Quotes About Adaptability

I think that business leaders today have to be more rounded than they used to be, they have to be completely multi-functional and fast-moving.

I'm sometimes described as a flamboyant leader and a hip-shooter, a fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants operator. But if that were true, I could never have been successful in this business.

The real winners in life are the people who look at every situation with an expectation that they can make it work ot make it better.

How you gather, manage and use intel in life determines whether you win or lose. That's the # 1 rule for the mavericks in business.

An innovative mind is never once bitten, twice shy.

I've hung on for a long time in this business and had some success, and I think it's keeping an open mind and being curious and having a sense of humor about oneself that's important.

Straight roads are for fast cars, turns are for fast drivers.

From being a waiter, to a door-to-door salesman, to a car-washer, to a delivery boy - I have done it all.

If you don't have a car, ride a bicycle or a donkey.

Did you ever observe to whom the accidents happen? Chance favors only the prepared mind.

If today the instruction is to put everything on the right, one does that as impeccably as one can. When tomorrow the instruction is to put everything on the left, one does that with one's whole heart. The idea of one right way sort of dissolves into the mist.

Live your life as an experiment. Adopt an attitude of "I'm not sure what will help in this situation, but I'm going to experiment and try this." Sometimes the result will be, "Wow, did that ever not work!" But if it is, we've learned something. And now we can try something else.

Meditation is a process of transformation, instead of a process of becoming more and more set in our ways. And, as you know, as we get older it's very common to become increasingly fixed in our habits. But then you do meet people who, for some reason, are becoming more and more flexible and open as they age. Which kind of person do you want to be?

We're always looking for a permanent reference point, and it doesn't exist. Everything is impermanent. Everything is always changing—fluid, unfixed, and open. Nothing is pin-down-able the way we'd like it to be.

He enjoyed himself in Salford because, given half a chance, he enjoyed himself anywhere.

No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.

Schools everywhere are organized on the assumption that there is only one right way to learn and that it is the same way for everybody.

But what stands out in Japanese history, as well as in today's Japanese management behavior, is the capacity for making 180-degree turns—that is, for reaching radical and highly controversial decisions.

A young man who has the right strength for one organization may be a total misfit in another, which from the outside looks just the same.

We need to encourage habits of flexibility, of continuous learning, and of acceptance of change as normal and as opportunity - for institutions as well as for individuals.

A successful stockpicker has the same relationship with a drop in the market as a Minnesotan has with freezing weather. You know it's coming, and you're ready to ride it out, and when your favorite stocks go down with the rest, you jump at the chance to buy more.

It turns out that people can live very well with the situation where they make their case and yet another view is implemented, so long as the learning process is open and everyone acts with integrity.

As Winston Churchill once said, "The Americans can always be counted upon to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possibilities.

the emphasis on linear systems, top-down control, relentless efficiency and eradicating failure left little room for creative discovery and trial and error.