Mavericks
I have a new book in my list of favorite books of all-time. It’s Mavericks at Work by William C. Taylor and Polly LaBarre. Great book! Challenged the heck out of me. This book offers great insights on attracting talent to your organization and creating an environment where they can soar. Here are some of the highlights that really grabbed my attention:

  • "Companies that compete on a disruptive point of view are defined as much by the opportunities they choose not to pursue as by the businesses they do enter."
  • "The customers who are right for you, they love you. They become evangelists. The customers who you close out, they hate you. But you know what they do when they hate you? They tell everybody about you–and that’s good. It creates dialogue. There’s nothing like differentiation."
  • "People want to work at companies that know what they stand for."
  • "Are you prepared to reject opportunities that offer short-term benefits but distract your organization from its long-term mission?"
  • "If your company [or church] went out of business tomorrow, who would really miss you and why?"
  • "Perhaps the most powerful indicator of a company’s future share of the product market in its industry is its current position in the talent market for that industry: is it attracting more than its fair share of the best people?"
  • "Great performers tend to be naturally competitive. They want to know where they stand, they want to know how good they are. They also want to be challenged, to improve their skills."
  • "You cannot motivate the best people with money. Money is just a way to keep score. The best people in any field are motivated by passion. That becomes more true the higher the skill level gets. People do their best work when they are passionately engaged in what they’re doing."
  • "Whatever day it is, something in the world changed overnight, and you better figure out what it is and what it means. You have to forget what you just did and what you just learned. You have to walk in stupid every day."
  • "The most effective leaders are the ones who are the most insatiable learners, and experienced leaders learn the most by interacting with people whose interests, backgrounds, and experiences are the least like theirs."
  • "In the new world, the most transparent leader is the most attractive leader."
  • "One of our core philosophies is that we spend the money that other companies spend on marketing to create a store experience that exceeds people’s expectations. We don’t spend money on messages–we invest in execution."
  • "To make their offerings more memorable, companies are working desperately to make them more emotional."
  • "If you believe that a brand has to have a set of convictions, then you have to be prepared to piss people off. We don’t have to appeal to everyone."
  • "You cannot have happy, satisfied customers if your organization is filled with unhappy, dissatisfied people."
  • "Great people almost always have great jobs. So if you want to fill your organization with knockout contributors, you can’t wait for them to knock on your door. You’ve got to knock on their door and persuade them to walk into your office."
  • "The best people already have jobs they like."
  • "Stars don’t work for idiots. So as you raise the quality of your talent, you’ve also got to raise the quality of your management."
  • "Successful innovators don’t ask for the most resources or the strictest oversight; they ask for the most room to maneuver and the fewest bureaucratic hurdles."
  • "Great people want to work on exciting projects. Great people want to feel like impact players inside their organization. Great people want to be surrounded with and challenged by other great people. Put simply, great people want to feel like they’re part of something greater than themselves."
  • "Leaders who are content to fill their organizations with people actively looking for new jobs risk attracting malcontents and mediocre performers."