Quote Of The Week

  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...

Quote of the Week 35 " If you expect others to agree with you, why aren’t you trying more often to agree with them? " ―  Olivier Sibony Triggered by Sibony's statement in a McKinsey Quarterly article " Sounding the alarm on system noise "  promoting the book " Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment " he co-authored with Daniel Kahnemann and Cass Sunstein. Olivier Sibony:  "There is an almost philosophical thing that I would like leaders to think about, which is this: If you expect others to agree with you, why aren’t you trying more often to agree with them? Why do so many people, especially in leadership positions, seem to believe that their role is to express a unique, distinct, even original point of view on what needs to be done and, at the same time, find it troubling when others don’t agree with them?"

Quote of the Week 34 " Dashboards are astrology for execs . " ― Taylor Murphy Triggered by Taylor 's tweet : dashboards are astrology for execs — Single Source of Taylor (@tayloramurphy) August 16, 2022

Quote of the Week 33 " With great responsibility comes no power . " ― Product Manager's Motto accor ding to Dan Olsen Triggered by the use of the quote in the  Enterprise Product Management presentation by Dan Olsen at Lean Product Meetup on May 11, 2022. Dan also tweeted the same more than five years ago. Spiderman's motto: With great power comes great responsibility. Product manager's motto: With great responsibility comes no power. #prodmgmt pic.twitter.com/cBc7tH5Khe — Dan Olsen (@danolsen) December 7, 2016 The origin of Spiderman's motto dates back to the first century BC according to Wikipedia .

Quote of the Week 32 " A goal without a method is cruel. " ― W.E. Deming Triggered by the use of the quote in Bryan Finster's 2021 " How to Misuse DORA DevOps Metrics " presentation. (See also my  blog article on the topic). From Deming's 5 Rules of Management : 1. Put fun back into work. “The prevailing system of management has crushed fun out of the workplace.” 2. Give people a reason to come to work. “We are here to make another world.” 3. Don’t leave people hanging. “A goal without a method is cruel.” 4. Push responsibility down the line. “Quality is everyone's responsibility.” 5. Encourage and celebrate innovation. “Innovation comes from the producer - not from the customer.”

Quote of the Week 31 " The customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him. One reason for this is, of course, that nobody pays for a  ‘ product ’ . What is paid for is satisfactions . " ― Peter Drucker Sometimes paraphrased as "The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it is selling." Triggered by the use of the quote when  revisiting Clayton Christensen's work in the context of the Jobs to Be Done Innovation Theory . For more information on JTBD see:  https://jobs-to-be-done-book.com  

Quote of the Week 30 " Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought. " ―  Albert Szent-Györgyi Triggered by a @ProfFeynman tweet . [Update: 09/17/2025] The original quote is attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer.

Quote of the Week 29 "I’m not young enough to know everything." ― James Matthew Barrie (sometimes attributed to Oscar Wilde) Triggered by a reply to a @wilddueck  tweet .

Quote of the Week 28 " Proximity does breed creativity within a group of people." ― Kara Swisher Triggered by Kara's claim in a recent Pivot Podcast episode: . @karaswisher explains that there are some real advantages to working in-person in the office: “Proximity does breed creativity within a group of people.” Stream Pivot here, presented by @Salesforce + 👉 https://t.co/wo1l2mMrMP pic.twitter.com/coSLj8xTsS — Pivot Podcast (@PivotPod) June 3, 2022 Unfortunately, I could not yet find a research study that fully backs this opinion. While the creativity myth   "Creativity tends to be a solitary activity" has been challenged, " face-to-face verbal interaction is typically not an effective way to tap the creative potential of a group "   according to  Alone versus together: Finding the right balance for creativity (researchgate.net) . [Update: July 17, 2022 Proximity does indeed cause contagion within a group of people. ]

Quote of the Week 27 " By far the greatest flow of newness is not innovation at all. Rather, it is  imitation ." ― Theodore Levitt "Imitation is not only more abundant than innovation, but actually a much more prevalent road to business growth and profits." Triggered by the inflationary u se of the term "innovation" in marketing new products. Theodore Levitt already diagnosed the same more than half a decade ago in his 1966 Harvard Business Review article "Innovative Imitation" summarized here . [ Post | LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 26 " The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it." ― Brandolini's Law (aka Bullshit Asymmetry Principle ) Triggered by the u se of the quote in Tony Fadell's recent book " Build ".

2nd Quote of the Week 25 " Creativity is a spiritual experience, not a mental experience." ―  Deepak Chopra Triggered by the interview with Deepak Chopra @ OpenText World EMEA 2022 in Munich. See  Creativity (blog-on-innovation.blogspot.com)  for a brief overview of the concept of creativity summarized by another Chopra quote: " To harness true creativity, you must silence the conditioned mind."

Quote of the Week 25 " Listen, everyone is entitled to my opinion. " ―  Madonna Use of the quote  triggered by recent actions of a certain self-proclaimed "free speech advocate".

Quote of the Week 24 " You can’t copy your way to the top ." ―  Steven B. Sample ( The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership ) Cited in Contingency Theories for Leadership . Source:  DALL·E mini - a Hugging Face Space by dalle-mini More counter-intuitive lessons from the book : Never make a decision today that can reasonably be put off to tomorrow. Think gray. Don’t form opinions if you don’t have to. Think free. Move several steps beyond traditional brainstorming. Listen first, talk later. And when you listen, do so artfully. Shoot your own horse. Don’t force others to do your dirty work. The best leaders don’t keep up with the popular media and the trades. Know what hill you are willing to die on—and keep its exact location to yourself. Know the all–important difference between being leader and doing leader. You can’t copy your way to the top.

Quote of the Week 23 " To catch up, you have to run faster than the leader. " ―  Mark Akers Full quote taken from the book Indiana (in) Decision  by Mark Aker: " If you are running in a race and are behind the leader,  to catch up, you have to run faster than the leader ." Triggered by Gunter Dueck 's variant of the quote in German: "Wenn man zur Spitze aufschliessen will, muss man schneller laufen als der Erste."

Quote of the Week 22 " It is a lot better to walk alone than with a crowd going in the wrong direction ." ―  A @ProfFeynman tweet Source: Tweet

Quote of the Week 21 " Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do. " ―  Jean Piaget Triggered by the use of the  quote  in a recent tweet by François Chollet.

Quote of the Week 20 " All actual life is encounter. " ―  Martin Buber (I and Thou) Variant translation: "All real life is meeting." "Alles wirkliche Leben ist Begegnung." ―  Martin Buber (Ich und Du) Triggered by the use of the  quote  in a recent podcast .

Quote of the Week 19 " They lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them. " ―  Elena Gorokhova ( A Mountain of Crumbs ) Triggered by the use of a variant of the quote attributed to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn : "We know they are lying. They know they are lying. They know that we know they are lying. We know that they know that we know they are lying. And still they continue to lie."

Quote of the Week 18 " Don’t tell people what to do; tell them what you need accomplished, and you’ll be amazed at the results. " ― George S. Patton Triggered by Marty Cagan's use of this variant of the quote in the Silicon Valley Product Group blog article " The Alternative to Roadmaps ". Original quote : " Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. "

Quote of the Week 17 " Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken." ― misattributed to Oscar Wilde Source: Quote Investigator . See also: Professor Buzzkill .

Quote of the Week 16 " There is no truth, only belief." ― Unknown I have seen this quote attributed to René Descartes and David Hume but could not find a definitive source. See also " The Belief in Truth " and Oleg Filin's " The Portrait of M. Monroe " for expressing the same thought.