A Small Team Quotes & Sayings

As difficult as it is to build a team, it is not complicated. In fact, keeping it simple is critical, whether you run the executive staff at a multi-national company, a small department within a larger organization, or even if you are merely a member of a team that needs improvement. — Patrick Lencioni

Dear 2600: Tell me how much one of your hackers would charge me to delete my criminal record from the Texas police database.
[NAME DELETED] Well, we would start with erasing your latest crime, that of soliciting a minor to commit another crime. (Your request was read by a small child here in the office.) After you're all paid up on that, we will send out the bill for hiding your identity by not printing your real name, which you sent us like the meathead you apparently are. After that's all sorted, we can assemble our team of hackers, who sit around the office waiting for such lucrative opportunities as this to come along, and figure out even more ways to shake you down. It's what we do, after all. Just ask Fox News. — Emmanuel Goldstein

I've said this before elsewhere: There are plenty of opportunities to make a six-figure salary by attacking projects that would typically not be worth the time of a small engineering team. One person with a broad skill set can tackle it economically. — Anonymous

First a small team writes a small system. Then they find the natural fracture lines and divide the system into relatively independent parts for expansion. The architects help choose the most appropriate fracture lines and then follow the system as a whole, keeping the big picture in mind as the groups focus on their smaller section. — Kent Beck

The Boy will not be a failure. Mythili knows.She has seen the generations before.The boy will make it.As his father has said,he does not have the option of failure.He will crack atleast one entrance exam,and he will one day have a nice house in a suburb of San Francisco,or in a suburb of a suburb of San Francisco.He will find a cute Tamil Brahmin wife and make her produce two sweet children.He will drive a Toyota Corolla to work.And there,in the conference room of his office,he will tell his small team,with his hands stretched wide in a managerial way,'We must think out of the box — Manu Joseph

There's nothing wrong with staying small. You can do big things with a small team. — Jason Fried

My drive into high tech doesn't involve a lot of people - just me and a very small team. — Raymond Kwok

I had thirty weeks of prep on 'Captain America.' I have a small team of qualified, supportive, creative producers who are actually helping me achieve my vision of the film. I had a dream cast headed by Chris Evans. I had the best designers, artists, sculptors, craftspeople. — Joe Johnston

Persons like you say, 'I'm an individual, therefore I oppose any power over me.' That right there does not follow. How about 'I'm an individual, therefore I notice and understand my place in the grand scheme of things'? I've heard of persons who don't feel small in the vastness of Nature or intimidated by its challenges, and that strikes me as a lack of perspective. If all you can see is yourself, you're not seeing very far. How about, 'I'm an individual, therefore I notice and understand that my success depends on others' success, because we're all interconnected'? That does not negate my individuality or threaten my freedom. We support each other on a team. Your problem is you don't know we're all on the same team, because you're too busy holding the ball, saying, 'Mine!', and not playing the game with good sportsmanship. Yeah, good sportsmanship. Ever heard of that? — Robert Peate

If small groups are included in the decision-making process, then they should be allowed to make decisions. If an organization sets up teams and then uses them for purely advisory purposes, it loses the true advantage that a team has: namely, collective wisdom. — James Surowiecki

I love sports. I was an athlete in high school, and my school was so small we didn't have a football team, so it's the one sport I didn't bother to learn the rules to because I never went to game. — Katie Aselton

BuzzFeed started as a lab with a small team where we would play with ideas. — Jonah Peretti

I went to college to be a jock and to play on the baseball team. And then, I got cut and realized that that was it for that. I was really small. The other guys were really big, on that team. I was a bit of a theater nerd, and I was an art history major. — Charlie Day

I think the World Cup is going to be bigger than what a lot of people are anticipating. At this stage in my career, when there is an opportunity, albeit a small one, of being on the team, what a great way to possibly end my career. — Al Leiter

The biggest thing, I think, is to stay healthy and make the fewest mistakes, and then you can win ... The margin of error is so small in the NFL, so if you can do those two things - keep your team healthy and make the fewest mistakes each Sunday - you have a good chance of going to the Super Bowl. — Hugh Douglas

A person or team which is not humble cannot get better. This is because they think they already have everything mastered. They think they already have done enough to succeed. They think they already know all of the answers. Once someone has had some success, be it large or small, they frequently get satisfied, even a little lazy. They think the way they worked yesterday was good enough, so they struggle to work hard today. As a result, they stay still as the humble advance. — William James Moore

I was so small, I wasn't even going to go back out for my junior year. But my mom and dad sat me down and said, 'we didn't raise a quitter - you're going back out.' I made the team and everything happened from there. — Mark Buehrle

Companies generally work better when they are smaller. It's always worth spending time to think about the least amount of projects/work you can feasibly do, and then having as small a team as possible to do it. — Sam Altman

To be a small town kid from Hialeah, Fla., pitching in Miami and representing Team U.S.A., that says it all. It's a kid's dream. Don't pinch me. I don't want to wake up. — Gio Gonzalez

Small teams driven by their passion with a clear focus can do extraordinary things. Things that only large corporations and governments could do in the past. — Peter Diamandis

The lessons I learned from the dark days at Alibaba are that you've got to make your team have value, innovation, and vision. Also, if you don't give up, you still have a chance. And, when you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength. — Jack Ma

Building product is not about having a large team to manage. It is about having a small team with the right people on it. — Fred Wilson

Most cleantech companies crashed because they neglected one or more of the seven questions that every business must answer: 1. The Engineering Question Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements? 2. The Timing Question Is now the right time to start your particular business? 3. The Monopoly Question Are you starting with a big share of a small market? 4. The People Question Do you have the right team? 5. The Distribution Question Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product? 6. The Durability Question Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future? 7. The Secret Question Have you identified a unique opportunity that — Peter Thiel

I like to work in a small team. There is only 18 of us on the design team. Nobody has ever left. — Jonathan Ive

As human beings we are all keenly aware of our own mortality, but although we know we all have to die eventually, there is some small amount of comfort in knowing that maybe it's something we could all do together, as a team. There is, after all, no "I" in "apocalypse. — Robert Brockway

One is never 100 per cent motivated. In winter, when it's raining and you have to go and play a small team in the north, I won't reveal what passes through your mind when you're getting out of the bus. — Marcel Desailly

Final approves (F). This is the one person (most often) or small group (rarely) who has the final say on any disputes that cannot be handled by the designated approver(s). 2. Approves (A). The person, or people, authorized to make the decision (i.e., approve). If multiple people are involved, or if a party can dispute the approver's decision, a separate, final approver is necessary. 3. Recommends (R). Those people inside your organization and on the consultant's team who make a recommendation for the decision at hand. 4. Consulted (C). Those people, inside and outside the organization, whose input is sought but who are not decision makers. — David Fields

It's a unique situation as well because England is a small country, so it makes it easy for the fans to travel. If we play down in London, they get buses and we'll get three or four thousand fans come down. They'll all sit in the same area and show their support for the team. — Claudio Reyna

'Planet Earth' was such an extraordinary series and the 'Making Of' ... is fascinating: the creatures and stories behind the camera are just as fascinating as those in front. It's a bit of a dream come true to be a part of the team in some small way. — Dan Stevens

Emphasize small goals when you have a team that isn't going to win a lot of games — Mike Dunlap

team had joined the FOB at Hastings: a small village outside Freetown, a location chosen to maintain a low — Josef Black

I am but one member of a vast team made up of many organizations, officials, thousands of scientists, and millions of farmers - mostly small and humble - who for many years have been fighting a quiet, oftentimes losing war on the food production front. — Norman Borlaug

The hi-tech industry is not a monolithic thing. If you look on a timeline of a company, you see that in the beginning, you have to come up with an idea and to be willing to take risk. You have to grow fast, you have to think fast, and you have to do this usually in small teams. — Yossi Vardi

Principles Principles are rules you have made in order to align what you are doing to some larger goal, and will sometimes change. For example, if one of your strategic goals as an organization is to decrease the time to market for new features, you may define a principle that says that delivery teams have full control over the lifecycle of their software to ship whenever they are ready, independently of any other team. If another goal is that your organization is moving to aggressively grow its offering in other countries, you may decide to implement a principle that the entire system must be portable to allow for it to be deployed locally in order to respect sovereignty of data. You probably don't want loads of these. Fewer than 10 is a good number - small enough that people can remember them, or to fit on small posters. The more principles you have, the greater the chance that they overlap or contradict each other. — Sam Newman

A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. — Steve Jobs

Small science, which includes most research in the life sciences all over the world, is science directed usually by an individual senior scientist and a small team of junior associates, perhaps three, ten, fifteen, something in that order. — Daniel Nathans

The unit had organized itself like a small-market baseball team enjoying an unlikely pennant run: talented journeymen working together, no stars, no egos, mutually supportive, and above all ruthlessly and relentlessly effective. — Lee Child

A good, quick, small team can beat a big, slow team any time. — Paul Bryant

We need government and business to work together for the benefit of everyone. It should no longer be just about typical "corporate social responsibility" where the "responsibility" bit is usually the realm of a small team buried in a basement office - now it should be about every single person in a business taking responsibility to make a difference in everything they do, at work and in their personal lives. — Richard Branson

Or there, in the clay-baked piedmont of the South, that lean and tan-faced boy who sprawls there in the creaking chair among admiring cronies before the open doorways of the fire department, and tells them how he pitched the team to shut-out victory to-day. What visions burn, what dreams possess him, seeker of the night? The packed stands of the stadium, the bleachers sweltering with their unshaded hordes, the faultless velvet of the diamond, unlike the clay-balked outfields down in Georgia. The mounting roar of eighty thousand voices and Gehrig coming up to bat, the boy himself upon the pitching mound, the lean face steady as a hound's; then the nod, the signal, and the wind-up, the rawhide arm that snaps and crackles like a whip, the small white bullet of the blazing ball, its loud report in the oiled pocket of the catcher's mitt, the umpire's thumb jerked upwards, the clean strike. — Thomas Wolfe

We stop at nothing, in offering a quality selection of your pet's everyday needs. Our Fast and Free India wide shipping service extends to +6500 pincodes covering small towns and metros across the country. We bundle up Easy Payment options on most popular pet brands in India with an selection of 3000+ products from all popular brands in dog, cat and fish supplies available in the Indian Pet Care Industry and then some. Our customer service team is a zealous lot to ensure an acme online shopping experience for the pet parents who shop with us. — Karan Gupta

Billy Beane was a guy who had been devalued by the sport as a player and now is working as a GM for a small-market team.There is such a gulf in what these teams have to spend on talent [that] they can never play equally - they can never have a true competition. — Brad Pitt

The Engineering Question Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements? 2. The Timing Question Is now the right time to start your particular business? 3. The Monopoly Question Are you starting with a big share of a small market? 4. The People Question Do you have the right team? 5. The Distribution Question Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product? 6. The Durability Question Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future? 7. The Secret Question Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don't see? We — Peter Thiel

The public schools I attended were dominated by athletics and rarely inspiring intellectually, but I enjoyed a small circle of interesting friends despite my ineptitude at team sports and my preference for reading. — Harold E. Varmus

The girls are all talking and laughing, trying to get pumped up and for just one small sliver of a moment, I stop. Taking it all in because this is something I've really missed over the last year. The comradery of a team. The sisterhood of hockey players. Girls who have your back. — Jennifer Sucevic

You see, if introverts made the rules you'd live in a perfect world. You'd have your own private office at work. Holiday parties would be short and small. Neighbors would always call before dropping by. Family events would be optional, all-day office meetings would be illegal, and team-building events would be punishable by death. — Joan Pastor

I wasn't sure Lorraine and others like her-ones who were so despairing of marriage, ones who were so sure their expectations could never be met-understood that it was these small moments of caretaking that meant the most, that forged the real relationship. The way one pulled the blanket over the sleeping other, the way one prepared a snack for oneself, but made enough to share. Such moments made for the team of two, which made for one's sword and shield. — Elizabeth Berg

A small team, committed to a cause bigger than themselves, can achieve absolutely anything. — Simon Sinek

Who you looking for
What is his name
you can prob'ly find him
at the football game
it's a small town
you know what I mean
it's a small town, son
and we all support the team — James McMurtry

I don't like ass kissers, flag wavers or team players. I like people who buck the system. Individualists. I often warn people: "Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, 'There is no "I" in team.' What you should tell them is, 'Maybe not. But there is an "I" in independence, individuality and integrity.'" Avoid teams at all cost. Keep your circle small. Never join a group that has a name. If they say, "We're the So-and-Sos," take a walk. And if, somehow, you must join, if it's unavoidable, such as a union or a trade association, go ahead and join. But don't participate; it will be your death. And if they tell you you're not a team player, congratulate them on being observant. — George Carlin

I believe good software is written by small teams of two, three, or four people interacting with each other at a very, high dense level. — John Warnock

I have a very small team by choice, because I don't believe in teams of 55,000 people. — Italo Zucchelli

In early 2002, as part of a new personal ritual, he took time after the holidays to think and read. (In this respect, Microsoft's Bill Gates, who also took such annual think weeks, served as a positive example.) Returning to the company after a few weeks, Bezos presented his next big idea to the S Team in the basement of his Medina, Washington, home. The entire company, he said, would restructure itself around what he called "two-pizza teams." Employees would be organized into autonomous groups of fewer than ten people - small enough that, when working late, the team members could be fed with two pizza pies. These teams would be independently set loose on Amazon's biggest problems. — Brad Stone

A leadership team is a small group of people who are collectively responsible for achieving a common objective for their organization. — Patrick Lencioni

There's nothing more invigorating than being deeply involved with a small company and a young team of founders out to do something incredibly special. — Michael Moritz

I was crazy about goal keeping. In Russia and the Latin countries, that gallant art had been always surrounded with a halo of singular glamour. Aloof, solitary, impassive, the crack goalie is followed in the streets by entranced small boys. He vies with the matador and the flying ace as an object of thrilled adulation. His sweater, his peaked cap, his kneeguards, the gloves protruding from the hip pocket of his shorts, set him apart from the rest of the team. He is the lone eagle, the man of mystery, the last defender. Photographers, reverently bending one knee, snap him in the act of making a spectacular dive across the goal mouth to deflect with his fingertips a low, lightning-like shot, and the stadium roars in approval as he remains for a moment or two lying full length where he fell, his goal still intact. — Vladimir Nabokov

Absurdly, I haven't yet got around to saying that football is a wonderful sport, but of course it is. Goals have a rarity value that points and runs and sets do not, and so there will always be that thrill, the thrill of seeing someone do something that can only be done three or four times in a whole game if you are lucky, not at all if you are not. And I love the pace of it, its lack of formula; and I love the way that small men can destroy big men ... in a way that they can't in other contact sports, and the way that t he best team does not necessarily win. And there's the athleticism ... , and the way that strength and intelligence have to combine. It allows players to look beautiful and balletic in a way that some sports do not: a perfectly-timed diving header, or a perfectly-struck volley, allow the body to achieve a poise and grace that some sportsmen can never exhibit. — Nick Hornby

Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine. Then masturbate under the desk. The following day you will feel a deep and cohering sense of embarrassment. — Will Self

I was very slender and small. All my friends were on the team, so I had to make it too. I was a very aggressive player. I wanted to be one of the best, but I just ended up as one of the good ones. — Ed O'Neill

Embrace the power of little things and you will build a tower of mighty things. Mighty things are made up varieties of little things put together! — Israelmore Ayivor

We are certain that for every one of these rock stars we meet in our daily work, there are dozens or even hundreds more who are doing their best to unseat us from our perch. Maybe all of them will fail, but probably not. Probably, somewhere in a garage, dorm room, lab, or conference room, a brave business leader has gathered a small, dedicated team of smart creatives. Maybe she has a copy of our book, and is using our ideas to help her create a company that will eventually render Google irrelevant. Preposterous, right? Except that, given that no business wins forever, it is inevitable. Some would find this chilling. We find it inspiring. — Eric Schmidt

For the world as a whole, the CIA has now become the bogey that Communism has been for America. Wherever there is trouble, violence, suffering, tragedy, the rest of us are now quick to suspect the CIA had a hand in it. Our phobia about the CIA is, no doubt, as fantastically excessive as America's phobia about world Communism; but in this case, too, there is just enough convincing guidance to make the phobia genuine. In fact, the roles of America and Russia have been reversed in the world's eyes. Today America has become the world's nightmare. When an uncontrolled and perhaps uncontrollable team can flaunt the historic and traditional codes of civilization by disregarding the honor and sovereignty of other countries large and small, by intervening in the internal affairs of other countries for reasons real and contrived, the rest of the world does fear for its own welfare and for the future of this country. — L. Fletcher Prouty

Social media listening tools make it easy to track brand references and mentions, and these functions can still be handled ably by a small, dedicated team. — Ryan Holmes

She understood about the comfort you can get from a small separate world, whether it's a theatre or a basketball team or the inside of a book. — Susan Cooper

Yes, he's a good boy. Never been in trouble at school and he's on the honor roll. Captain of the football team. All-around psycho serial killer who hides bodies in the fridge whenever his parents go out of town. (Nick)
I also eat babies for breakfast and torture small animals for fun. My therapist says I'm making real progress though. (Caleb) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Her lips curved up then, as if she liked his answer. "Are you working tomorrow?"
Dax nodded. "Yeah. Training stuff." He was running weapons-training exercises with three of his guys and a small team of DEA agents. They liked to do joint operations, especially in Miami, where there was a smorgasbord of government agencies. But he couldn't tell her that.
"When do you get off?"
The way she said "get off" brought up all sorts of images. Hannah must have read his expression, because she shook her head. "Pervert," she muttered.
He grinned, liking the camaraderie between them, as if part of that wall she'd erected had been knocked down. — Katie Reus

Losers assemble in small groups & complain, winners assemble as a team & find ways to win. — Bill Parcells

Great teams are usually small-under fifty in total head count. (There are few examples of a team made up of hundreds of people who created anything revolutionary.) Big teams aren't conducive to revolutionary products because such products require a high degree of single-mindedness, unity, and unreasonable passion. — Guy Kawasaki

Not infrequently, parents fail to help children grasp their responsibility for a community. Often we as parents don't convey to our children that they have obligations to small communities like a sports team or a school choir or a dance troupe. How many of us ever simply mention to our children that a school is not just a place to learn but a community, or that a neighborhood is a community that carries obligations? — Richard Weissbourd

'The Look' is my first documentary, and I enjoyed the freedom of working within a small team. — Angelina Maccarone

Individual and team discipline ultimately come down to practicing a small set of principles over a long period of time. Success is not a matter of mastering subtle, sophisticated theory, but rather embracing common sense with uncommon levels of discipline and persistence. Said in yet another way, discipline is to an athlete what scales are to a musician. Mastering the scales is what allows the musician to perform music. Mastering the skills of self discipline is what enables a person to become an accomplished elite athlete. — Mike Hebert

When I drove for British teams ... they called me The Tadpole because I was too small to be a frog. — Alain Prost

When we're strong enough," said Sam, "will you come with me?"
"Where? To Bucko Palace?"
"Yes. To find Ella."
"Course I will," said the Kid, and he put an arm around Sam. "It'll be a new grand adventure of the old school. They'll write books about us. Long books. Nothing's gonna split us up, small fry. We're a team. Like Batman and Robin Hood."
And he sang.
"Ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-Batman! — Charlie Higson

It used to be that, in astronomy, a small team of people could look at photos of a few thousand galaxies and classify and catalog them relatively easily. But now, with a new generation of robotic telescopes scanning the skies constantly and producing millions of images, that's become next to impossible. — Peter Diamandis

Apocalyptic saucer cults have started to spring up all over America. One small group, which has been receiving messages from outer space via Lake City housewife Mrs. Marian Keech, becomes the subject of a research team led by psychologist Leon Festinger. According to an alien entity named Sananda, the end of the world is due any day and under the most cataclysmic of circumstances. The group meets regularly to discuss the latest predictions from Sananda and the rest of the Space Brothers, all relayed to them by Mrs. Keech. Some members bake cakes in the shape of flying saucers to be consumed during their gatherings while local college football scores are closely debated. — Ken Hollings

1. The Engineering Question Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements? 2. The Timing Question Is now the right time to start your particular business? 3. The Monopoly Question Are you starting with a big share of a small market? 4. The People Question Do you have the right team? 5. The Distribution Question Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product? 6. The Durability Question Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future? 7. The Secret Question Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don't see? — Peter Thiel

Basketball, more than any other sport, is a team game ... about the thousands of small, unselfish acts, the sacrifices on the part of the players that result in team building. — Dean Smith

Even before 2007, this half of a small island was the richest football country on earth. In 2005-2006 the Premiership's total revenue was about £1.4bn, 40 per cent more than its nearest rival, Italy's Serie A. That was before take-off. Now foreign television channels are sending so much cash that the Premiership is expected to take in nearly £1.8bn this season. Even the team that finishes bottom of the table (Wigan might be a good bet) will get £26.8m from TV. That's more than all of Argentine or Belgian football put together. — Simon Kuper

Finding the fine line between satisfying a daytime TV audience and an afternoon radio audience. That involved editing down my delivery to under an hour. I've been blessed to have great producers and a great staff to achieve that. I have a small team but they're very efficient. — Wendy Williams

I love doing features, but it's a very different ballgame. Sometimes I yearn for short films again, working with a small team, getting my hands on the clay. — Nick Park

Was odd. She'd initially invited Naasir, Janvier, and Ash. The small team had become a tight unit during the fighting and she knew Naasir hadn't yet had a chance to catch up with Ash. All three had accepted the invitation, but the weird thing was, suddenly every member of the Seven who was in the vicinity had the night off to join them. — Nalini Singh

Consider developing your whole self with the same raw focus and intensity that you develop a particular skill set. Get focused. Go out, have adventures. Run, jump, skin your knee, fall in love, root loudly for the away team at a baseball game, barely escape a crash of stampeding rhinos, live to see another day. Experience things big and small. Go for a walk. The world is full of wonders. — Anthony Holden

She remembered Kelsier, standing boldly before a small group of thieves, proclaiming that they would
overthrow the Lord Ruler and free the empire. We're thieves, he'd said. And we're extraordinarily
good ones. We can rob the unrobbable and fool the unfoolable. We know how to take an
incredibly large task and break it down to manageable pieces, then deal with each of those pieces.
That day, when he'd written up the team's goals and plans on a small board, Vin had been amazed by
how possible he had made an impossible task seem. That day, a little bit of her had begun to believe that
Kelsier could overthrow the Final Empire. — Brandon Sanderson

Her greatest joy in life was knowing that her importance to the team was by no means small and that, as narrow as that world might be, she had been granted a definite place in it. Someone needed her. — Haruki Murakami

I like being part of a big company's executive team. It's fun to stretch other parts of my brain, considering questions like, 'How should we think of acquisitions?' I get to be privy to things that would never come up at a small company. — Sam Yagan

At this time, my work on the SPS power supplies had just come to an end; I joined a study group on the pp project and an experimental team studying cooling in a small ring (ICE). — Simon Van Der Meer

A "grouplet" - a small, self-organized team that has almost no budget and even less authority, but that tries to change something within the company. — Daniel H. Pink

The building block of organizations should be small teams. Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder, at one point had a "two-pizza team" rule,41 which stipulates that teams be small enough to be fed by two pizzas. — Eric Schmidt