Performance Hierarchy Quotes

Good people hire people better than themselves. So A players hire A+ players. But others hire below their skills to make themselves look good. So B players hire C players. C players hire D players, etc.

Steve Jobs has a saying that A players hire A players; B players hire C players; and C players hire D players. It doesn't take long to get to Z players. This trickle-down effect causes bozo explosions in companies.

They should just put 'two' beside everybody's name, you know? Because there's only No. 1 guy out there, and that's the champion.

I think every league is good. Every league is pretty much the same: You got your top teams that are all very good, you got middle of the road teams that are really good and then you got your bottom of leagues that are all kind if fighting to get really good. I think it's pretty much the same across the board; I've said that for a long time.

I remember in the circus learning that the clown was the prince, the high prince. I always thought that the high prince was the lion or the magician, but the clown is the most important.

You look up at drama, down at comedy. A singer, looking up is okay. A comic, it's death.

Understudies don't normally get invited to openings.

When we heard we were topping the bill over James Brown we couldn't believe it. We tried for two days to get it changed round - I mean you can't follow an act like that.

At the Sahara, the seats are banked and most of the audience is looking down at the stage. Everybody in the business knows: Up for singers, down for comics. The people want to idealize a singer. They want to feel superior to a comic. You're trying to make them laugh. They can't laugh at someone they're looking up to.

I know what it means to have a leading part, and I know what it means to have a featured part.

Dancers have always been a kind of background image, we've always danced behind an artist or we've danced in a movie behind the actors. We've always been very secondary.

In the hierarchy of instruments, if you're a harpist, you're considered someone with a brain much more than if you're a singer. Even though singers, particularly singers who can play piano... If you go to the office of career development, you can get a gig much easier. Still, musicians tend to look down on you. I think they've got some nerve, because if they could sing, they would do it, but most of them can't.