The first step out of the gate has to be knowing where you want to end up. What do you really want from your company?
~ Stan Slap
The first step to solving any problem is to accept one’s own accountability for creating it.
~ Stan Slap
You don't have to fear your own company being perceived as human. You want it. People don't trust companies, they trust people.
~ Stan Slap
Being relevant to your customers only when you’re trying to sell something means choosing to be irrelevant to them for the rest of the time.
~ Stan Slap
There will be plenty of other problems in the future. This is as good a time as any to get ahead of them.
~ Stan Slap
The economy is in ruins! Bottom line? Good management will defeat a bad economy.
~ Stan Slap
Your company is its own competition and can deliver itself debilitating blows the competition only dreams of.
~ Stan Slap
Instead of waiting for a leader you can believe in, try this: Become a leader you can believe in.
~ Stan Slap
The purpose of leadership is to change the world around you in the name of your values, so you can live those values more fully.
~ Stan Slap
Profitability. Growth. Quality. Exceeding customer expectations. These are not examples of values. These are examples of corporate strategies being sold to you as values.
~ Stan Slap
When you’re a manager, you work for your company. When you’re a leader, your company works for you.
~ Stan Slap
Work/life balance is not about escaping work. It’s about living exactly the way you want to when you’re at work.
~ Stan Slap
What first separates a leader from a normal human being? A leader knows who they are as a human being.
~ Stan Slap
True leaders live their values everywhere, not just in the workplace.
~ Stan Slap
The worst thing in your own development as a leader is not to do it wrong. It’s to do it for the wrong reasons.
~ Stan Slap
When rewards come from an external source instead of an internal source, they’re unreliable, which means they’re dangerous if you grow to depend on them.
~ Stan Slap
A company can’t buy true emotional commitment from managers no matter how much it’s willing to spend, this is something too valuable to have a price tag. And yet a company can’t afford not to have it.
~ Stan Slap
Human behavior is only unpredictable and dangerous if you don’t start from humanity in the first place.
~ Stan Slap
Imagine a world where what you say synchs up, not sinks down.
~ Stan Slap
Why live my personal values at work? This is an excellent question to ask. If your attorneys are planning an insanity defense.
~ Stan Slap
Here’s what you need to know most about leadership: Lead your own life first. The only thing in this world that will dependably happen from the top down is the digging of your grave.
~ Stan Slap
The myth of management is that your personal values are irrelevant or inappropriate at work.
~ Stan Slap
It’s impossible for a company to get what it wants most if managers have to make a choice between their own values and company priorities.
~ Stan Slap
Try not to take this the wrong way, but your brain is smarter than you are.
~ Stan Slap
A manager’s emotional commitment is the ultimate trigger for their discretionary effort, worth more than financial, intellectual & physical commitment combined.
~ Stan Slap
You can stuff yourself with emotional fulfillment until it’s dribbling down your chin & your ego will quickly chomp it down and demand more.
~ Stan Slap
Your dreams and the dreams of your company may be different, but they are in no way incompatible.
~ Stan Slap
Providing the ultimate solution to work/life balance: not escaping from work but living the way you want to at work.
~ Stan Slap
Your company really has to work for you before you’ll really work for your company.
~ Stan Slap
What companies want most from their managers is what they most stop their managers from giving. What managers want most from their jobs is what they most stop themselves from getting.
~ Stan Slap
Most managers have plenty of emotional commitment to give to their jobs. If they can be convinced it’s safe and sensible to give it.
~ Stan Slap
What managers want most from companies they stop themselves from getting.What companies want most from managers they stop them from giving.
~ Stan Slap
This is your one and only precious life. Somebody’s going to decide how it’s going to be lived and that person had better be you.
~ Stan Slap
A manager’s emotional commitment is worth more than their financial, intellectual and physical commitment combined.
~ Stan Slap