Dave Gray > Quotes

“We construct our beliefs, mostly unconsciously, and thereafter they hold us captive. They can help us focus and make us more effective, but sadly, they also can limit us: they blind us to possibility and subject us to fog, fear, and doubt.”
― Dave Gray, Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think

“If you give people facts without a story, they will explain it within their existing belief system. The best way to promote a new or different belief is not with facts, but with a story.”
― Dave Gray, Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think

“Having a business meeting without artifacts and meaningful space is like meeting blindfolded with your hands behind your back. Yes, you can do it, but why would you want to?”
― Dave Gray, Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rule-breakers, and Changemakers

“That concept is important enough that I’m going to say it again: People rarely test ideas for external validity when they don’t have internal coherence. If it doesn’t make sense from within the bubble, you’re going to think it’s a mistake, or a lie, or somebody got it wrong. You will tend to do whatever is necessary to protect the consistency and coherence of that bubble, because to you, that bubble is reality itself. Liminal thinking requires a willingness to test and validate new ideas, even when they seem absurd, crazy, or wrong.”
― Dave Gray, Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think

“Leaders are not good because they are right, they are good because people follow them, and people follow those who are willing to listen and learn.”
― Dave Gray, The Connected Company

“Most boundaries are convenient fictions.”
― Dave Gray, Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think

“Having an idea of an elephant in your head is not the same thing as having a real elephant in your head!”
― Dave Gray, Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think

“Companies run on passion, and if you can’t find the passion in the work you’re doing today, then you’re in the wrong place.”
― Dave Gray, The Connected Company

“Like the blind men and the elephant, it’s often the case that people see the same thing, but they see it differently, and the argument over who is right and wrong distracts them from learning or doing anything productive with the situation they find themselves in. The obvious is not obvious. Even”
― Dave Gray, Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think

“Connected companies are living, learning networks that live within larger networks. Power in networks comes from awareness and influence, not control. Leaders must create an environment of clarity, trust, and shared purpose, while management focuses on designing and tuning the system that supports learning and performance.”
― Dave Gray, The Connected Company

“When the world is constantly changing, the speed at which you can learn is the only thing that can give you a long-term, sustainable advantage.”
― Dave Gray, The Connected Company

“I once asked a neuroscientist, “What’s the difference between consciousness and dreaming?” “Very little,” he told me. “In fact,” he said, “if you look at an MRI, at the actual brain processes that are happening when you are dreaming and when you are awake, they look almost identical. Only a practiced neuroscientist can tell the difference.” What”
― Dave Gray, Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think

“Perhaps nothing is more important to exploration and discovery than the art of asking good questions. Questions are fire-starters: they ignite people’s passions and energy; they create heat; and they illuminate things that were previously obscure.”
― Dave Gray, Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rule-breakers, and Changemakers

“Principles are liberating, whereas policies are constraining. Principles are rules of thumb that can help people make decisions in all kinds of situations. Principles make use of human judgment. Policies, on the other hand, restrict and constrain and reduce the human element.”
― Dave Gray, The Connected Company

“There’s an old adage about making difficult decisions: “When in doubt, go towards the fear.”
― Dave Gray, The Connected Company

“Customers, after all, are the one thing no business can do without. They are the key to every company’s survival.”
― Dave Gray, The Connected Company

“Learning is making progress toward a goal, so people need to know what they are shooting for.”
― Dave Gray, The Connected Company

“Based on the belief I chose, I could have created either one of those worlds. If I had chosen to believe Spitfire was a problem dog and I had acted on that belief, it would have been a self-fulfilling prophecy. By my belief and actions, I would have created that world. But I chose to believe Spitfire was a good dog, and acted accordingly. By those actions, my wife and I created that more positive shared world, with a lot of help from the dog, of course. That is the power of a story web. Changing stories can change reality.”
― Dave Gray, Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think

“A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels. —Albert Einstein Some”
― Dave Gray, Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think

“When people confuse their beliefs with reality, they get into arguments and conflicts,”
― Dave Gray, Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think

“As a leader, if you attract and hire good people in the first place, half of your leadership problems are solved right out of the gate.”
― Dave Gray, The Connected Company

“Some years ago, I came across a book that had inspired me as a high school student. The book was called Rapid Viz: A New Method for the Rapid Visualization of Ideas by Kurt Hanks. It was the first time I had ever seen someone articulate the idea of drawing as thinking, which since then has become a central theme of my life and work.”
― Dave Gray, Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think

“Most often when you want people to understand something, it’s because you want them to change something or learn something that they can then “DO.” Ask yourself, or the group, “What will happen once they understand?”
― Dave Gray, Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rule-breakers, and Changemakers

“An emergent approach to strategy requires a large and diverse pool of ideas.”
― Dave Gray, The Connected Company

“When principles are at the core of your competitive strategy, you must hire for attitude first. You can train people on skills, but you can’t train them on attitude. Employees must be a good fit. Hire for attitude, orient for values, and train for skills.”
― Dave Gray, The Connected Company

“Es fácil dejar la creatividad a las personas creativas, y decirse a uno mismo: «Lo que pasa es que yo no soy creativo». El hecho es que en una economía compleja, dinámica e intelectualmente competitiva, adoptar esta postura ya no es algo aceptable.”
― Dave Gray, Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rule-breakers, and Changemakers

“The obvious is not obvious. It is constructed”
― Dave Gray, Liminal Thinking: Create the Change You Want by Changing the Way You Think

“As a senior leader, it’s all too easy to be blinded by past successes.”
― Dave Gray, The Connected Company

“The problem in many companies is that the workers in the company are insulated from these adaptive tensions. Many people just don’t feel them, and they don’t have any sense of urgency about them. The job of the leader is to bring these adaptive tensions front and center in the company to make them the topic of ongoing conversations,”
― Dave Gray, The Connected Company