Quotes About Adaptation

I undertook this project with the vague notion that reinvention was about moving a business from point A to point B. But that's not what I found. We discovered that in the process of moving from A to B these businesses developed new skill sets and values that allowed them to quickly progress to C, D, E, and beyond. They all became serial reinventors and embraced constant radical change.

Companies committed to growth make staying ahead of their customers' wants and needs a hallmark of their culture and accomplish that goal through constant radical change and reinvention.

Great companies [inevitably] develop a rowboat mentality," says Sir Howard Stringer, chairman and CEO of Sony. They are "always looking behind to past successes" with awe and admiration as they row into the future.

We are working hard to avoid living in our past," he says. Stringer recognized that the real culprit standing in the way of progress at Sony was a tradition-bound mentality and began systematically letting go of the traditions and people that had hamstrung the company.

The ability of an organization to embrace radical change and reinvention is determined by the ego of the person in charge; substantive change is never initiated from the mid level or bottom ranks of an organization.

Companies that do the best job of embracing constant change, growth, and reinvention make it look easy, because they've systematized and scaled all the core business practices. Systematizing means determining the best way to do something (step-by-step), making certain everyone does his or her part the same way (without significant variation), and then using the system as a baseline for continual improvement.

Millner is just as excited about the culture of continuous improvement that is at the core of Cabela's. "Adaptation is critical. You've got to adapt. No matter how successful you are, the minute you can't do what you've done, you've got to let it go. If you don't continuously improve, you die.

Jugaad started as the Hindi word for an ultracheap vehicle first fashioned by rural Punjabi carpenters. Having nothing but empty pockets and a problem to solve, the local craftsmen took an old diesel irrigation pump, attached it to a wooden frame, and added wheels and the discarded steering system from a broken-down jeep. They called this jalopy "jugaad," roughly translated as "using few resources and a lot of determination to find an innovative solution to a problem.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it," when he added that those words are, in Powell's perspective, "a slogan for the complacent, the arrogant, or the scared." How can such a commonsense maxim be so insidious and disastrous? It's because of an immutable law of business: By the time you figure out it's broke, it's been broke for a very long time.

Until people are able to figure out how to deal with the natural tendency to hesitate and drag their feet because of their fear of the unknown, no meaningful reinvention will occur.

Decisions about who goes and who stays, who leads and who follows will determine any enterprise's ability to embrace constant change, growth, and reinvention.

When confronted with problems, most companies try to make small changes or Band-Aid fixes and hope things get better or that the problem goes away. This approach doesn't work and ensures that they'll waste vast amounts of time and energy.

The refrain we constantly heard from the entrepreneurs and leaders during our research was to never bet the ranch but to make lots of small bets, learn from them, and then scale.

The main job of the leader is to be a destination expert, to let everybody know where the company is going and make certain that everyone understands and is willing to embrace constant change in order to get there.

Necessity is the mother of reinvention. —what Plato should have said

Businesses that do the best job of constant radical change and reinvention simply don't get blinded by the fairy tales of the biggest bets generating the biggest paydays. They realize that successful strategy is discovered by doing, and that doing has to be learned from making lots of small bets.

Together, all four now subscribed to a set of teachings that boiled down to "the law of nonresistance," as they described it—fundamentally, making the best of the current moment.

Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.

en eso consiste la vida civilizada: en aprender a convivir de manera razonable con la frustración.

Una pareja que depende y vive de sus obstáculos es una pareja que se deshará cuando ya no los haya".

KiÅŸi bir ÅŸeye al???rsa art?k onu önemsemeden yaÅŸar.

Ha az ember sokáig vágyik valamire, egy idÅ' után már nagyon nehéz nem vágyni rá; úgy értem, ráébredni és elfogadni, hogy már nem arra vágyunk, hanem másvalamit szeretnénk.

Lo que importó ya no importa o muy poco, y para ese poco hay que hacer un esfuerzo;

Porque las palabras del año pasado pertenecen al lenguaje del año pasado y las palabras del año que viene esperan una voz distinta'.