Effort Quotes - Page 129

Linux is a complex example of the wisdom of crowds. It's a good example in the sense that it shows you can set people to work in a decentralized way - that is, without anyone really directing their efforts in a particular direction - and still trust that they're going to come up with good answers.

In the 80s, Ford's successful introduction of the Taurus was, in large part, due to productivity gains resulting from the setting aside of outmoded work rules. Yet, inexplicably, union leaders ignored such efforts to foster employee involvement, much as unions largely stayed on the sidelines with regard to the equally promising practices of employee stock ownership and gain-sharing.

The failure of unions to support efforts to increase employee involvement and ownership coincided with their unwillingness to speak out on the broader issues of business effectiveness and performance. When foreign competitors threatened the survival of American manufacturers, unions chose to voice traditional employee demands for higher wages, better benefits, and more security. What they failed to provide were effective responses to the challenge of globalization.

Ed Lawler and I document that the key to creating good, productive jobs in all industries is to organize work processes and systems in ways that allow employees to contribute significant amounts of "added value" to the products they make and services they provide. When mangers give employees the organizational structure, resources, and authority needed for them to contribute their ideas and efforts, American workers, like those at Harley-Davidson, almost always prove capable of effectively competing against their overseas counterparts.

Once ISIS is defeated, there is a larger effort under way to make certain that we don't just sprout a new enemy. We know ISIS is going to go down. We have had success on the battlefield. We have freed millions of people from being under their control.

Any gathering of people requires leadership to cohere, to achieve its potential contribution. What is not needed is a "boss" of yore, directing everyone else's efforts toward "the one best way."

The idea of death robs inquiry of its passionate vitality and empties our efforts of their purpose by coming to one predestined conclusion, death. Why inquire if you already know the answer?

I needed an outlet in high school and came across painting. I've actually been painting longer than I've been acting. A movie is a collaborative effort, and with painting you just have yourself.

If you really want to improve technology, if you want things to work better and be better, you've got to protect the person who spends a lot of effort, money, and time developing that new technology.

She and Thomas had helped construct the Maze; at the same time she’d exerted a lot of effort to build a wall holding back her emotions.

We're conducting an investigation to understand whether there was any coordination between the Russian efforts and anybody associated with the Trump campaign.

For although this was a very heroic war, with a parade of every sort of high moral principle, and with the most sonorous language employed upon both sides, it somehow failed to bring about either the reformation or the ruin of humankind: and after the conclusion of the murdering and general breakage, the world went on pretty much as it has done after all other wars, with a vague notion that a deal of time and effort had been unprofitably invested, and a conviction that it would be inglorious to say so.

All of consciousness is shifted from the imagined, the revisive, to the effort to perceive simply the cruel radiance of what is

Artists are not going to put somebody new in the president's chair. It's all worth the effort; it all needs to be done. But I don't look at songwriting as having the ability to necessarily do that today.

An effort made with ourselves for the good of others, with the intention of pleasing God alone.

So I'm in that half-hour business where the most money is, so that eventually I feel like the people that put on the Dupont show, like maybe my artistic effort is going to be a little different.

There was never any effort made out there to improve the artist.

I believe in sex on a first date. Otherwise, how do you know if a second date is worth the effort?

I thought of myself as part of the general filmmaking effort. And as my scope broadened, I began to think about directing. I wanted to be the guy who got to say whether the dress is red or blue.

Two qualities are at the root of all meditation development: right effort and right aim—arousing effort to aim the mind toward the object.

His [Pitt's] successor as prime minister was Mr. Addington, who was a friend of Mr. Pitt, just as Mr. Pitt was a friend of Mr. Addington; but their respective friends were each other's enemies. Mr. Fox, who was Mr. Pitt's enemy (although many of his friends were Mr. Pitt's friends), had always stood uncompromisingly for peace with France and held dangerously liberal opinions; nevertheless, in 1804, Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt got together to overthrow Mr. Pitt's friend Mr. Addington, who was pushing the war effort with insufficient vigor.

Things which do not require effort of some sort are seldom worth having.

It frustrates and fascinates me that we'll never know for sure, that despite the best efforts of historians and scientists and poets, there are some things we'll just never know. What the first song sounded like. How it felt to see the first photograph. Who kissed the first kiss, and if it was any good.

At Linkabit, we put little effort and energy into patenting things.

For me words still possess their primitive, mystical, incantatory powers. I am inclined to use them as part of an attempt to make my own reality more real for others, as part of an effort to transcend emotional danger. For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change. Their articulation represents a complete, lived experience.