‘How many times did you say no today?’

Ontem de manhã cedo, ao ler “Questions Are the Answer” de Hal Gregersen encontrei:

“Ive had always noticed Jobs’s ability to maintain a laser focus on the task where his attention would make the most difference. One day Ive told Jobs he admired that, and admitted it was something he himself struggled with. Evidently, this became one of the people-development problems Jobs then decided to prioritize. In their daily encounters, Ive said, Jobs “would try to help me improve my focus by asking me, ‘How many times did you say no today?’””

Ao final do dia numa caminhada li "The One Thing You Need to Know About Managing Functions" onde encontrei:

“Where should we start?” asked Stephen. Recently appointed head of innovation at a large, diversified apparel company, Stephen had been tasked with building a culture of innovation across a pretty traditional, operations-focused set of brands. So, at the end of an innovation workshop we led for him, he asked us for advice on the smartest place to get started.
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Our answer? With strategy. Begin by thoughtfully articulating the critical choices facing the innovation function. This, we said, would help his team understand where it was headed and how it would get there. He rolled his eyes. “We don’t need a strategy for our team,” he said. “The brands love us. They know they need us. Creating a strategy would be a waste of time—and we’re overwhelmed as it is. In fact, we have more work than we can handle.”
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And there it was: the very best reason to start with strategy. Stephen’s team had more work than it could possibly do. He was trying his best to serve the company and was struggling to keep up. Inevitably, work was falling through the cracks as his team tried to do everything for everyone. By denying that he needed to make strategic choices as the head of a function—about how his team allocated resources, what it prioritized, what it ignored—Stephen was in fact making a choice. He was choosing not to choose. And as a result, his team was failing to achieve much at all."