Quotes About Change

The evidence does not support the idea that you need an outside leader to come in and shake up the place to go from good to great. In fact, going for a high-profile outside change agent is negatively correlated with a sustained transformation from good to great.

Truly great companies understand the difference between what should never change and what should be open for change, between what is genuinely sacred and what is not.

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

In another, drawn directly from his own comments on leading change, the word I appears forty-four times ("I could lead the charge"; "I wrote the twelve objectives"; "I presented and explained the objectives"), whereas the word we appears just sixteen times.

If you create a place where the best people always have a seat on the bus, they're more likely to support changes in direction. For

We all snickered at some writers who viewed Dad [Sam Walton] as a grand strategist who intuitively developed complex plans and implemented them with precision. Dad thrived on change, and no decision was ever sacred.

Multiply, vary, let the strongest [experiments] win, and the weakest die.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of a great company is that it doesn't stop trying to change, improve, and do new things. A great company never arrives, never believes that it is good enough.

The good-to-great leaders understood three simple truths. First, if you begin with "who," rather than "what," you can more easily adapt to a changing world.

purposeful evolution.

Technology and technology-driven change has virtually nothing to do with igniting a transformation from good to great. Technology can accelerate a transformation, but technology cannot cause a transformation.

Those who built the visionary companies wisely understood that it is better to understand who you are than where you are going—for where you are going will almost certainly change. It is a lesson as relevant to our individual lives as to aspiring visionary companies.

We've seen a number of companies, such as the one above, encounter difficulty soon after moving into beautiful new buildings and offices. It's not that the new offices are in themselves bad. But they send a signal: "We've arrived. We're successful. We've made it.

Practical Discipline #2: When you know you need to make a people change, act.

10Xers distinguish themselves by an ability to recognize defining moments that call for disrupting their plans, changing the focus of their intensity, and/or rearranging their agenda, because of opportunity or peril, or both.

The good-to-great companies paid scant attention to managing change, motivating people, or creating alignment. Under the right conditions, the problems of commitment, alignment, motivation, and change largely melt away.

Enduring great companies preserve their core values and purpose while their business strategies and operating practices endlessly adapt to a changing world. This is the magical combination of "preserve the core and stimulate progress.

About 50 percent of great leadership is what you do with the unexpected.

it is more important to know who you are than where you are going, for where you are going will change as the world around you changes.

the world is changing, and will continue to do so. But that does not mean we should stop the search for timeless principles.

Leaders die, products become obsolete, markets change, new technologies emerge, and management fads come and go, but core ideology in a great company endures as a source of guidance and inspiration.

under the right conditions, the problems of commitment, alignment, motivation, and change just melt away. They largely take care of themselves.

transformations never happened in one fell swoop. There was no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment. Rather, the process resembled relentlessly pushing a giant heavy flywheel in one direction, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond.

High modernism implies, as we have seen, a rejection of the past as a model to improve upon and a desire to make a completely fresh start. The more utopian the high modernism, the more thoroughgoing its implied critique of the existing society.