management

I made the mistake of using my earned sick time at the W. M. Keck Observatory for essential surgery. When I returned to work the management team demanded my resignation numerous times, citing my essential surgery as a reason. The W. M. Keck Observatory taught me that using earned sick time in the USA may put your future employment at significant risk.

Unfortunately, the board of directors that the middle managers report to generally make them aggressive. Imagine being hired into a company and then being told that you have to ignore the emerging health and safety issues (This is illegal!) and not inform the workers that the system is known to be dangerous (This is illegal!). You have two options: To go to jail for illegal activities sometime in the future, or to lose your job now and have all your USA workplace rights removed for recognizing the illegal activities that your Directors want you to engage in. Welcome to the corporate America management team!

Depending on someone to make for you money is quite like depending on them to make for you a baby: they will own the money just as they will own the baby

It is through aversion to hardship that great ideas are born, but it is only through acceptance of it that these ideas can be implemented

You lose nothing if by losing a friend you win countless admirers

Very few managers know how to effectively tap the biggest source of performance improvement available to them: namely, the creativity and knowledge of the people who work for them.

Innovation can start with wanting what does not yet exist - and finding a solution - or seeing what does not yet exist - and finding an opportunity.

To the inexperienced and naive, creativity often looks like magic. But in truth creativity is rooted in the fertile grounds of knowledge and many hours of hard work and thinking.

The majority of people are not willing to risk what they have built for the opportunity to have something better.

Disruption causes vast sums of money to flow from existing businesses and business models to new entrants.

Self-disruption is akin to undergoing major surgery, but you are the one holding the scalpel.

Your energy is a valuable resource, distribute it wisely.

The business world is littered with the fossils of companies that failed to evolve. Disrupt or be disrupted. There is no middle ground.

Building a career or a company is about living a few years of your life like most people won't so that you can spend the rest of your life living at a level most people can't.

Insight and drive are all the skills you need. Everything else can be hired.

Those that recognize the inevitability of change stand to benefit the most from it.

A negative mind will never find success. I have never heard a positive idea come from a person in a negative state.

The customer is always right...even when they're wrong.