Don Soderquist Quotes

We not only worked hard—but we had a lot of fun doing it. We never saw the dynamics of work and fun as incompatible. If you're going to spend a large percentage of your waking hours at work, why not enjoy it?

When was the last time you set your mind to wandering beyond today to imagine a brighter tomorrow? Let your mind go, dream a little, and you might just discover that anything is possible.

I hold the simple belief that if you live your life in the right way guided by values, God will take care of the rest. God's plans will always be better than the ones we come up with ourselves.

Today's great leaders will make sure they have all the important information, appropriate discussion, and reflection so that they can act decisively when time is of great importance.

Customer loyalty doesn't just happen; you have to work on it every day. It isn't only big things; it's a lot of the little things done over and over again. Over time, these little things demonstrate to your customers that you really do care about them and are genuinely interested in satisfying them. It is important to understand that you don't do it only to increase sales, you do it because it's the right thing to do.

“Joy is not based on circumstances. You can experience a deep, abiding joy no matter what you have to be happy or unhappy about in your world. Joyful people radiate something deeper, something based in their heart and will. Others sense this joy and feel uplifted. I realized that’s what the phrase Scatter Joy is all about—reflecting that deep and abiding joy to the world. “

"Go back and correct your mistakes. We all make mistakes. The wise person admits them, corrects them, and doesn’t leave them for others to clean up.”

The role of the leader, then, is to paint a picture of that vision in such a way that those he or she is leading will embrace it and make it their own. In that way, all of the energies of the organization are focused on the same objective. That's when vision happens.

Sometimes it takes a decision, an act of the will, a step of faith, to be joyful—and then God can plant something real and abiding in our hearts.

“Too many leaders are afraid of letting their minds wander too far; they put fences around their dreams. If you want to accomplish great things, you must dare to venture beyond today’s realities. The thinking behind ‘Imagine the Possible’ was that we needed to push even further, beyond the self-imposed limits of our current thought processes and previous experiences."

The way a new leader acts early in his or her job will show what kind of person he or she is. During that time frame, everyone develops their own long-lasting perception. And those perceptions—hard to change—determine how they respond to the new leadership long into the future.

Vision is the beginning point of any great endeavor. Vision is a picture of how we would like tomorrow to look—or, put another way, how we would like ourselves to look tomorrow. Every good leadership book identifies vision as an essential characteristic of a leader, and every good leader has learned his or her responsibility to create and communicate a vision. But the danger is that talk of a vision has become so prevalent—maybe even so commonplace—that many leaders take the process and discipline out of vision-casting for granted.

Culture is the personality of an organization. Therefore, culture governs much of how people think, act, interact, with others, and do their work. It is extremely powerful in determining the present and continuing success and the future direction of any organization Culture can literally determine whether a company has a future.

“Do whatever you’re asked to do. No job is too small or menial that it doesn’t need to be done well. And no one is too good for those small jobs."

When people feel good about themselves, then they feel good about others. When people feel good about each other, they can work together as a team, and when people work as a team, they are able to accomplish exceedingly more than anyone could hope to expect.