CEO Esential

CEO Essentials!
1. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. —Goethe

2. Your playing small does not serve the world. —Marianne Williamson
3. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps. David Lloyd George
4. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different
results. —Rita Mae Brown (often attributed to Albert Einstein)
5. When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic,
but creatures of emotion. Dale Carnegie
6. Culture is coded wisdom. —Wangari Maathai
7. Design is intelligence made visible. —Alina Wheeler
8. Achieving stagility doesn't happen by chance, nor does it happen overnight.
9. Judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree and it will spend its whole life believing
that it is stupid. Unknown (often attributed to Albert Einstein)
10. Imagine how hard physics would be if particles could think. —Murray Gell-Mann
11. The strength of the team is each individual team member. The strength of each
member is the team. —Phil Jackson
12. Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships. —Michael
Jordan
13. The best way to learn is through the powerful force of rhythm. Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart
14. Be strong enough to stand alone, smart enough to know when you need help,
and brave enough to ask for it. —Ziad K. Abdelnour
15. Money is the currency of transactions. Trust is the currency of interactions. —
Rachel Botsman
16. I can do things you cannot. You can do things I cannot. Together we can do
great things. —Mother Teresa
17. Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today. —Will Rogers
18. Everyone’s important. Trouble is trying to figure out why. —Emory R. Frie
19. Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement. —W. Clement
Stone
20. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of
view. —Harper Lee
21. There’s no harm in hoping for the best as long as you’re prepared for the worst.
—Stephen King
22. There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at
all. —Peter Drucker
23. I must govern the clock, not be governed by it. —Golda Meir
24. Doing is never enough if you neglect being. —Eckhart Tolle
25. A large chair does not make a king. —Sudanese proverb
26. Your big picture will never be a masterpiece if you ignore the tiny brush strokes.
—Andy Andrews
27. ‘Business is a lot like maths, which was my undergraduate degree. To make a sale, you
have to figure out what the customer value proposition is and then work back to solve
for it.’ - Mpumi Madisa
28. ‘It is easy to stand on the sidelines and criticise. It is harder and requires much more
courage and dedication to roll up your sleeves, step into the ring and help solve the
problem.’ Edward Kieswetter
29. ‘You can be strict about your destination but not about your route. Your vision must be
flexible – within reason – because businesses, economies and people change.’ Osman
Arbee
30. ‘My passion was always to be an entrepreneur and build something . . .It is the
entrepreneurial spirit that actually attracts me, not so much the CEO role.’ Gerrie
Fourie
31. ‘I am not in business simply to buy and sell and make a profit. I approach business from
a different angle: I see it simply as a catalyst for social good.’ Isaac Shongwe
32. ‘Having everyone on a team know their targets and what they need to do every day,
every week and every month can have a big impact – it can turn around an
organisation.’ Jeanette Marais
33. ‘It is easy for competitors to copy what you’ve developed. But if your differentiation is
embedded in your structure, it takes them a long time to replicate it.’ Ajen Sita
34. When hard work and luck combine ‘If you get the sense that you are
growing, and working alongside like-minded people with similar values and culture, you
have probably found the right place.’ Mike Brown
35. ‘Good leaders are bold leaders. They need to be courageous when defining and
designing a strategy yet realistic about setting achievable goals.’ Faith Khanyile
36. ‘Courage is what separates managers from leaders.’ JJ Ngulube
37. ‘Making no decision is worse than making a bad decision. Leaders shouldn’t let the fear
of making an incorrect decision paralyse them from making a call.’ Busisiwe Mavuso
38. ‘Ask your team for advice. It is crucial to surround yourself with excellent people who,
within their field, are more knowledgeable than you.’ Nigel Atherton
39. ‘In a task with many people responsible for it, everyone is hoping that someone else
will make it happen. Things get done when someone takes charge.’ Nyimpini
Mabunda
40. ‘People should respect you as a person rather than because of your position. People can
only respect you as a person if you serve them with humility.’ Chris van der Merwe
41. ‘We need to move from a developmental state to a developmental society where
entrepreneurs have to address underperformance in areas traditionally served by
government.’ Sandile Zungu
42. ‘A lot of work goes into being successful. What you put in is what you get out. It is not
possible to invest just a tiny bit and get out heaps.’ Sandra Crous
43. The turnaround talisman ‘You should create an environment where

employees feel that they are allowed to make mistakes and that there is collaboration in
steadying the ship. Mistakes should be viewed as part of the learning process.’ Thomas
Kgokolo
44. Taking business personally ‘You can’t put a square peg in a round hole.
CEOs do well when they are placed in positions that are aligned to their core strengths.
Sean Joubert
45. A ‘dragon’ with a teachable spirit ‘Leadership starts with self-

leadership: to be a good leader you should first have a vision for yourself.’ Polo Leteka
46. Leading by listening ‘When a customer walks down our aisles, there must
always be something that excites them. To do that, you need to go to the ground level
and experience things the way the customer is experiencing them.’ Rui Morais
47. ‘No matter how much experience you have – if employees don’t trust you, they won’t
respect you.’ Erik Smuts
48. Bringing a rock climber’s mindset to business ‘Climbing has
taught me that without risk, life is dull and colourless. We need to seek out that which
takes us out of our comfort zone and gives us strength rather than safety.’ Leila Fourie
49. Innovate or die ‘A leader needs to be a change agent to get his team to think
about the next big thing. You have two options: innovate or die.’ Mxolisi Mgojo
50. The paradigm of ‘authentegrity’ ‘Trust is an incredibly precious and

fragile thing. It takes decades to earn, but you can destroy it in an instant.’ Dion
Shango
51. ‘I believe complex problems require multi-pronged solutions. You cannot just do one or
two things – you must develop a plan that addresses the problem from multiple angles .
. ’ Sally Hutton
52. ‘Trust is something that is earned. Leaders must be dependable and have a reputation
for doing the right thing – and show this in everything they do.’ Peter Steenkamp
53. ‘I don’t want to be the one making all the decisions. When you have a broad team of
fellow decision-makers, the chance of making the right decisions is much higher and you
minimise errors.’ Vukani Mngxati
54. ‘An organisation is like an orchestra, if the participants are not in sync, they can learn all
the notes and play but the performance will not give the audience goosebumps.’ Emrie
Brown

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CEO Essentials!

1. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. —Goethe

43. The turnaround talisman ‘You should create an environment where

45. A ‘dragon’ with a teachable spirit ‘Leadership starts with self-

50. The paradigm of ‘authentegrity’ ‘Trust is an incredibly precious and

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