Find the right people, not the best people.
Interpretation
It's more important to surround yourself with the right people who share your values than to only seek the most qualified individuals.
This quote by Jack Ma emphasizes the importance of building relationships with individuals who are a good fit for your vision and values rather than solely focusing on their qualifications or status. The right people contribute positively to our goals and provide support, while the best people in a technical sense may not always align with our ethos or help foster a productive environment.
In practice
In a leadership seminar, this quote can inspire attendees to prioritize team cohesion over individual performance.
Hong Kong people say Hong Kong needs to preserve its uniqueness. I say Hong Kong's uniqueness is in its diversity, its tolerance of difference cultures... China does not want to see Hong Kong in decline. I have full confidence in its future.
If we are a good team and know what we want to do, one of us can defeat tons of them.
It's not that other countries steal jobs from you guys. It's your strategy. Distribute the money and things in a proper way.
Helping doing business easier, we choose the name Alibaba because it is a global company. It is founded in China, but it was created for the world.
In the beginning I just wanted to survive. For the first three years, we made zero revenue. I remember many times when I was trying to pay up, the restaurant owner would say, 'Your bill was paid.' And there would be a note saying, 'Mr. Ma, I'm your customer on the Alibaba platform. I made a lot of money, and I know you don't, so I paid the bill.'
Even if your competitor is still small in size or weak, you should take him seriously and treat him as a giant. Likewise, even if your competitor is massive in size, you shouldn't regard yourself as a weakling.
It is difficult to say who do you the most mischief, enemies with the worst intentions, or friends with the best.
Marriage is about love, but it is not first and foremost about love. First and foremost, marriage is about continuity and transmission.
I still think it's important for people to have a sharp, ongoing critique of marriage in patriarchal society β because once you marry within a society that remains patriarchal, no matter how alternative you want to be within your unit, there is still a culture outside you that will impose many, many values on you whether you want them to or not.
We had loved people we really shouldn't have loved and then married other people in order to forget our impossible loves, or we had once called out hello into the cauldron of the world and then run away before anyone could respond.
I spent a long time reporting on trans issues, and I know in the course of that reporting I saw how deeply adversity runs.
When I was little, my friends would gush over wedding gowns and honeymoons. But I saw too many people flush decades together down the toilet over money or kids or meaningless flings. My own parents chose to stay married, which I think is rather funny, since they show about as much affection for each other as pit bulls in a ring. Tying the knot means slipping a noose around love and choking it to death.
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