James Merlino famous quotes

As a physician, we are taught that learning and education never stop - they are lifelong. I think education comes in various forms: formal, informal, and most importantly, experiential. All of this defines who we are and gives us if you will our abilities to function as leaders. I believe all of those pieces constitute formal education - it is invaluable to who we are and how well we perform.
-- James Merlino

#Believe #Thinking #Giving

Things that people thought not possible when they were proposed and blown off become enormously successful. There are a lot of ideas that never succeed - but we all know the crazy ideas that did - who would have thought 30 years ago that people would pay $4 for a cup of coffee - but today, we have 20,000 Starbucks stores around the world. A group of prospective investors once remarked that "Google" was the "balloon company." The point is, don't rush to pooh-pooh something you don't understand or aren't willing to try - it could be something that changes the world.
-- James Merlino

#Crazy #Coffee #Successful

Talking about improving the culture, I prefer to say "develop" or "evolve" rather than "change". If I walk into a room and say: "we are here to change the organization," it sends shock waves through the group. If I say: "your success to date has come from who you are, to be successful in the future, we need to get to X, let's talk about how we evolve the organization to that point," that is a very different statement. Successful organizational "change" must come from the people. So, recruit them with common purpose, recognize that it will take time, and plow forward.
-- James Merlino

#Successful #People #Different

You frequently hear the phrase "culture eats strategy for lunch!" This is something that they don't teach you in school and few leaders appreciate. Cultural influences come at you from two different directions. There is the organizational culture that you must understand if you are to impact significant strategic initiatives. If the "people" are on board, you can achieve anything. Vice versa if they are not - you will not achieve anything.
-- James Merlino

#School #People #Appreciate

I have participated as a leader in many organizations where the leadership culture was just mean - ugly, where competitiveness, and destructive relationships stymied progress. There should be healthy tension and candid debate, but leadership teams need to practice communication, relationship building, emotional intelligence, and be aligned around common purpose to achieve organizational success. Senior leaders, chief executive officers, others need to ensure they are fostering the right environment for leadership otherwise all of that ugliness will trickle through the organization.
-- James Merlino

#Senior #Team #Communication

Good C-suite executives rise to the top because they can execute. Good execution at the operational level requires us to have a solid handle on details - that doesn't mean operators don't delegate, it just means that they have a strong line of site to the front lines because they know that is where operational success is driven. As people move into the c-suite, they hold on to their operational persona and likely feel the need to do more. But success in the c-suite comes from our ability to be more strategic and trust that we have selected highly qualified people to take our places.
-- James Merlino

#Strong #Moving #Mean

I still secretly believe that afternoons are the time for the test card and you shouldn't watch television when the sun is out.

The gods have fled, I know. My sense is the gods have always been essentially absent. I do not believe human beings have played games or sports from the beginning merely to summon or to please or to appease the gods. If anthropologists and historians believe that, it is because they believe whatever they have been able to recover about what humankind told the gods humankind was doing. I believe we have played games, and watched games, to imitate the gods, to become godlike in our worship of eachother and, through those moments of transmutation, to know for an instant what the gods know.

I was a narrative historian, believing more and more as I matured that the first function of the historian was to answer the child's question, "What happened next?

I was a common man, and I will always remain a common man. No amount of stardom will ever consume my soul. Money comes, money goes. Fame comes, fame goes. I believe every human being is a celebrity in their own right.

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

My goal has been to encourage jointness, to push people to think of affiliations rather than to operate as solo entrepreneurs.

There is not a command God gives to His children for which He does not provide the enablement for obedience.

The science of anti-Semitism finally comes to explain this phenomenon, enlightening further the consciousness of people, fully satisfying their instinct and its violent eruptions thus legitimized by revealing their cause - the parasitism of the Jews. Thus it gives us the formula of the scientific solution for the problem of Judaism, which in order to realize we have only to apply.

There is a certain indolence in us, a wish not to be disturbed, which tempts us to think that when things are quiet, all is well. Subconsciously, we tend to give the preference to 'social peace,' though it be only apparent, because our lives and possessions seem then secure. Actually, human beings acquiesce too easily in evil conditions; they rebel far too little and too seldom. There is nothing noble about acquiescence in a cramped life or mere submission to superior force.

He gives me the hairy eyeball, and asks me to help him find his pancreas.