Geoff Colvin is an author of and co-author of several publications as well as Senior Editor at Large for Fortune Magazine. With an education from Harvard University and Business School, Colvin is best known for discussing the deliberate practices followed by many great achievers in our time. Here is a look at some of the best documented Geoff Colvin quotes ever recorded.
“As the shift in valuable skills continues, organizations are finding not only that they have no jobs for the disengaged and socially inept, but that such people are toxic to the enterprise and must be removed.”
“Avoiding automaticity through continual practice is another way of saying that great performers are always getting better. This is why the most devoted can stay at the top of their field for far longer than most people would think possible.”
“Deliberate practice requires that one identify certain sharply defined elements of performance that need to be improved, and then work intently on them.”
“Google’s autonomous cars are an obvious and significant example—significant because the number one job among American men is truck driver.”
“Great performance is in our hands far more than most of us ever suspected.”
“If you set a goal of becoming an expert in your business, you would immediately start doing all kinds of things you don’t do now.”
#IABC16 backstage: @geoffcolvin doing final prep for his keynote … We'll kick off shortly pic.twitter.com/IsUw9jaWtE
— Michael Ambjorn (@michaelambjorn) June 7, 2016
“In a wide range of fields, including business, the connection between general intelligence and specific abilities is weak and in some cases apparently nonexistent.”
“In our own lives, we will try something new and, finding that it isn’t easy for us, we conclude we don’t have a talent for it.”
“Landing on your butt twenty thousand times is where great performance comes from.”
“Maybe we can’t expect most people to achieve greatness. It’s just too demanding. But the striking, liberating news is that greatness isn’t reserved for a preordained few. It is available to you and to everyone.”
“The best computer programmers are much better than novices at remembering the overall structure of programs because they understand better what they’re intended to do and how.”
“The best performers set goals that are not about the outcome but about the process of reaching the outcome.”
Look outward AND inward to better yourself. #IABC16 @geoffcolvin pic.twitter.com/dytpstBn8n
— Renee Carpenter (@reneecarp) June 7, 2016
“The cash held by US companies are hitting all time records. Companies are using some of this money to buy back their own stock at record rates.”
“The costs of being less than truly world class are growing, as are the rewards of being genuinely great.”
“Tiger is born into the home of an expert golfer and confessed “golf addict” who loves to teach and is eager to begin teaching his new son as soon as possible.”
“Top performers understand their field at a higher level than average performers do, and thus have a superior structure for remembering information about it.”
“We can never make progress in the comfort zone because those are the activities we can already do easily, while panic-zone activities are so hard that we don’t even know how to approach them.”
“We just can’t get our heads around the power of doubling every two years. At that rate, computing power increases by a factor of a million in forty years.”
Great listening to Geoff Colvin speak about what it takes to be even more human in a world of increasing technology! pic.twitter.com/eG1TDGKkl4
— Rick Lochner (@rick_lochner) May 3, 2016
“We will achieve greatness only through an enormous amount of hard work over many years.”
“What great performers have achieved is the ability to avoid doing it automatically.”
“What you really believe about the source of great performance thus becomes the foundation of all you will ever achieve.”
“Working on people’s development early is a big change at most companies, where development programs were long reserved for an elite group several years into their careers.”
“You learn ten times more in a crisis than during normal times.”
Here is a look at the best big ideas found in Geoff Colvin’s book, ‘Talent is Overrated.’
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