Quotes About Adaptation

Whoever is born in New York is ill-equipped to deal with any other city: all other cities seem, at best, a mistake, and, at worst, a fraud.

The world will change, because it has to change.

Not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed unless it is faced.

You accept life as it is, you see it as it is before you can change it.

a child's major attention has to be concentrated on how to fit into a world which, with every passing hour, reveals itself as merciless.

Well, when in Rome, said Jurgen, one must be romantic.

technology is important—you can't remain a laggard and hope to be great. But technology by itself is never a primary cause of either greatness or decline.

Hewlett Packard Chairman Built Company by Design, Calculator by Chance.

This rare ability to manage continuity and change—requiring a consciously practiced discipline—is closely linked to the ability to develop a vision.

The good-to-great companies did not focus principally on what to do to become great; they focused equally on what not to do and what to stop doing.

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.

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.

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.

planful opportunism

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.

Twenty percent of our success is the new technology that we embrace ... [but] eighty percent of our success is in the culture of our company."24 Indeed

the good-to-great companies continually refined the path to greatness with the brutal facts of reality.

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.

A company should not change its core values in response to market changes; rather, it should change markets, if necessary, to remain true to its core values.

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.

good-to-great companies did not focus principally on what to do to become great; they focused equally on what not to do and what to stop doing.

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.