Scott Berkun Quotes & Sayings

Politics is a kind of problem solving. No matter what organizational challenge you face, and how frustrating it might be, it's just another kind of problem to solve. — Scott Berkun

to call someone an artist means that they have a sense of higher purpose beyond commerce. Not that they don't profit from their work, or promote themselves, but that the work itself has spiritual, philosophical, emotional or experiential attributes as central goals. — Scott Berkun

The way you find the answers to your problems will be unique to you. — Scott Berkun

an idea is a combination of other ideas. — Scott Berkun

Without change and the occasional struggle, we can't learn or grow. — Scott Berkun

This is one big problem with working remotely: no one believes you have a job at all. — Scott Berkun

Most people doubt online meetings can work but they somehow overlook that most in-person meetings don't work either. — Scott Berkun

It's not the fear of writing that blocks people, it's fear of not writing well; something quite different. — Scott Berkun

In a recent survey, innovative people - from inventors to scientists, writers to programmers - were asked what techniques they used. Over 70% believed they got their best ideas by exploring areas they were not experts in — Scott Berkun

For centuries before Google, MIT, and IDEO, modern hotbeds of innovation, we struggled to explain any kind of creation, from the universe itself to the multitudes of ideas around us. While we can make atomic bombs, and dry-clean silk ties, we still don't have satisfying answers for simple questions like: Where do songs come from? Are there an infinite variety of possible kinds of cheese? How did Shakespeare and Stephen King invent so much, while we're satisfied watching sitcom reruns? Our popular answers have been unconvincing, enabling misleading, fantasy-laden myths to grow strong. — Scott Berkun

The inability to scale is one of the stupidest arguments against a possibly great idea: greatness rarely scales, and that's part of what made it great in the first place. — Scott Berkun

The problem with smart people is that they like to be right and sometimes will defend ideas to the death rather than admit they're wrong... Until they come face to face with someone who is tenacious enough to dissect their logic, and resilient enough to endure the thinly veiled intellectual abuse they dish out during debate, they're never forced to question their ability to defend bad ideas. — Scott Berkun

If you'd like to be good at something, the first thing to out the window is the notion of perfection. — Scott Berkun

Self-discovery is the process of learning about who you are as an individual, independent from your friends, family, employer, or nation. — Scott Berkun

Imparting trust, the real meaning of delegation, is a powerful thing. — Scott Berkun

It seems that bad advice that's fun will always be better known than than good advice that's dull-no matter how useless that fun advice is. — Scott Berkun

Anyone can criticize or accept praise, but initiating a positive exchange is a hallmark of a difference maker. — Scott Berkun

Innovation is significant positive change. — Scott Berkun

It's safe to assume that no matter where you stand, someone would be happy to be in your shoes, just as you'd be happy to be in someone else's. — Scott Berkun

History can't give attention to what's been lost, hidden, or deliberately buried; it is mostly a telling of success, not the partial failures that enabled success. — Scott Berkun

The best lesson from the myths of Newton and Archimedes is to work passionately but to take breaks. Sitting under trees and relaxing in baths lets the mind wander and frees the subconscious to do work on our behalf. Freeman Dyson, a world-class physi- cist and author, agrees: "I think it's very important to be idle...people who keep themselves busy all the time are generally not creative. So I am not ashamed of being idle. — Scott Berkun

People tell me this is obvious. But it's ok to be obvious. Knowing and doing are different. Many people know many obvious things they completely fail to do, despite their knowledge. — Scott Berkun

Einstein said, " Imagination is more important than knowledge," but you'd be hard-pressed to find schools or corporations that invest in people with those priorities. The systems of education and professional life, similar by design, push the idea-finding habits of fun and play to the corners of our minds, training us out of our creativity.[117] We reward conformance of mind, not independent thought, in our systems - from school to college to the workplace to the home - yet we wonder why so few are willing to take creative risks. — Scott Berkun

The bottleneck is never code or creativity; it's lack of clarity. — Scott Berkun

Professional management was born from the desire to optimize and control, not to lead waves of change. — Scott Berkun

a small idea, applied consistently, can have disproportionately large effects. — Scott Berkun

The love of new ideas is a myth: we prefer ideas only after others have tested them. — Scott Berkun

No one has died from giving a bad presentation. Well, at least one person did, President William Henry Harrison, but he developed pneumonia after giving the longest inaugural address in U.S. history. The easy lesson from his story: keep it short, or you might die. — Scott Berkun

Big thoughts are fun to romanticize, but it's many small insights coming together that bring big ideas into the world. — Scott Berkun

I don't want to be perfect. I want to be useful, I want to be good, and I want to sound like myself. Trying to be perfect gets in the way of all three. — Scott Berkun

It's rare for people to genuinely try to understand what others are trying to say. — Scott Berkun

Innovative ideas are rarely rejected on their merits; they're rejected because of how they make people feel. If you forget people's concerns and feelings when you present an innovation, or neglect to understand their perspectives in your design, you're setting yourself up to fail. — Scott Berkun

My intent is simply to know my material so well that I'm very comfortable with it. Confidence, not perfection, is the goal. — Scott Berkun

Part of the challenge of innovation is coming up with the problem to solve, not just its solution. — Scott Berkun

Progress won't be a straight line but if you keep learning you will have more successes than failures, and the mistakes you make along the way will help you get to where you want to go. — Scott Berkun

We develop ulcers, high blood pressure, headaches, and other physical problems in part because our stress systems aren't designed to handle the "dangers" of our brave new world: computer crashes, micromanaging bosses, 12-way conference calls, and long commutes in rush-hour traffic. — Scott Berkun

Effective PMs simply consider more alternatives before giving up than other people do. — Scott Berkun

Increasing creativeness doesn't require anything more than increasing your observations: become more aware of possible combinations. — Scott Berkun

Look for smart ways around a problem or faster ways to resolve them. Make effective use of the people around you instead of assuming you have to do everything yourself. — Scott Berkun

Experiment is the expected failure to deliberately learn something. — Scott Berkun

Nearly every major innovation of the 20th century took place without claims of epiphany. — Scott Berkun

It's only through effort that we learn what an idea actually is, and if our passion for it will last or fade. There is no shame in failure - all makers fail. But it's hard to respect someone who never tries, even once, to do something good that's always on their mind. If you're worried about how good your idea is, you're worrying about the wrong thing. — Scott Berkun

Most people listening to presentations around the world right now are hoping their speakers will end soon. That's all they want. — Scott Berkun

When I'm the speaker, I know that special moment [just before speaking] is the only time I will have the entire audience's full attention. Unless an alien spaceship crash-lands on stage midway through the talk, the silence before I begin is the most powerful moment I have. What defines how well I'll do starts with how I use the power of that moment. — Scott Berkun

Staying curious and open is what makes growth
possible, and it requires practice to maintain that mindset. To keep learning, we have to avoid the temptation to slide into narrow, safe views of what we do. — Scott Berkun

It's natural for people to protect what they know instead of leaping into the unknown, and managers are no exception. Managers might even be worse, as the politics they rely on to survive can make them more entrenched and defensive. — Scott Berkun

If you lead an active intellectual and emotional life, your ideas will grow with you. — Scott Berkun

Good public speaking is based on good private thinking — Scott Berkun

People who truly have control over time always have some in their pocket to give to someone in need. A sense of priorities drives their use of time and it can shift away from the ordinary work that's easy to justify, in favor of the more ethereal, deeper things that are harder to justify. They protect their time from trivia and idiocy; these people are time rich. They provide themselves with a surplus of time. They might seem to idle, or relax more often than the rest, but that just might be a sign of their mastery, not their incompetence. — Scott Berkun

diligence wins battles. — Scott Berkun

The temptation many creative people I know have is to strive for popularity. To make, do, and say things that other people like in the hopes of pleasing them. This motivation is nice. And sometimes the end result is good. But often what happens in trying so hard to please other people, especially many other people, the result is mediocre. — Scott Berkun

The Greeks were so committed to ideas as supernatural forces that they created an entire group of goddesses (not one but nine) to represent creative power; the opening lines of both The Iliad and The Odyssey begin with calls to them. These nine goddesses, or muses, were the recipients of prayers from writers, engineers, and musicians. Even the great minds of the time, like Socrates and Plato, built shrines and visited temples dedicated to their particular muse (or muses, for those who hedged their bets). Right now, under our very secular noses, we honor these beliefs in our language, as the etymology of words like museum ("place of the muses") and music ("art of the muses") come from the Greek heritage of ideas as superhuman forces. — Scott Berkun

As a rule, if you insist on speaking your mind, you will inevitably find yourself somewhere where everyone hates you. — Scott Berkun

All great tasks test our motivation. It's easy to court ideas over beers and change the world with napkin sketches, but like most things taken home from bars, new challenges arise the next day. It's in the morning light when work begins, and grand ideas (or barroom conquests) lose their luster. To do interesting things requires work and it's no surprise we abandon demanding passions for simpler, easier, more predictable things. — Scott Berkun

There is a big difference between wanting to say you wrote a book, and actually writing one. Many people think they want to write, even though they find crafting sentences and paragraphs unpleasant. They hope there is a way to write without writing. I can tell you with certainty there isn't one. — Scott Berkun

Commit yourself to taking enough risks that you will fail some of the time. If you're not failing, we're not doing something sufficiently difficult or creative. — Scott Berkun