I REASON SO

"Everything that is beautiful and noble is the product of reason and calculation."

Charles Baudelaire

19th century French poet

Both to make those things as well as to find that made by others.

The last one in particular.

TOO MUCH OF TWO, NOT ENOUGH OF ONE

"Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance."

Plato 

4th century BC Greek philosopher

Of greater importance is that most people can't tell the difference, not for others and certainly not for themselves.

Forget others, just concentrate on you.

Assume more ignorance than knowledge, acting accordingly, and you'll often end with the reverse being true.

WHEN YOU GOT NOTHING

"How many people make themselves abstract to appear profound. The most useful part of abstract terms are the shadows they create to hide a vacuum."

Joseph Joubert

18th/19th century French moralist

Better to acknowledge you don't know than to pretend you do.

IF YOU DON'T I SWEAR I WILL . .

"What you cannot enforce, do not command."

Sophocles 

5th century BC Greek tragic poet

"Enforcement" takes many forms.

The best is when you gain willing participation from others for what you hope they will do.

JUDGE NOT LEAST YOU BE JUDGED

"A man is not good or bad for one action."

Thomas Fuller

17th century British clergyman/author

Nor, two, three, or even considerably more.

Judge if you must but only after patiently, methodically reaching whatever conclusions would be reached by any normally non judgmental person.

YES YOU ARE

"Most people are in favor of progress, it's the changes they don't like."

Unknown

Or change is ok as long as someone else is doing it.

People, you are changing! The only question is to what, decided by who?

Shouldn't you be the judge of that?

NOT WHAT IS, WHAT WILL BE

"We have it in our power to begin the world over again."

Thomas Paine

18th century English intellectual

And if not the world, certainly your business and absolutely what you will become in the future.

But you have to do it!

REGRETTING NEVER OPENED DOORS

"Footfalls echo in the memory down the passage which we did not take towards the door we never opened into the rose-garden."

T. S. Eliot

Late 19th/20th century American-English poet/playwright

You can't always know which doors open to rose gardens but you will never know if you never open any of them.

I CERTAINLY KNOW WHAT I ASSUME

"He is poor indeed that can promise nothing."

Thomas Fuller

17th century British clergyman/author

Planning is about the future, little more than assumptions regarding what may happen.

You always end up assuming more than you know.

You can't promise to know but you can promise the most accurate assumptions.

THE POINT OF RETURN

"Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied."

Pearl S. Buck

20th century American novelist

You can be mistaken about when that halfway moment is reached, but not that it exists.

Look for it, turn back before you reach it, make fewer great mistakes.

BOTH TO AND FROM YOU

"Civility costs nothing."

Proverb

Your position within a company does not matter; you owe and are owed civility to and from others.

I CAN PROVE IT TOO!

"That which proves too much, proves nothing!"

Proverb

There comes a point where self-evident either is or you have to question the "truth" you think you've found.

YOU HAVE A LOT TO SAY ABOUT WHAT WILL BE

"We know what we are, but know not what we may be."

William Shakespeare

16th century British poet/playwright

But we can work to become whatever we wish to be.

Plan for it, work hard to make it happen.

NO ARGUMENT HERE

"The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress."

Joseph Joubert

18th century French moralist

Progress that is mutually beneficial to both sides of the argument.

YOU GOTTA EARN IT

"Luck is the idol of the idle."

Proverb

Fortunately, the harder you work the "luckier" you will become.

ARE YOU REALLY REAL?

"Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there."

Eric Hoffer

20th century American philosopher/author

"The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there."

In you and your company.

If you know the value is not there sooner or later others will as well.

Probably sooner.

DID YOU HEAR WHAT MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE HAPPENED?

"In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation."

Voltaire

18th  century French writer/historian

Because without confirmation it is what may be rather than what is.

Big difference.

LET ME UNDERSTAND

"The word is half his that speaks, and half his that hears it."

Montaigne

16th century French philosopher/essayist

That "word" is communication and the responsibility for it rests as much with the listener as it does the speaker.

BEFORE IT IS YOU VOTED OFF THE ISLAND . . .

"Coalitions though successful have always found this, that their triumph has been brief."

Benjamin Disraeli

19th century British politician/author

At work we might call these "clicks".

Avoid them by any name choosing instead to align only with those who work to advance the company mission rather than their own.

YOU'RE NOT THROUGH YET

"How do you know if your mission in life is finished? If you're still alive, it isn't."

Richard Bach

20th century American writer

We could parse "alive", deciding that merely existing does not qualify, but let's not.

As long as you or your business can continue in some form, your "mission" is not finished.

You may need to change what and how you do things but you are not finished.