41 Quotes by Marc A. Pitman

Amassing knowledge about something is not the same thing as getting it done. Be wary of your habit of mistaking studying a topic as accomplishing goals.

Try to catch yourself going down the rabbit hole of planning for emergencies, especially when planning prevents you from acting. Your desire to explore all potential failures could be coming across as attacking your team’s intelligence.

Be aware of your amazing ability to reflexively reframe negative experiences into positive ones. Reframing can help people see the good in a situation, but it can also mask a deep-seated need to avoid slowing down or being bored. Many in your team will benefit from periods of slow and steady work.

As you work on identity, you will discover clues about yourself in three different types of stories: the stories you tell, the stories you like, and the stories you hear from others. You will be blown away by how much you will learn about the role you can play in your own story.

Stock stories tell your human operating system how to respond, how to habitually move through your life.

Stock plotlines—the themes people tell themselves so that they can build on the positive ones and create alternatives for the negative ones—happen in organizations and teams, and identifying them helps us decide whether we want to keep them or change them.

Too often in leadership, we unreflectively let the past dictate our leadership style. By working on your imaginary obituary, you use the future to shape your style too. We can’t change what has passed, but the future is still yet to be written. So, write it.

Pay attention to intuitional goals. When they appear, they come up for a good reason. They speak to your priorities and they might just support you in ways your more analytical side couldn’t dream of.

Developing a strategic plan—complete with cascading goals—is hard work. But it can energize you, your team, and provide focus for all your work together.