Quotes About Progress

there are two honest reasons so many people hate the thought of the functions they perform being systematized: Either they're too inflexible to learn a new way of doing things, or they're scared to death of the accountability that systematization will bring.

If a business isn't growing between 5 and 10 percent annually, the good, highly talented people won't get the responsibility and the financial rewards they want, and they'll leave.

THE REINVENTION KILLERS Yesterday's Breadwinners Every product or service has a natural life cycle that begins with an introduction, followed by growth, maturity, and inevitably a decline as it becomes yesterday's breadwinner. There are no exceptions

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.

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.

The right people are those who take the initiative to get things done, who make things happen and whom you come to count on for ideas for constant change and improvement.

But basic smarts are just half of the necessary mind-set. The second half is the ability to learn new things, something a surprising number of people find incredibly difficult.

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 most natural action of a senior official is to breed junior officials.

After twenty years of systematic observation I've decided the most common mistake is for one to get stuck on the "plains of hesitation." The plains of hesitation are a metaphorical place where the best laid plans and good intentions expire.

The only guarantee in business is if you do nothing, nothing will happen. Also, as the school of hard knocks teaches, most good strategy is made by doing.

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

The microwave oven is the consolation prize in our struggle to understand physics.

Well, my view before was a Western view, and I certainly understand marriage equality and civil rights, equal rights for all, but having visited developing nations and some of the poorest nations in the world, I realize how deep it goes and how much work really needs to be done to create equality for all.

When characters change on screen, it makes you feel better about yourself. You think, 'Oh I change too, I'm constantly becoming a better person.'

Growth purely for its own sake is the philosophy of cancer.

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

Nada dura, ni se repite, ni se detiene, ni insiste.

Sim, é ridículo que depois de tantos séculos de prática, e de incríveis avanços e inventos, não haja ainda uma maneira de saber quando alguém mente; é claro que isso nos beneficia e prejudica a todos por igual, talvez seja o único reduto de liberdade que nos resta.