Category Archives: Change

The pessimist….

… complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.

– John Maxwell

While it is…

…. essential for a leader to mobilize commitment to high performance at all levels of an organisation, it is equally essential for leaders to stimulate ‘performance anxiety’ and drive concerns about the status quo downward through the organisation.

– David Hunter

You see…

things and you say “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?”

– George Bernard Shaw

If we…

… cannot envision the world we would like to live in, we cannot work towards its creation. If we cannot place ourselves in it in our imagination, we will not believe it is possible.

– Chellis Glendinning

Managers…

… maintain an efficient status quo while leaders attack the status quo to create something new

– Orrin Woodward

To excel…

… means to reach beyond the best you have ever given because doing so matters to you personally, for its own sake. It means to run your own race—as an individual, team, or organization. To excel is to know your greatest strengths and passions, and to emphasize them while honestly admitting and managing your weaknesses.

– Robert Cooper

There is…

… nothing like a concrete life plan to weigh you down. Because if you always have one eye on some future goal, you stop paying attention the the job at hand, miss opportunities that might arise, and stay fixedly on one path, even when a better, newer course might have opened up.

– Indra Nooyi

Treat a man…

… as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A new leader…

… has to be able to change an organisation that is dreamless, soulless and visionless… someone’s got to make a wake up call.

– Warren Bennis

The true mark…

… of a leader is the willingness to stick with a bold course of action — an unconventional business strategy, a unique product-development roadmap, a controversial marketing campaign — even as the rest of the world wonders why you’re not marching in step with the status quo. In other words, real leaders are happy to zig while others zag. They understand that in an era of hyper-competition and non-stop disruption, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to stand for something special.

– Bill Taylor