Wriston
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Information about money has become almost as important as money itself.
Walter Wriston
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It is a maxim of cryptology that what one man can devise, another can unravel. This principle keeps armies of tax lawyers and accountants employed, but adds nothing to our national productivity.
Walter Wriston
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A truly global economy, as opposed to the multinational economy of the recent past, will require concessions of national power ... that seemed impossible a few years ago and which even now we can but partly imagine.
Walter Wriston
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Many organizations are now trying to walk under the banner of The Learning Organization, realizing that knowledge is our most important product ... But the only place that I've seen it is in the Army. As one colonel said, We realized a while ago that it's better to learn than be dead.
Walter Wriston
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The guy with the competitive advantage is the one with the best technology.
Walter Wriston
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Countries don't go out of business....The infrastructure doesn't go away, the productivity of the people doesn't go away, the natural resources don’t go away. And so their assets always exceed their liabilities, which is the technical reason for bankruptcy. And that's very different from a company.
Walter Wriston
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Failure is not a crime. Failure to learn from failure is.
Walter Wriston
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A country does not go bankrupt.
Walter Wriston
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One man saying that everything is wrong can command coast-to-coast attention in living color, a power not given to an absolute monarch a century ago.
Walter Wriston
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Banking is a branch of the information business.
Walter Wriston
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All of life is the management of risk, not its elimination.
Walter Wriston
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Every line in the government's budget has its own constituency.
Walter Wriston
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Capital will always go where it’s welcome and stay where it’s well treated. Capital is not just money. It’s also talent and ideas. They, too, will go where they’re welcome and stay where they are well treated.
Walter Wriston
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Capital goes where it is welcome and stays where it is well treated.
Walter Wriston