Top 46 Scott Berkun Quotes
#1. Professional management was born from the desire to optimize and control, not to lead waves of change.
Scott Berkun
#2. There is a big difference between wanting to say you wrote a book, and actually writing one. Many people think they want to write, even though they find crafting sentences and paragraphs unpleasant. They hope there is a way to write without writing. I can tell you with certainty there isn't one.
Scott Berkun
#3. It seems that bad advice that's fun will always be better known than than good advice that's dull-no matter how useless that fun advice is.
Scott Berkun
#4. The love of new ideas is a myth: we prefer ideas only after others have tested them.
Scott Berkun
#6. Most people doubt online meetings can work but they somehow overlook that most in-person meetings don't work either.
Scott Berkun
#7. Imparting trust, the real meaning of delegation, is a powerful thing.
Scott Berkun
#8. to call someone an artist means that they have a sense of higher purpose beyond commerce. Not that they don't profit from their work, or promote themselves, but that the work itself has spiritual, philosophical, emotional or experiential attributes as central goals.
Scott Berkun
#9. Good public speaking is based on good private thinking
Scott Berkun
#10. Commit yourself to taking enough risks that you will fail some of the time. If you're not failing, we're not doing something sufficiently difficult or creative.
Scott Berkun
#11. I don't want to be perfect. I want to be useful, I want to be good, and I want to sound like myself. Trying to be perfect gets in the way of all three.
Scott Berkun
#12. The inability to scale is one of the stupidest arguments against a possibly great idea: greatness rarely scales, and that's part of what made it great in the first place.
Scott Berkun
#13. This is one big problem with working remotely: no one believes you have a job at all.
Scott Berkun
#14. My intent is simply to know my material so well that I'm very comfortable with it. Confidence, not perfection, is the goal.
Scott Berkun
#15. Effective PMs simply consider more alternatives before giving up than other people do.
Scott Berkun
#16. a small idea, applied consistently, can have disproportionately large effects.
Scott Berkun
#17. The way you find the answers to your problems will be unique to you.
Scott Berkun
#18. Part of the challenge of innovation is coming up with the problem to solve, not just its solution.
Scott Berkun
#19. Progress won't be a straight line but if you keep learning you will have more successes than failures, and the mistakes you make along the way will help you get to where you want to go.
Scott Berkun
#21. It's natural for people to protect what they know instead of leaping into the unknown, and managers are no exception. Managers might even be worse, as the politics they rely on to survive can make them more entrenched and defensive.
Scott Berkun
#22. Experiment is the expected failure to deliberately learn something.
Scott Berkun
#23. Look for smart ways around a problem or faster ways to resolve them. Make effective use of the people around you instead of assuming you have to do everything yourself.
Scott Berkun
#24. Innovative ideas are rarely rejected on their merits; they're rejected because of how they make people feel. If you forget people's concerns and feelings when you present an innovation, or neglect to understand their perspectives in your design, you're setting yourself up to fail.
Scott Berkun
#25. It's safe to assume that no matter where you stand, someone would be happy to be in your shoes, just as you'd be happy to be in someone else's.
Scott Berkun
#26. Without change and the occasional struggle, we can't learn or grow.
Scott Berkun
#27. Anyone can criticize or accept praise, but initiating a positive exchange is a hallmark of a difference maker.
Scott Berkun
#28. If you lead an active intellectual and emotional life, your ideas will grow with you.
Scott Berkun
#29. No one has died from giving a bad presentation. Well, at least one person did, President William Henry Harrison, but he developed pneumonia after giving the longest inaugural address in U.S. history. The easy lesson from his story: keep it short, or you might die.
Scott Berkun
#30. If you'd like to be good at something, the first thing to out the window is the notion of perfection.
Scott Berkun
#31. History can't give attention to what's been lost, hidden, or deliberately buried; it is mostly a telling of success, not the partial failures that enabled success.
Scott Berkun
#32. We develop ulcers, high blood pressure, headaches, and other physical problems in part because our stress systems aren't designed to handle the "dangers" of our brave new world: computer crashes, micromanaging bosses, 12-way conference calls, and long commutes in rush-hour traffic.
Scott Berkun
#33. Politics is a kind of problem solving. No matter what organizational challenge you face, and how frustrating it might be, it's just another kind of problem to solve.
Scott Berkun
#34. As a rule, if you insist on speaking your mind, you will inevitably find yourself somewhere where everyone hates you.
Scott Berkun
#35. Most people listening to presentations around the world right now are hoping their speakers will end soon. That's all they want.
Scott Berkun
#36. People tell me this is obvious. But it's ok to be obvious. Knowing and doing are different. Many people know many obvious things they completely fail to do, despite their knowledge.
Scott Berkun
#37. It's not the fear of writing that blocks people, it's fear of not writing well; something quite different.
Scott Berkun
#38. Big thoughts are fun to romanticize, but it's many small insights coming together that bring big ideas into the world.
Scott Berkun
#39. Staying curious and open is what makes growth
possible, and it requires practice to maintain that mindset. To keep learning, we have to avoid the temptation to slide into narrow, safe views of what we do.
Scott Berkun
#40. In a recent survey, innovative people - from inventors to scientists, writers to programmers - were asked what techniques they used. Over 70% believed they got their best ideas by exploring areas they were not experts in
Scott Berkun
#41. Increasing creativeness doesn't require anything more than increasing your observations: become more aware of possible combinations.
Scott Berkun
#42. It's rare for people to genuinely try to understand what others are trying to say.
Scott Berkun
#43. The bottleneck is never code or creativity; it's lack of clarity.
Scott Berkun
#45. Nearly every major innovation of the 20th century took place without claims of epiphany.
Scott Berkun
#46. Self-discovery is the process of learning about who you are as an individual, independent from your friends, family, employer, or nation.
Scott Berkun
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