Quotes About Leadership

The simple insight that management is not leadership (chapter 2) is better understood today, but not nearly as well as is needed. Management makes a system work. It helps you do what you know how to do. Leadership builds systems or transforms old ones.

Pull Together the Guiding Team. Make sure there is a powerful group guiding the change—one with leadership skills, credibility, communications ability, authority, analytical skills, and a sense of urgency.

Communicate for Understanding and Buy-In. Make sure as many others as possible understand and accept the vision and the strategy. Go beyond "stopping resistance" to creating more and more people who want to help you.

John P. Kotter

Create a New Culture. Hold on to the new ways of behaving, and make sure they succeed, until they become strong enough to replace old traditions. Better still, make all of these steps a central part of the way you live to help you adapt to an ever faster changing world. Consider: Are we putting those who have helped make change happen in leadership roles? Have the scouts been rewarded? How can we institutionalize change, like adding scouting to the school curriculum?

Question: Is there one takeaway you want readers to carry with them? JK: Yes. In these turbulent times, sufficient leadership, not just from the top couple of people, is very important, far too rare, and it does not have to be that way. It often starts with only one person not looking away or waiting for something to happen, but seizing opportunities to act where others see problems, fault or threat. Why couldn't that one person be you, or anyone reading this interview right now?

Management makes a system work. It helps you do what you know how to do. Leadership builds systems or transforms old ones.

Nothing undermines change more than behavior by important individuals that is inconsistent with the verbal communication.

If you cannot describe your vision to someone in five minutes and get their interest, you have more work to do in this phase of a transformation process.

Whenever smart and well-intentioned people avoid confronting obstacles, they disempower employees and undermine change.

Employees in large, older firms often have difficulty getting a transformation process started because of the lack of leadership coupled with arrogance, insularity, and bureaucracy.

Major change is often said to be impossible unless the head of the organization is an active supporter.

A guiding coalition made up only of managers—even superb managers who are wonderful people—will cause major change efforts to fail.

A useful rule of thumb: Whenever you cannot describe the vision driving a change initiative in five minutes or less and get a reaction that signifies both understanding and interest, you are in for trouble. Error

Without short-term wins, too many employees give up or actively join the resistance. Creating

Empower Others to Act. Remove as many barriers as possible so that those who want to make the vision a reality can do so. Encourage others to remove barriers and make true innovation happen.

reducing complacency and increasing urgency they had taken exactly the right first step in potentially saving the colony.

When people fail to develop the coalition needed to guide change, the most common reason is that down deep they really don't think a transformation is necessary or they don't think a strong team is needed to direct the change. Skill at team building is rarely the central problem.

Never underestimate the power of clever people to help others see the possibilities, to help them generate a feeling of faith, and to change behavior.

The steps are: establishing a sense of urgency, creating the guiding coalition, developing a vision and strategy, communicating the change vision, empowering a broad base of people to take action, generating short-term wins, consolidating gains and producing even more change, and institutionalizing new approaches in the culture.

IBM has taken a leadership role in this area and is prepared to be a technology partner with companies around the world to take advantage of these new developments.

Pastors and leaders must recognize, and then relinquish, any methods of control and manipulation they exercise. They must cease to gossip against fellow pastors and other believers, to talk disrespectfully about other ministries, or to reveal personal tidbits shared in confidence with them. Pastors who have privileged information, are sometimes the worst offenders of gossip. They must refrain from talebearing, before the wineskin tears.

Trotsky once asked, "How many Aristotles are herding swine, and how many swineherds are sitting on thrones?

A famous cigarette billboard pictures a curly-headed, bronze-faced, muscular macho with a cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth. The sign reads 'Where a man belongs.' That is a lie. Where a man belongs is at the bedside of his children, leading in devotion and prayer. Where a man belongs is leading his family to the house of God. Where a man belongs is up early and alone with God seeking vision and direction for the family.