"The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it"
About this Quote
Patience gets dressed up as a virtue so often it risks sounding like scolding. Glasow dodges that trap with a barnyard image that’s blunt, funny, and faintly threatening: smash the egg and you’ll get immediate results, just not the results you wanted. The line works because it recasts patience as strategy, not sainthood. Waiting isn’t passive; it’s a deliberate refusal of the shortcut that feels productive but guarantees failure.
As a businessman, Glasow is speaking from the world of quarterly temptations: the urge to force outcomes, juice metrics, rush product, pressure people, “fix” a problem by breaking the system it lives in. The egg is any fragile, high-potential thing: trust in a team, a new market, a relationship with customers, a skill you’re trying to build. The chicken is compounding: growth that arrives alive, not dead-on-arrival. His point isn’t “be calm.” It’s “respect process.”
The subtext carries a warning about violence disguised as efficiency. Smashing is what impatient institutions do when they demand instant proof: they overmanage, overpromise, overextract. You can’t bully incubation. Time is an ingredient, not an obstacle, and some outcomes only show up after a period of unseen work. That’s why the metaphor lands: it dramatizes the cost of mistaking speed for progress.
In a culture that rewards urgency as ambition, Glasow’s wit is corrective. Patience, here, isn’t waiting for luck; it’s protecting the conditions where something can actually hatch.
As a businessman, Glasow is speaking from the world of quarterly temptations: the urge to force outcomes, juice metrics, rush product, pressure people, “fix” a problem by breaking the system it lives in. The egg is any fragile, high-potential thing: trust in a team, a new market, a relationship with customers, a skill you’re trying to build. The chicken is compounding: growth that arrives alive, not dead-on-arrival. His point isn’t “be calm.” It’s “respect process.”
The subtext carries a warning about violence disguised as efficiency. Smashing is what impatient institutions do when they demand instant proof: they overmanage, overpromise, overextract. You can’t bully incubation. Time is an ingredient, not an obstacle, and some outcomes only show up after a period of unseen work. That’s why the metaphor lands: it dramatizes the cost of mistaking speed for progress.
In a culture that rewards urgency as ambition, Glasow’s wit is corrective. Patience, here, isn’t waiting for luck; it’s protecting the conditions where something can actually hatch.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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