We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.
—Karl Popper
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Category Archives: Leadership
Quote of the Day
Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.
—George S. Patton
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If you want to succeed in the world, you don’t have to be much cleverer than other people. You just have to be one day earlier.
—Leo Szilard
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Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.
—Xenophon
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Principles and rules are intended to provide a thinking man with a frame of reference.
—Carl von Clausewitz
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Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.
—Niccolo Machiavelli
A Summary of Today’s News
Everything proceeded as I had foreseen.
I wish I’d been wrong.
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It’s a real burden being right so often.
—Malcolm Reynolds
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In private matters everyone is equal before the law. In public matters, when it is a question of putting power and responsibility into the hands of one man rather than another, what counts is not rank or money, but the ability to do the job well.
—Pericles
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It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
—Isaac Asimov
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It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.
—Sitting Bull
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I think you should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side.
—Elon Musk
20 % of the Customers Drink 80 % of the Beer
That version of the the 80/20 Rule is attributed to an English pub keeper. It’s an informal summary of the Pareto distribution, a power-law probability phenomenon that describes a great deal of human behavior. The Pareto distribution suggests it is usually the case in an organization with a statistically large population that a group about the size of the square root of the total population produces half of the organization’s beneficial work.
This tells us why Elon Musk is probably right and Robert Reich is probably wrong.
If Twitter had 7500 employees when Musk took over, something on the order of 87 were probably carrying half the real productive load. Firing only half the staff wouldn’t get rid of enough deadwood.
I’m looking forward to seeing how Twitter will be reshaped.
Quote of the Day
Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Cleaning House at Twitter
Elon Musk has announced Twitter 2.0 and is taking the company back into startup mode. At midnight PT, employees received an email telling them to expect long hours and high performance standards. They were given until close of business Thursday to either sign on to the new program or take three months’ severance pay.
A few dedicated hardcore engineers will generally deliver a better product than a large team of 9-to-5ers. Think of the Macintosh computer ecosystem versus Windows 95 or the reusable SpaceX Falcon 9 versus the finally flying SLS.
I’ve been on several the kind of engineering teams that Musk is trying to form at Twitter. I’ve even had the privilege of leading one. It can be exhilarating. It can be draining. And it’s for the young. I’ll be 75 on New Year’s Eve, and I’ve had to slow down a bit, but I still find myself working overtime to get things not just right but the best they can be.
Twitter is noticeably better since Musk bought it. I look forward to seeing what he can do with the deadwood out of the way.
UPDATE—Corrected the drop dead date for getting with new program.
Quote of the Day
Ignorance is bold and knowledge reserved.
—Thucydides
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I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.
—Alexander the Great
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You can’t know too much, but you can say too much.
—Calvin Coolidge
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Quality in a classical Greek sense is how to live with grace and intelligence, with bravery and mercy.
—Theodore White
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The very best impromptu speeches are the ones written well in advance.
—Ruth Gordon
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The public is like a piano. You just have to know what keys to poke.
—Al Capp
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Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.
—Theodore Roosevelt
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Never give a sword to a man who can’t dance.
—Confucius
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No one is so brave that he is not disturbed by something unexpected.
—Julius Caesar
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Nothing made by brute force lasts.
—Robert Louis Stevenson