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What do I love about: Winners dream?
The winners dream is a truly iconic piece. It is for anyone looking to forge ahead in career, leadership and most especially life as a whole. The writer, who happens to be the CEO (former) of the largest business software in the world, SAP, uses his life journey to inspire the chutzpah in everyone.
This book gives the readers a front – row seat to his experiences as he lived them. I particularly loved the details provided by the book. It felt like I was watching a biopic of Bill McDermott.
As we continue our winners dream, Bill emphasizes that it is the essence of who we are. “It is your power, it is your strength. Your winners dream represents your hunger, your inner magic, your capacity for empathy and execution.
The purity of your winners dream is what emboldens you to triumph over the thunderbolts and be a crusader on behalf of yourself and those around you. So imagine it, be ever loyal to it, and be forever inspired by it.
Ultimately, your winners dream is your journey as you strive to be true to yourself and create a life of authenticity.
What do I not love about: Winners dream?
Zilch
Who should read: Winners dream?
I recommend this book for anyone in the IT space most especially individuals who admire companies such as SAP, ServiceNow, Xerox, IBM etc.
Who should not read: Winners dream?
I feel like if you do not know who Bill McDermott then you may not really enjoy this book.
Notes from Winners dream
Part 1: Hungry
- Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstances- Bruce Barton
- It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
- Be more concerned with your character than your reputation. Your character is what you really are, but your reputation is what others think of you.- John Wooden
- Winning is not about how many point one player scores but about the TEAM winning
- None of us is as talented/ smart as all of us
- The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work- Vinci Lombardi
- Never let the circumstances of a moment supersede the size of your dreams. Rules, assumptions, and doubt were no match for my will, creativity and hardwork. If I wanted something, I would find a way.
- Once I knew my customers, what they wanted, and what I was good at, I focused on it relentlessly.
- The thing always happen that you believe in, and the belief in a thing makes it happen. Frank Lloyd Wright.
Part 2 Empathy
- No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care- Theodore Roosevelt
- “Bill McDermott”, He says, “You are either going to be the next CEO of Xerox, or you are going to jail”.
- The harder you work, the luckier you get- Gary Player
- Sir- “I have been thrown out of four offices today that were twice as nice as yours. Have a good day “.
- Control your destiny, or someone else will- Jack Welch.
- If we take people as we find them, we make them worse, but if we treat them as though they are what they should be, we help them to become what they are capable of becoming.
- There is nothing noble about mediocrity
- Laziness is different from an inability to perform
- Undersell your product and you undersell yourself
- Leadership is the act of developing followership
Part 3: Inspire
- To thine own self be true- William Shakespeare, Hamlet
- The method of enterprising is to plan with audacity, and execute with vigor, to sketch out a map of possibilities, and then to treat them as probabilities- Christian N. Bovee
- Who leaps out of bed to win the silver??
- Change is the price of survival- Winston Churchill
- For when people get caught up with that which is right and therefore willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory- Dr Martin Luther King Jr
- When there is no vision the people perish- Proverbs 29:18
- No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what you give- Calvin Coolidge
- We can be better, we can be bored or we can be broke
- Having a degree in my back pocket couldn’t hurt, I figured, but not having it could put me at a disadvantage one day.
- Winning was the process, not the destination
- Intrigued by the evolving landscape of technology, and emboldened by my own conviction, I was feeling ready to exit. I even had a few options.
Part 4: Thunderbolts
- Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition; they somehow already know what you truly want to become- Steve Jobs
- The battles that count are not the ones for gold medals. But the struggles within yourself- invincible, inevitable battles inside all of us- that’s where it’s at. Jesse Owens
- Nothing can beat me up enough to get me down. I am a dreamer, but I am also a fighter
- I have learnt that making a living is not the same thing as making a life- Maya Angelou
Part 5: Foundations of discipline
- The privilege of a life is being who you are.
- Fortune Favours the bold- Virgil
- If you are busy, ensure you know what you are getting done.
- Excuses never built a single stair step to success
- If you have a problem, share it but help solve it.
- A man’s mind stretched to a new ideas, never goes back to its original dimensions- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr
- I would rather reach for the stars and hit the moon than reach for the moon and hit nothing
- If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are leader- John Quincy Adams
- It would be radical to think we can get a different business outcome if we continued to do the same thing.
Part 6: Be bold
- It always seems impossible until it is done- Nelson Mandela
- Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits- Thomas Edison
- It is time for a new generation of leaders to cope with new challenges and new opportunities, for there is a new world to be won- John F. Kennedy
- The secret to change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new- Dan Mill Man
- Jim’s more even- keel demeanor tempered my high octane enthusiasm
- The world of tomorrow belongs to the person who has the vision today- Robert H. Schuller
- If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live which he has imagined, then he will meet with success unexpected in common hours- Henry David Thoreau
- The cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die- Senator Edward “TED’ Kennedy
- I reminded others that winning was a process not a destination, and victory a state of mind.
- Simplicity is sophistication in disguise.
- None of these hurdles had halted my own winning dream. If anything, obstacles fueled my desire.