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Every organization should tolerate rebels who tell the emperor he has no clothes.

Colin Powell

Maybe we don’t put our young people in situations often enough where they’re allowed to fail. When you fail you gain experience, and with enough experience, you don’t fail as often.
COLIN POWELL

Allow Enough Experience Failure People Situation Young Yourself
The most important thing I learned is that soldiers watch what their leaders do. You can give them classes and lecture them forever, but it is your personal example they will follow.
COLIN POWELL

Follow Forever Important Learning Personal Soldier
You don’t know what you can get away with until you try.
COLIN POWELL

Ability Let Go Try Yourself
Be careful what you choose: You may get it.
COLIN POWELL

Care Choice Yourself
I have never seen a good organization where the standards weren’t high.
COLIN POWELL

Goodness High Myself Organization Standard
Leaders have followers. The primary role of a leader is to convey to those followers a sense of purpose, vision, and mission.
COLIN POWELL

Follow Leadership Mission Primary Purpose Role Vision
Pissing people off doesn’t mean you’re doing the right things, but doing the right things will almost inevitably piss people off.
COLIN POWELL

People Perspective Right Yourself
We can seldom get our children to do what we tell them, but they almost never fail to imitate us.
COLIN POWELL

Children Failure Imitation Ourselves
You can be sure that the American spirit will prevail over this tragedy.
COLIN POWELL

Spirit Tragedy Yourself
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
COLIN POWELL

Failure Hard Work Inspirational Learning Preparation Result Secret Success
All values are important, everyone who has ever touched my life in some way was a mentor for good or bad. Life is a blend, and a person is a blend of all the influences that have touched their lives.
COLIN POWELL

Important Influence Life Live Touch Value
Leaders honor their core values, but they are flexible in how they execute them.
COLIN POWELL

Core Execution Leadership Value Yourself
If everybody trusts one another, then the person who didn’t prevail will faithfully execute the decision as if it was their idea.
COLIN POWELL

Decision Execution Faith Ideas Oneself Person Trust
When you wrestle with a pig, he has fun, and you just end up dirty.
COLIN POWELL

Animal Dirty End Fight Yourself
Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.
COLIN POWELL

Average Sign Yourself
We are not trapped in what the science of management says we can do. We are capable of doing what the art of leadership says is possible.
COLIN POWELL

Art Leadership Management Possible Science

Every organization should tolerate rebels who tell the emperor he has no clothes.

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Every organization should tolerate rebels who tell the emperor he has no clothes.

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