Quotes About Progress

A recent article in Fast Company pointed out that a11 number of today's leading companies—Nike, Apple, Netflix—have increasingly been finding success by moving outside their primary area of expertise. The article, with the provocative headline "Death to Core Competency," suggests that whatever a company's specialty product or service might be—whatever got you to where you are today—might not be the thing that gets you to the next level.

Keith Yamashita says companies can try to find their cause by asking, What does the world hunger for?

The How stage of questioning is where the rubber meets the road or, in Nanda's case, the clock hits the floor. It's the point at which things come together and then, more often than not, fall apart, repeatedly. Reality intrudes and nothing goes quite as planned.

One of the difficult early challenges at this stage is to make a commitment to one idea. At the wide-open What If stage of inquiry, one tends to ask many questions, to explore multiple possibilities—from practical to far-out ideas. But when it comes time to act on an idea, you have to narrow possibilities and converge on the one deemed worthy of being taken to the next level.

All of which means that, whereas in the past one needed to appear to have "all the answers" in order to rise in companies, today, at least in some enlightened segments of the business world, the corner office is there for the askers

Cooperrider says that "organizations gravitate toward the questions they ask.

In a time when so much of what we know is subject to revision or obsolescence, the comfortable expert must go back to being a restless learner.

Our grandfathers and great grandfathers18 built schools to train people to have a lifetime of productive labor as part of the industrialized economy. And it worked." To

incumbency has an interest in maintaining the status quo. To question well, you must have the ability to say, 'It doesn't have to be that way.

When companies are facing disruptive change (and these days, what company isn't?), old habits and traditions can sometimes get in the way of progress. One of the things hypothetical What If questioning can do is remove those constraints, if only briefly, to allow for more fresh thinking.

If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it . . . if you think of, detail by detail, what you have to do next, it is a wonderful dream even if the end is a long way off, for there are about five thousand steps to be taken before we realize it; and start making the first ten, and stay making twenty after, it is amazing how quickly you get through those five thousand steps.

It's easier to act your way33 into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.

Death to Core Competency," suggests that whatever a company's specialty product or service might be—whatever got you to where you are today—might not be the thing that gets you to the next level.

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

We always live in an uncertain world. What is certain is that the United States will go forward over time.

Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.

We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.

No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

It's better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you'll drift in that direction.

You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

The health industry, the fitness industry, was really starting to pick up. This was around the mid 80's.

I went from 118 pounds to 135 pounds in a few months. But, I still didn't know anything about food.

We must have a program to learn the way out of prison.

Tradition:' one of those words conservative people use as a shortcut to thinking.