Todd Park Quotes

You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient.

I pushed the process forward by saying, 'We should do this, this, and this right now. Please find the budget for me to find a structural engineer, a mechanical engineer, a civil engineer, so we can do the preliminary work.'

I see myself as a technical person who chose a great project and a great way of doing that project.

About half my time is spent on business operation type stuff.

Currently, I am overseeing the construction of the new Trump Tower in Chicago. I am involved in meeting with the construction crews, architects and sales teams. I am learning a lot and working with some of the best in the business.

In setting goals and executing a strategy, Wanda is sophisticated. We have good systems and departments. If targets are not reached, a yellow light goes off.

This is a business that is much easier planned than executed.

Strategic Work is all about the big questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? Tactical Work is all about answers: This is the system we use to do each task. This is how we do it, how we measure it, how we monitor it.

When I did a high-profile project, I was not the developer of it.

I don't believe in projects of more than three years.

Projects are usually undertaken to either solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity. The probability that the project - even if precisely executed - will complete on time, on budget, and on performance is typically small. Project management is utilized to increase this probability. So in a sense, project management is risk management.

Don't bring on the design engineers too soon. One of the worst things you can do in the early phases of a project is to bring on a bunch of detailed design engineers and then not give them clear direction and close supervision.

Throughout my Enterprise career, I have been primarily operationally focused.

Too often in business, only financial data is gathered - and then it is distributed only to management. Other key indicators that relate to performance areas also need to be tracked. Information on performance has to be made available to those people who can best use it - those doing the work.

While a lab director can get done the things that he regards as important, he has the more important job of bringing out the best ideas of the broader scientific community. I learned this early in my career while I was leading the construction of the SPEAR facility.

As you grow as a company, you get layers and hierarchy that, in theory, should make your decisions a lot better. They get reviewed, and thoughtful people look at decision.

Our focus is to see that we are growing faster than the industry and, whichever product we launch, we do better than competition. We try and manage our operations better than competition. Essentially, we try to be better than what we were the previous year.

Americans can take on huge projects. But they need to understand why they should take on a huge project.

The only choice that leads small business owners to real success in their endeavors is the one that requires real thought. Understanding and building the systems they need within their company to afford them a framework of organization that can scale the business from a company of one to a company of one thousand.

Throughout history, the organizational evolution of the military has been inextricably linked with that of the business world.

I've said it for four decades - work 'on' your business, not just 'in' your business!

A big part of my job is to accelerate our ability to bring innovative products to our customers more quickly.

Great companies have to manage the cadence of what they do.

As a studio executive, I took the approach that people are competent until proven otherwise. But when you make a movie, because there is so little time to fix things when they break, you have to almost come to it with the mindset that everyone is incompetent until proven otherwise.

We have to address impediments that stall implementation of projects and streamline the process to ensure smooth execution going forward. We need to address the leverage levels among corporates to restart investment cycle.