Bryan York

“Countries such as Great Britain and the United States became rich because their citizens overthrew the elites who controlled power and created a society where political rights were much more broadly distributed, where the government was accountable and responsive to citizens, and where the great mass of people could take advantage of economic opportunities.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

“One of the greatest mistakes of successful people is the assumption, “I behave this way, and I achieve results. Therefore, I must be achieving results because I behave this way.” This belief is sometimes true, but not across the board. That’s where superstition kicks in. It creates the core fallacy necessitating this book, the reason that “what got us here won’t get us there.” I’m talking about the difference between success that happens because of our behavior and the success that comes in spite of our behavior. Almost everyone I meet is successful because of doing a lot of things right, and almost everyone I meet is successful in spite of some behavior that defies common sense.”
― Marshall Goldsmith, What Got You Here, Won't Get You There

“When you start a sentence with “no,” “but,” “however,” or any variation thereof, no matter how friendly your tone or how many cute mollifying phrases you throw in to acknowledge the other person’s feelings, the message to the other person is You are wrong.”
― Marshall Goldsmith, What Got You Here, Won't Get You There

“How often do they come to you with helpful suggestions—without you having to ask? How often do they knock on your door and sit down to shoot the breeze or give you a heads-up about a development that may affect you? How does the floor traffic around your desk compare with other colleagues? Are you a popular item, or are you beginning to gather dust on the shelf? If you get even the vaguest sense that there is an imaginary “Do Not Enter” sign outside your office, you’ve just become a little smarter about what you must change. When the issue is negativity, I prefer this form of observational feedback to mere monitoring of speech patterns.”
― Marshall Goldsmith, What Got You Here, Won't Get You There