the yak occidental

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from Leading with the Heart: Coach K’s Successful Strategies for Basketball, Business, and Life by Mike Krzyzewski with Donald T. Phillips  Grant Hill once perceptively remarked that every team he played on during his four years at Duke, I coached differently. Actually, every team I’ve had in my coaching career, I’ve coached differently. That’s because each year brings with it a new team, with new people who have different personalities and different skills. If I hope to get the most out of these players as a group, I have to coach them differently than previous teams. p. 16-17 Recruit great individuals who are willing to be part of a team and who are coachable. p.18 Because they’ve been in that rotation, they’ll have great empathy for the current players. And to me, that is a much more important aspect of leadership than having the great technical expertise of someone who’s coached for fifteen years elsewhere. Not everyone can know what he ...

Sometimes, you just need to get a show out the door. In Animation, we are all at the mercy of the schedule. Especially if you are working on animated series like myself, you will know the familiar song of not enough time to RnD, project ramp up, doing overtime, and so on.  As much as we would like to be able to measure twice and cut once, we are often developing our shows on the go. Though we all try our very best, not every show is going to be a hit, nor is every shot or asset going to be demo-reel worthy. Sometimes we just have to get the show out the door. In Production, we need to stay as agile and flexible as our artists as things change at a rapid pace, particularly on shows that may be especially chaotic. Perfection is not the point when things move fast, and at some point we have to let a process or project run its course, doing what we can to maintain order and efficiency. To this end, Andrew Hill with John Wooden offer the advice on screen from their book Be Quick - But D...