Communication
Quotes
“Companies that out-execute their
competitors have communicated crystalclear messages to all their employees .”
Louis V. Gerstner
“Failure to communicate strategy results in staff
members making up their own actions.”
Robin Speculand
Author & Consultant
“All of this takes enormous commitment
from the CEO to communicate,
communicate, and communicate some
more. No institutional transformation
takes place, I believe, without a multi-year
commitment by the CEO to put himself or
herself constantly in front of employees
and speak in plain, simple, compelling
language that drives conviction and action
throughout the organization.”
Louis Grestner,
former CEO of IBM
“Wise men talk because they have
something to say; fools, because they
have to say something.”
Plato (428-348 B.C.)
“Proof read carefully to see if you any
words out.”
Anonymous
“Senior managers get lulled into
believing that a well conceived strategy
communicated to the organization
equals implementation.”
Michael Beer & Russell Eisenstat
“Great speakers create change. Their
worth is measured, years after the
speech, by the change their words create
in the actions and attitudes of those
whose lives they have touched.”
Lilly Waiters
"You've got to be able to speak so that
people can understand you.
You have to practice all the time. One of the
best methods is to put a bunch of marbles in
your mouth while you talk. Slowly but
surely, you take away one marble at a time.
And then, when you've lost all your
marbles, you're a public speaker.”
George Jessel
"My job is to speak. Your job is to listen. Let's
hope we finish our jobs at the same time.“
Adlai Stevenson
“The real message is not what you say. It’s
what the other person remembers.”
Harry Mills
“In many turnarounds and corporate
transformations, the hardest battle is simply to make
people aware of the need for a strategic shift and to
agree on its causes.”
W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne,
Blue Ocean Strategy
Old English
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
A mouse was a rodent
A keyboard came attached to a piano
A curser used profanity
A virus was the flu
A hard drive was a long car trip
A web was a spider’s home
A net caught fish
A program was a TV show
A CD was a bank account
A back up was a clogged toilet
An application was for employment
Log on was adding wood to the fire
Memory was something that got worse with age
A window was something you gazed out of
The greater the communication the lower
the level of resistance.
Robin Speculand,
Author & Consultant
I forget what I hear.
I remember what I see.
I learn what I do.
Chinese Proverb
“When people talk, listen completely. Most people
never listen.”
Earnest Hemingway
“Put it before them briefly so they will
read it, clearly so they will appreciate
it, picturesquely so they will remember
it and above all accurately so they will
be guided by its light.”
Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911),
newspaper publisher
“If you can’t convince them, confuse them.”
Harry Truman, 33rd American President
“Without credible communication
and a lot of it, employees’ hearts and
minds are never captured.”
Paul Niven
If you have an important point to make,
don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile
driver. Hit the point once. The come back
and hit it again, then hit it a third time with
a tremendous whack
Sir Winston Churchill
After all is said and done,
more is said than done.
Anonymous
Two monologues do not make a
dialogue.
Unknown
“To live effectively is to live with
adequate information”
Norbert Weiner
(1894-1964), cybernetician