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…problems that require a flash of insight operate by different rules.

The problem with market research is that often it is simply too blunt an instrument to pick up this distinction between the bad and the merely different.

…surviving multiple layoffs wears down people’s psychological defenses, provoking depression, health problems, and thoughts of quitting.

The desire to maintain a positive self-image contributes to the problem with quitting. When you quit, you’re closing a mental account, and we know that we don’t like to close those accounts in the losses.

You won’t always find something better when you’re forced to quit, but sometimes you will. The problem is that most of us will never discover those other opportunities because we can’t see what we’re not even looking for.

…the way that we lead can exacerbate the problems that both the pass-fail and the fixed nature of goals can create.

We need to start thinking about waste as a forward-looking problem, not a backward-looking one. That means realizing that spending another minute or another dollar or another bit of effort on something that is no longer worthwhile is the real waste.

…our ability to make ourselves better as individuals – to dive into more satisfying work, to foster real hopes of success, to strengthen our social connections, to become a part of something bigger – also helps us work together, longer, on more complex and pressing problems.

Unfortunately, many of the problems existing in varying organizations today come from piss poor leadership and management.

…you need to combine a wide-angle lens (to see the whole business landscape) with a a narrow depth of field (to see precisely what the data can practically do). But the secret is to start problem first, not data first.