Quotes About Change

At one point quantity turned into quality.

Abandon what is about to be obsolete, develop a system to exploit your successes, and develop a systematic approach to innovation.

Indeed, everyone familiar with business today has seen situations in which a manager's attempt to avoid misdirection through changing his manners has converted a fairly satisfactory relationship into a nightmare of embarrassment and misunderstanding. The manager himself becomes so self-conscious as to lose all easy relationship with his men. And the men in turn react with: "So help us, the old man has read a book; we used to know what he wanted of us, now ,we have to guess.

During the process that precedes the decision, no mention is made of what the answer might be. This is done so that people will not be forced to take sides; once they have taken sides, a decision would be a victory for one side and a defeat for the other. Thus the whole process is focused on finding out what the decision is really about, not what the decision should be. Its result is a meeting of the minds that there is (or is not) a need for a change in behavior.

In actual practice this distinction makes no sense whatever. An enterprise, whether a business or any other institution, that does not innovate and does not engage in entrepreneurship will not survive long.

If it were a decision today to start something you are already in (to enter a business, to hire a person, to institute a policy, to launch a project, etc.), would you? If not, then why do you persist?

The question is: how to be useful!" A great teacher can change your life in thirty seconds.

But innovation and change make inordinate time demands on the executive. All one can think and do in a short time is to think what one already knows and to do as one has always done.

Write an Action Plan

Society, community, family are all conserving institutions. They try to maintain stability and to prevent, or at least slow down, change. But the organization of the post-capitalist society of organizations is a destabilizer. Because its function is to put knowledge to work - on tools, processes, and products; on work; on knowledge itself - it must be organized for constant change. It must be organized for innovation.

The task of an executive is not to change human beings. Rather, as the Bible tells us in the parable of the talents, the task is to multiply the performance capacity of the whole by putting to use whatever strength, whatever health, whatever aspiration there is in individuals.

When a change in perception takes place, the facts do not change. Their meaning does.

The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.

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.

Protectionism could indeed make the world economy poor and impede its functioning to the point of near-collapse. But it cannot destroy the common demands. It cannot undo the worldwide horizon and vision. The fundamental change has happened irrevocably. The question is not whether it will remain. The question is whether it can be turned to advantage—for society, for the individual, and for the business enterprise.

One reason why it is difficult for management to accept unexpected success is that all of us tend to believe that anything that has lasted a fair amount of time must be 'normal' and go on 'forever'. Anything that contradicts what we have come to consider a law of nature is then rejected as unsound, unhealthy, and obviously abnormal.

Berlin Stays Red

It's always instructive to observe the life cycle of the First World aid worker. A wary enthusiasm blooms into an almost messianic sense of what might be possible. Then, as they bump up against the local cultural limits of acceptable change, comes the inevitable disappointment, which can harden into cynicism and even racism, until they are no better than the resident whites they have initially disparaged.

In 1980, at independence, a man might expect to live to sixty and to see his children grow up strong and have children of their own, and if he was fortunate, a man might even live to see his great-grandchildren bring him gourds of beer before he died. But life expectancy dropped to fifty, and now it has collapsed, all the way down to thirty-three. It is hard to comprehend. At thirty-three, just as people should be in their prime, they suddenly sicken and die.

And then I realize that maybe not so much has changed as we all thought, that maybe the whole idea of progress is a paradox, a rocking horse that goes forward and back, forward and back, but stays in the same place, giving only the comforting illusion of motion.

For example, Pegeen's students have constructed time lines of their lives, replete with photos and annotations, and posted them on the wall, inviting conversations about change.

Stephen summarizes, "It's when you look back and you learn how much you've grown and changed.

Adoptar movimientos lentos para toda la vida.

En otras ocasiones ella hacía con sus relatos planes para el futuro: <>. Ahora callaba. Intentó conmoverla con recuerdos comunes, pero tampoco respondió a ellos. Las antiguas bromas, que siempre la hacían reír, la dejaron impertérrita. ¡No quería seguir los juegos tácitamente acordados!