March 31, 2009

"Great companies first build a culture of discipline…and create a business model that fits squarely in the intersection of three circles: what they can be best in the world at, a deep understanding of their economic engine, and the core values they hold with deep passion."

- Jim Collins

March 30, 2009

"If the bureaucratic trap is like a cage that restricts the opportunities for people to contribute all they can, the entrepreneurial trap is a void, a black hole into which people disappear when they lack direction or accountability. The issue is balance: enough breadth in jobs and decentralization in decisions to allow initiative and creativity, but enough discipline and direction and controls to focus local initiative on the highest priority tasks from the standpoint of the entire corporation."

- Rosabeth Moss Kanter

March 29, 2009

"People are too complex to understand without their cooperation, and they are too difficult to change without their permission."

- Annette Simmons

March 28, 2009

"Our brains are hard wired to do three things: match patterns, resist or fight any threats to survival, and respond first with emotion over logic. ...Unless an organization accepts and addresses this reality, managing change with an emphasis on logic not emotion will not diminish resistance to organizational change."

- Anne Riches

March 27, 2009

"In all of my writing about change I distinguish between bold strokes and long marches. If you have the authority, there are certain things you can do with the stroke of the pen. You can make a decision to open something, close something, lay off workers or make an acquisition. That's a bold stroke. A long march is leading people in a new direction that changes their behaviour, in which they voluntarily begin to act in new ways."

- Rosabeth Moss Kanter

March 26, 2009

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

- Steve Jobs

March 25, 2009

"The key to changing minds is to introduce conflicting ideas and create 'constructive confusion.' Only after confusion has been attained can clarity appear."

- John Wareham

March 24, 2009

"Whenever a new idea might affect resources, power, control or turf, politics will be part of the problem at the implementation stage. You need to prepare an idea-selling campaign, not just a presentation."

- G. Richard Shell

March 23, 2009

"You do not really understand an organization until you try to change it."

- Kurt Lewin

March 22, 2009

"People need something familiar to relate to in order to gain a sense of comfort with the new, the strange. Creative ideas take the facts, feelings and everyday fictions we all share and find new ways to connect them. By making the new and strange seem familiar, you not only establish an opening for your audience to interpret your idea, you create a backdrop against which the edge of your idea will shine."

- Alan Parr and Karen Ansbaugh, in Change This

March 21, 2009

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof."

- John Kenneth Galbraith

March 20, 2009

"Sitting monarchs don’t usually lead revolutions. Yet most management systems give a disproportionate share of influence over strategy and policy to a small number of senior executives. Ironically, these are the people most vested in the status quo and most likely to defend it. That’s why incumbents often surrender the future to upstarts. The only solution is to develop management systems that redistribute power to those who have most of their emotional equity invested in the future and have the least to lose from change."

- Gary Hamel

March 19, 2009

"Reduce the layers of management. They put distance between the top of an organization and the customers."

- Donald Rumsfeld

March 18, 2009

"A good manager is a man who isn't worried about his own career but rather the careers of those who work for him."

- H. S. M. Burns

March 17, 2009

"Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes."

- Peter Drucker

March 16, 2009

"Organization doesn't really accomplish anything. Plans don't accomplish anything, either. Theories of management don't much matter. Endeavors succeed or fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will you accomplish great deeds."

- Colin Powell

March 15, 2009

"The greatest ability in business is to get along with others and to influence their actions."

- John Hancock

March 14, 2009

"The business that considers itself immune to the necessity for advertising sooner or later finds itself immune to business."

- Derby Brown

March 13, 2009

"Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see."

- Edward De Bono

March 12, 2009

"Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success."

- Dale Carnegie

March 11, 2009

"Capital isn't so important in business. Experience isn't so important. You can get both these things. What is important is ideas. If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need, and there isn't any limit to what you can do with your business and your life."

- Harvey S. Firestone

March 10, 2009

"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."

- William Penn

March 9, 2009

"It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises-but only performance is reality."

- Harold S. Geneen

March 8, 2009

"All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgments of probabilities, and not on certainties."

- William Hewlett

March 7, 2009

"The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office."

- Dwight David Eisenhower

March 6, 2009

"It is a greater compliment to be trusted than loved."

- George Macdonald

March 5, 2009

"All organizations are perfectly aligned to get the result they get."

- Arthur W. Jones

March 4, 2009

"Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality."

- Warren Bennis

March 3, 2009

"What is now proved was once only imagined."

- William Blake

March 2, 2009

"The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out."

- Dee Hock, Founder Visa International

March 1, 2009

"Back of every noble life there are principles that have fashioned it."

- George H. Lorimer