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Amidst all the clutter, beyond all the obstacles, aside from all the static, are the goals set. Put your head down, do the best job possible, let the flak pass, and work towards those goals.

Donald Rumsfeld

If in doubt, move decisions up to the President.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Decision Doubt President
Think ahead. Don’t let day-to-day operations drive out planning.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Business Operation Planning Thinking
Arguments of convenience lack integrity and inevitably trip you up.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Argument Convenience Inevitable Integrity
Remember where you came from.
DONALD RUMSFELD

History One Liner Past Remember
The price of being close to the President is delivering bad news. You fail him if you don’t tell him the truth. Others won’t do it.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Deliver Failure President Price Truth
There are no “knowns.” There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Deep Philosophy
Agreement can always be reached by increasing the generality of the conclusion; when this is done, the form is generally preserved but only the illusion of policy is created.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Agreement Conclusion Creation Illusion Increase Policy
What you measure improves.” A corollary rule in the military is that “You get what you inspect, not what you expect.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Expectation Improvement Inspect Measure Military Rule
Prune – prune businesses, products, activities, people. Do it annually.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Activity Business People Product
Know that the amount of criticism you receive may correlate somewhat to the amount of publicity you receive.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Criticism Publicity Receive
With the press there is no ‘off the record.’
DONALD RUMSFELD

Media Record
There are known knowns, things we know that we know; and there are known unknowns, things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns, things we do not know we don’t know.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Imagination Knowledge
First rule of politics: you can’t win unless you’re on the ballot. Second rule: If you run, you may lose. And, if you tie, you do not win.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Ballot Lose Politics Rule Win
Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the President and do wonders for your performance.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Improvement Performance President Value Wonder
If the staff lacks policy guidance against which to test decisions, their decisions will be random.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Decision Guidance Lack Random
Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn’t exist.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Evidence Existence

Amidst all the clutter, beyond all the obstacles, aside from all the static, are the goals set. Put your head down, do the best job possible, let the flak pass, and work towards those goals.

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Amidst all the clutter, beyond all the obstacles, aside from all the static, are the goals set. Put your head down, do the best job possible, let the flak pass, and work towards those goals.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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