Quote Of The Week

Quote of the Week 44 "Trust, engagement, and happiness are outcomes. If you treat them like your inputs, you'll never get them." ― Leandro Herrero   A quote from Herrero's book " The Flipping Point " cited here . " There is a lot of confusion around inputs and outputs in Culture Change. Many organizations agree on broad values and directions for their culture and put things like "Trust, Engagement, and Happiness" in their value statements. But this is the output, the result. The input are behaviours. "

Quote of the Week 43 " Sometimes you change the subject, and sometimes the subject changes you. " ―  Timothy Snyder   As stated in his recent blog article " How does the Russo-Ukrainian War end ".

Quote of the Week 42 " Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. " ― Frank Zappa   Triggered by the use of the quote in a discussion of "normality" in the WDR 5 "Philosophical Radio" podcast .

Quote of the Week 41 " I quote others only in order the better to express myself. " ―  Michel de Montaigne Triggered by the discussion of Montaigne's Essais in a WDR 5 podcast . A variant of the original French quote : "Je ne dis les autres, sinon pour d'autant plus me dire." "I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better."

2nd Quote of the Week 40 " Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. " ―  Steve Jobs (who passed away 11 years ago today)

  Quote of the Week 40 " Gratitude is letting the power of knowing what you have, overpower thinking about what you don't. " ―  John Maeda

  Quote of the Week 39 " Agile now means, we do half of Scrum poorly and use Jira. " ―  Andy Hunt   Triggered by the use of the quote in  Agile & Scrum Don't Work | Allen Holub In The Engineering Room Ep. 9 .

Quote of the Week 38 "You can’t have privacy without security, but you can have security without privacy." ―  Unknown   Triggered by the u se of the adage in a Data Protocol certification course on Privacy-Centered Security . The statement is also included in this October 2007 presentation (slide #3). See the 2021 " Data Privacy vs. Data Security " blog article for a discussion of similarities and differences between data security and data privacy: "In short, data privacy and data security are, by no means, the same terms. Data privacy is about proper usage, collection, retention, deletion, and storage of data. Data security is policies, methods, and means to secure [personal] data. ... Data security is a prerequisite for data privacy."

Quote of the Week 37 "Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it." ―  André Gide  (sometimes attributed to Voltaire)  Triggered by the u se of a variation of the quote in a reply to a S.B. Kaufman tweet: "Admire those who seek the truth, but fear those who claim to have found it." -- Every Wise Person Ever — Christopher Ryan (@ThatChrisRyan) July 13, 2022

Quote of the Week 36 " You are never one feature away from success and you never will be. " ― Teresa Torres Triggered by  Teresa Torres '  use of this statement (pg. 117) in her 2021 book " Continuous Discovery Habits " in the introduction to Chapter 7 " Prioritizing Opportunities, Not Solutions ". "For too long, product teams have defined their work as shipping the next release. When we engage with stakeholders, we talk about our roadmaps and our backlogs. During our performance reviews, we highlight all the great features we implemented.  The vast majority of our conversations take place in the solution space . We assume that success comes from launching features. This is what product thought leader Melissa Perri calls "the build trap ." This obsession with producing outputs is strangling us.  It's why we spend countless hours prioritizing features, grooming backlogs, and micro-managing releases. The hard reality is that...