It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You’re thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all.
I have made a good many predictions about the future of our business and I have been wrong every time because I have always underestimated its possibilities.
It is better to aim at perfection and miss it than to aim at imperfection and hit it.
You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that's where you'll find success. On the far side.
Lying dead in the water and doing nothing is a comfortable alternative because it is without risk, but it is an absolutely fatal way to manage a business.
There is no such thing as standing still.
You cannot stay in one place: you either go forward or go backward.
We must never feel satisfied.
Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.
Our aim is higher every year and we always reach our mark. We must never think that what we have today will satisfy the demand ten years from now.
Analyze the past, consider the present and visualize the future.
Plan for the future…Have faith in the future.
Resolve to stand for something big and fine outside of your business life.
Solve it. Solve it quickly, solve it right or wrong. If you solve it wrong, it will come back and slap you in the face, and then you can solve it right.
Every time we've moved ahead in IBM, it was because someone was willing to take a chance, put his head on the block, and try something new.
Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker.
Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ‘crackpot’ than the stigma of conformity.
Develop your initiative. Do something no one else has done.
Pioneering must never cease. Yesterday we pioneered for today; today, we are pioneering for tomorrow.
Too many people are waiting for someone else to give them a push. We have tried to develop self-starters in IBM.
Your success will be determined by the manner in which you use the tools you have been given to work with. When practicing the art of selling use all your talents. Put everything you have into your efforts; above all put your personality into them. Never copy anybody. Be yourself.
All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.
What every business needs is more people who think.
Think. Think about your appearance, associations, actions, ambitions, accomplishment.
Education is the foundation of our progress. Research is the advance guard of our progress.
The forces that produce success are manpower and brain-power.
Knowledge creates enthusiasm.
You must guard constantly against those who lack vision. You must guard against the reactionary mind. Always cultivate and associate with persons of vision and with persons who believe that things are going to be better. When you do this, you take on the kind of vision, backed by the right kind of inspiration that you need if you are going to grow in this business or any other business.
Good design is good business. Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all…good design must primarily serve people.
A man is known by the company he keeps. A company is known by the men it keeps.
The IBM spirit, the IBM heart and the IBM language were the same in all tongues and in all countries.
A manager should regard his position as one that gives him a splendid opportunity to render assistance.
A manager is an assistant to his men.
It is impossible for any man, I don’t care how able he may be, to do the work and attend to all the details of a business – to accomplish anything – without the support of his entire organization. This business is such that neither I nor any executive staff can run it alone. It is too big. Our company has grown each year and succeeded because everybody has been contributing to its success.
Every manager’s first duty is to help the men under his direction…Listen to the man below you as well as the one above.
Cooperation means to give just as much as you get.
We have proved the worth of our machines to the world, and I feel it is now our obligation to plan so that this business may go on for all time. I want all of you to get the same kind of vision and belief in IBM.
Learn to supervise yourself.
The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas and enthusiasm.
To visualize the future of IBM you must know something of the past.
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