Jim Clifton > Quotes

“Humans used to desire love, money, food, shelter, safety, peace, and freedom more than anything else. The last 30 years have changed us. Now people want to have a good job, and they want their children to have a good job. This changes everything for world leaders.”
― Jim Clifton, The Coming Jobs War

“It’s absolutely critical that leaders understand this: An innovation has no value until an ambitious entrepreneur builds a business model around it and turns it into a product or service that customers will buy. If you can’t turn an innovative idea into something that creates a customer, it’s worthless.”
― Jim Clifton, Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder

“ Public school superintendents and university presidents need to think beyond core curricula and their graduation rates. Students don’t want to merely graduate; they want an education that results in a good job.”
― Jim Clifton, The Coming Jobs War

“The primary will of the world is no longer about peace or freedom or even democracy; it is not about having a family, and it is neither about God nor about owning a home or land. The will of the world is first and foremost to have a good job. Everything else comes after that. A good job is a social value. That is a huge sociological shift for humankind. It changes everything about how people lead countries, cities, and organizations.”
― Jim Clifton, The Coming Jobs War

“We’re so seriously misguided in our thinking about how jobs are born that we’re running the risk of putting our country on a course of permanent decline.”
― Jim Clifton, Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder

“Today’s explorers migrate to the cities that are most likely to maximize innovation and entrepreneurial talents and skill. Wherever the most talented choose to migrate is where the next economic empires will rise. That’s why San Francisco, Seoul, and Singapore have become such colossal engines of job creation.”
― Jim Clifton, The Coming Jobs War

“We can list more than 20 dimensions we’ve found in successful leaders: the ability to create a vision, thinking strategically, building influential internal and external networks, courage to make tough decisions, and so on. Successful leadership is multidimensional for sure. But most of the traits of successful leaders can be distilled down to two elements. They know how to: bring multiple teams together make great decisions And these two elements have a lot to do with whether organizations are agile.”
― Jim Clifton, It's the Manager: Gallup finds the quality of managers and team leaders is the single biggest factor in your organization's long-term success.

“if the image of free enterprise and entrepreneurship is going up among your youth, you will experience job creation. If it is trending down, may God be with you.”
― Jim Clifton, The Coming Jobs War

“Currently, it takes about three workers paying Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) taxes to support one retiree, and the system works as long as there is a ratio of three workers to one retiree. But it crumbles as the ratio of workers to retirees becomes, say, two to one. With fewer jobs, there are fewer workers”
― Jim Clifton, The Coming Jobs War

“What the whole world wants is a good job.”
― Jim Clifton, The Coming Jobs War

“Innovation is essential, and we need it. But the real magic starts with entrepreneurs — with people who are born with the rare gift to build successful businesses.”
― Jim Clifton, Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder

“So while America experiences a decline in GDP, it’s also experiencing a decline in a term you will start hearing a lot: gross national wellbeing (GNW). GNW is driven primarily by hopefulness or hopelessness.”
― Jim Clifton, The Coming Jobs War

“What if the whole world is wrong about how jobs are created?”
― Jim Clifton, Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder

“Strong leadership teams are already in place within cities. A natural order is already present, in governments and local business and philanthropic entities. Every city has strong, caring leaders working on numerous committees and initiatives to fuel their local economic growth — let’s call it the city GDP — and to create good jobs.”
― Jim Clifton, The Coming Jobs War