Latest Robert Reich Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I'm quite optimistic when it comes to the capacity of our people to have an honest discussion about what's really going on. What do you think John McCain's candidacy was about? And the early days of Bill Bradley's candidacy? People are hungry for a genuine, no-spin set of ideas and truths. They want their leaders to tell it like it is. There is a great demand for this. Politicians continually underestimate the ability of the American public to understand what's happening to them and what the real choices are.

  Robert Reich

  Real, Optimistic, Thinking

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• If we're concerned about volatility of earnings because we want some more stability in our lives, then let's create, instead of an unemployment insurance system, an earnings insurance system that will moderate the volatility for a certain period of time until we get back on our feet.

  Robert Reich

  Stability, Concerned

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• You ask, "Could we have an honest discussion about earnings insurance?" I think we could, if people understood that the alternative was to build up a backlash against global capital, against free trade, against technological change.

  Robert Reich

  Thinking, People, Honest

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• Here's why I think the public service jobs are almost unavoidable: When we have downturns in the economy - and we will, for we haven't repealed the business cycle - unemployment will build, yet we no longer have any safety net. What are we going to do? Unless we decide to pull out all the stops and lower interest rates immediately and risk turning a recession into wild inflation, we're going to have to figure out some way of providing some more, not job security, but employment security.

  Robert Reich

  Thinking, Safety, Risk

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• We are now enjoying the liberation that comes with not having to be organization men and women, and that's fabulous. But there are new social consequences here of which we need to be aware, and the sale of the self and what that entails for the rest of our lives is quite sobering.

  Robert Reich

  Men, Fabulous, Enjoy

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• We can't have extraordinary dynamism, innovation, and change in the economy and expect to have predictability and stability in our personal lives. It's not as if there are these big, giant institutions existing between us and the economy. In fact, these institutions have become tissue-thin. There is no mediation anymore. We are the economy; the economy is us.

  Robert Reich

  Innovation, Economy, Stability

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• Organizations aren't loyal; they can't be. They have to be nimble, they have to change. That means everybody in every organization will have one eye on his or her own brand, and the other eye on the organization of which he or she is a part. And the first loyalty - self-loyalty - is becoming more and more dominant, simply as a survival strategy. I'm in no way blaming anyone here; this is just simply a fact of life.

  Robert Reich

  Loyalty, Mean, Eye

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• The path to success used to be up and through an organization. Now the path to success is increasingly through self-promotion.

  Robert Reich

  Path

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• One logical consequence of this New Economy composed of big brands and entrepreneurial groups is that the unit of production is no longer a particular, identical product. The unit of production is the creative individual.

  Robert Reich

  Creative, Economy, Individual

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• You have to keep a sense of humor about yourself, more than anything else. You've got to take the issues very seriously, but you can't take yourself too seriously. And Washington is a city in which everybody takes themselves extraordinarily seriously.

  Robert Reich

  Sense Of Humor, About Yourself

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• The industrial leader of the 20th century was a system-builder. He was a visionary in terms of what could be built; got the capital together; certainly convinced investors that it was possible; and then ran a high-volume production system that would spew out a vast array of almost identical goods and services. They would be changed from time to time; there was research and development, to be sure. But the system was built around production, not innovation.

  Robert Reich

  Leader, Innovation, Together

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• As a top manager, you have to not just reward truth-telling, you've got to beg for it, and you've got to demand that everyone around you gives you constructive criticism, constantly. You've got to get out of the bubble, so that you can get direct feedback from everybody who's being affected.

  Robert Reich

  Giving, Criticism, Feedback

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• One of the most difficult things is to get truthful people. Nobody can manage well if they don't have a lot of mirrors around them that are honest, that tell them what they're doing is wrong or wrongheaded or misconceived. And in every large bureaucracy on earth, most people are afraid to tell the boss the truth.

  Robert Reich

  People, Boss, Earth

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• More and more, leadership, whether it's profit or nonprofit, is about recruiting and keeping talented people. That's the biggest challenge. Yes, you've got to create systems that will enable people easily to innovate continuously; you've got to be a system-builder. But finding and keeping geeks and shrinks is the biggest challenge. That means leaders have got to be salespeople, they've got to be recruiters, and they've got to be actively able to understand and keep the talent they have. Leadership is courtship. That's what it's becoming.

  Robert Reich

  Mean, People, Leader

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• Now, inventiveness and empathy, those qualities, if they're together in the same person, you've got an entrepreneurial genius. But they do tend to be slightly separate.

  Robert Reich

  Empathy, Quality, Together

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• What characteristics are most important in creative workers? One quality you need is inventiveness. You need to be able to take whatever product or service you are providing and figure out ways of making it better, faster, cheaper. The other quality is empathy and insight into what people might want, even though they don't even know their wants, probably because there's no product or service to test their wants.

  Robert Reich

  People, Empathy, Creative

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• The managers of the big brands have a very clear responsibility. It's attracting and keeping talented people in order to sustain and build the trustworthiness of that brand. There is no clearer objective in the economy. Your economic success depends on expanding and building your economies of trustworthiness.

  Robert Reich

  Responsibility, People, Building

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• If you're going to be a great guide to what's great for consumers, and, indirectly, for investors, you've got to be very careful about who you contract with and what you're offering.

  Robert Reich

  Careful, Investors

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• I think it's hard to have a brand portal and an economy of trustworthiness in one of them that sloshes over into another. But saying that there will be only a limited number of these giant brand portals doesn't mean a limited number of companies; it doesn't mean that everybody's going to be working for these companies. Quite the opposite. Most of us will be working through much smaller entities that simply use these portals as vehicles for getting and identifying customers.

  Robert Reich

  Mean, Thinking, Portal

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• It's very hard to establish an economy of trustworthiness. The key is continuing to innovate and to keep your customers through innovation, because the customers can leave. But once you are a dominant player that continues to innovate and provide a good deal, customers will stay with you.

  Robert Reich

  Player, Innovation, Trustworthiness

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• In entertainment, the technology began giving us greater choice and easier switching before almost any other area. The studios became much more dependent on the stars, not just star actors and directors but also star technicians, star cinematographers. It's a very important evolution in terms of understanding why people are working the way they're working.

  Robert Reich

  Technology, People, Giving

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• There's a great debate going on, you know, on whether we're moving toward a system of giant oligopolies or a system of multiples of small businesses. Which is it? I think it's both. In every sector of the economy, we have giant brands that are trustworthy guides to what's good, and then a vast number of small groups, many of them project-based, sometimes folding and re-creating, that are offering products and services through those giant global brands.

  Robert Reich

  Moving, Thinking, Sometimes

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• We're now moving toward a radically different economy. You absolutely can't have a distribution oligopoly. The new oligopolies - and I think there will be new oligopolies - will be oligopolies of trustworthiness. Microsoft, Amazon, Schwab, and other brands will dominate psychic space, not shelf space.

  Robert Reich

  Moving, Thinking, Different

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• Disney is no longer just Mickey Mouse; Disney is family entertainment. And we're seeing more and more brands change into something that is far greater and broader than individual products and services.

  Robert Reich

  Individual, Mice

  Source: www.strategy-business.com

• Given that ever-broadening array of options and alternatives, as consumers and investors, we are often bewildered. We need guidance. That's where today's brands come in. They are not so much signals about a particular product, they are signals about good judgment, trustworthiness. A big brand, whether it's Schwab or Disney, is becoming analogous to a portal that sells us advice about where we can find great deals.

  Robert Reich

  Advice, Portal, Guidance

  Source: www.strategy-business.com