When I look at efforts to create change in big companies over the past 10 years, I have to say that there’s enough evidence of success to say that change is possible – and enough evidence of failure to say that it isn’t likely. Both of those lessons are important.
In a sluggish system, aggressiveness produces instability. Either be patient or make the system more responsive.
If you want real, significant, sustainable change, you need talented, committed local line leaders. If the line manager is not innovating, then innovation is not going to occur.
An accurate, insightful view of current reality is as important as a clear vision.
Willpower is so common among highly successful people that many see its characteristics as synonymous with success.
Dialogue starts with the willingness to challenge our own thinking, to recognize that any certainty we have is, at best, a hypothesis about the world.
Theres a lot of American kids think their food comes from the grocery store and the concept of seasonality has no meaning to them whatsoever.
Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants.
In the Machine Age, the company itself became a machine – a machine for making money.
Innovation requires resources to invest, and you can see many companies pulling back and going into an intense protective mode in a major extended period of financial distress.
Governments, especially democratic ones, are short-term and nationalistic.
If there is genuine potential for growth, build capacity in advance of demand, as a strategy for creating demand. Hold the vision, especially as regards assessing key performance and evaluating whether capacity to meet potential demand is adequate.
Most leadership strategies are doomed to failure from the outset. As people have been noting for years, the majority of strategic initiatives that are driven from the top are marginally effective – at best.
Yet, most every corporate effort to graft this truly innovative practices into their culture has failed because, again and again, people reduce the living practice of AAR’s to a sterile technique.
Learning is all about connections, and through our connections with unique people we are able to gain a true understanding of the world around us.
We learn together in teams. This involves a shift from a spirit of advocacy to a spirit of enquiry.
People with a high level of personal mastery are able to consistently realize the results that matter most deeply to them-in effect, they approach their life as an artist would approach a work of art. The do that by becoming committed to their own lifelong learning.
The easy way out usually leads back in.
In great teams conflict becomes productive.
When placed in the same system, people, however different, tend to produce similar results.