John P. Kotter

“Great leaders understand that historical success tends to produce stable and inwardly focused organizations, and these outfits, in turn, reinforce a feeling of contentment with the status quo.”

“If the culture you have is radically different from an 'experiment and take-risk' culture, then you have a big change you going to have to make - and no little gimmicks are going to do it for you.”

“We started Kotter International to improve leaders' ability to deal with big, important transformations in organizations - and in their lives.”

“Every organization goes through a lifecycle where they eventually lose their initial speed or agility at a strategic level.”

“Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there.”

“Leadership is always about change: it's not about mobilising people to do what they've always done well to continue to do it well.”

“The vast majority of large scale change efforts fail. Which means that the probability that you have actually experienced a failure, and your people know that and are pessimistic, therefore, about trying something again, is very high.”

“The rate of change is not going to slow down anytime soon. If anything, competition in most industries will probably speed up even more in the next few decades.”

“I'm impatient. Typically people think they know all about change and don't need help. Their approach tends to be more management-oriented than leadership-oriented. It's very frustrating.”

“Low lights signal to our senses that the workday may be over and it's time for sleep, making it hard for an audience to pay careful attention. When we stand behind a big wooden podium, it can feel as if there's a shield between us and the audience.”

“At any one time the world has a very limited number of Steve Jobs or Winston Churchills or Thomas Watson the firsts. These are wonderful people and we can learn much from them, but praying for a few more of them to solve the world's problems is not a great idea.”

“In terms of getting people to experiment more and take more risk, there are at least three things that immediately come to my mind. Number one, of course, is role-modeling it yourself. Number two is, when people take intelligent, smart risks and yet it doesn't work out, not shooting them. And number three, being honest with yourself.”

“The dry academic tomes I wrote very early in my career were earnest reflections of the research I conducted, the analysis I applied and the conclusions I drew. And they had few readers, mostly other academics. I learned along the way and started including more and more stories in my work.”

“All organizations start with a structure that looks like a dynamic solar system. They can be very fast, agile. They attract people who play around with crazy ideas.”

“Innovation is kind of a sub-piece of change.”

“In an ever changing world, you never learn it all, even if you keep growing into your 90s.”

“Globalization is going to bring us closer and closer together across nations and technology you can't stop.”

“A higher rate of urgency does not imply ever-present panic, anxiety, or fear. It means a state in which complacency is virtually absent.”

“Neurologists say that our brains are programmed much more for stories than for abstract ideas. Tales with a little drama are remembered far longer than any slide crammed with analytics.”

“Many years ago, I think I got my first insight on how an incredibly diverse team can work together and do astonishing things, and not just misunderstand each other and fight.”