Today's Date :

 




"Quote … Unquote”
      

The links below relate to quotations that we have found interesting, provocative, funny or inspiring over the years. These are separated - arbitrarily in some cases - Into a number of issue-related categories.
 

ISSUES

A number of key issues that managers typically face, as they lead their organisations through the challenges of change and strive to achieve peak performance.

PROVOCATIONS

Published articles and informal ‘thought pieces’ which provide perspectives on issues that challenge conventional wisdom.

BOOKSHOP

An on-line bookshop, operated in association with Amazon.co.uk and featuring titles on leadership,

 

 

Quotations …

 


 

Change
“Change occurs when a person becomes what he or she is, not when he or she tries to become what (s)he is not.”
Beisser’s Paradoxical Theory of Change
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

Mahatma Gandhi
"When introducing change, the deeper challenge is how to ensure the continuity that this change will need."

Paul Evans - The Dualistic Leader: Thiving on Paradox in Chowdhury, S (2000) Management 21C. FT-Prentice Hall)
"Change has become a constant; managing it has become an expanding discipline. The way we embrace it defines our future."

Queen's Speech to UK Parliament - 30 April 2002

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Complexity
The failure to engage with complexity:
A man saw Nasrudin searching for something on the ground.
“What have you lost, Mulla?” he asked.
“My key,” said the Mulla.
So the man went down on his knees too, and they both looked for it.
After a time, the other man asked: “Where exactly did you drop it?”
“In my own house.”
“Then why are you looking here?”
“There is more light here than in my own house.”

Idries Shah - The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin
“Much of what is taught in management or business schools, or written about in business and management books, often appears as a banal paradox. It is banal in that it appears to regurgitate what everyone already takes for granted and knows to be true. It is a paradox because, despite being full of common sense, it doesn’t seem to work.”

Keith Grint – Fuzzy Management

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Creativity
"The great law of culture is: Let each become all that he was created capable of being."

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
"Culture exists not so much as a phenomenon that can be objectively measured, but as a story that can be experienced and retold, in ways that sustain its mythic meaning.”

Tudor Rickards - Creativity and the Management of Change

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Culture
"Where all think alike, no one thinks very much."

Walter Lippman

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Diversity
"If we amplify our leaders' strengths and modulate their weaknesses, we are the gem cutters of leadership, coaxing out its full brilliance. If we amplify our leaders' weaknesses, we may stress existing fracture lines in their characters and these fracture lines may become fatal flaws."

Ira Chaleff - The Courageous Follower

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Followership
"At bottom, becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It's precisely that simple, and it's also that difficult."

Warren Bennis - On Becoming a Leader

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Leadership
"To the Oriental mind, the unifying function of standing in the ‘space between’ is of greater value than being in the spotlight. Since that point of view is largely shared by both leaders and those who are led, getting credit for outstanding work is less valued than being seen as one who promotes the implicit wholeness of the organisation.”

Betty Edwards - Drawing on the Artist Within
"The message to leaders is, you have more symbolic power than you realise, but less control (over interpretations) than you probably desire."

Mary Jo Hatch - Organisation Theory

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Organisation
"To make strength productive is the unique purpose of organisation. It cannot, of course, overcome the weaknesses with which each one of us is abundantly endowed. But it can make them irrelevant. Its task is to use the strength of each man as a building block for joint performance."

Peter Drucker -The Effective Executive

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Paradigms
"The more widely shared our thinking, the more 'invisible' it seems to be. We are less aware of our particular thinking simply because it is so widely shared, and, in being less aware, we may not challenge or change that thinking. Inherited patterns keep us stuck."

If Price and Ray Shaw - Shifting the Patterns

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Passion
"Passion is the feeling you feel when you feel you're about to feel a feeling you've never felt before."

UK University 'Rag Mag''

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Performance Management
“The idea of a plane outside the world on which to stand has become a fundamental myth of our culture. The myth has most often taken the form of a spectator view of knowledge – the notion we can stand aside from the action and comment upon it from a detached viewpoint.”

Bruce Gregory – Inventing Reality
"You can't collapse the full breadth of performance management into a system of performance measurement."

Chris Rodgers - In Search of Escrick Man

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Politics (Organisational)
"Emerging organisational trends will put political skills at a premium in the new millenium."

Dave Buchanan and Richard Badham - Power, Politics and Organisational Change

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Purpose
"More than 300 years ago, Oliver Cromwell put his trust in the 'Plain, russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for and loves what he knows'.”

Quoted by David Marquand in Russet-Coated Captains – The Challenge of Social Democracy

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Resistance to Change
"People don't resist change, they resist being changed!"

Anonymous

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Resolve and Perseverance
"Every great oak was once a nut that stood its ground."

Anonymous
“The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that never otherwise would have occurred. . . . Whatever you can, do. Or dream you can, do. Begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”

Goethe
"If you can keep your head when all around are losing theirs, you don't understand the situation!"

Anonymous

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Staffing
"Whoever tries to place a man or staff an organisation to avoid weakness will end up at best with mediocrity. The idea that there are 'well-rounded' people, people who have only strengths and no weaknesses (the 'generalist') is a prescription for mediocrity if not for incompetence."

Peter Drucker -The Effective Executive

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Strategy
"Be daring, be first and be different."

Anita Roddick
"The hard truth is that there are no panaceas."

Eileen Shapiro - Fad Surfing

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Unlocking Talent
"An individual without information cannot take responsibility; an individual who is given information cannot help but take responsibility."

Jan Carlzon - Moments of Truth

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Vision
"Where there is no vision, the people perish."

Proverbs 29:18
“When they asked him how he made his statue of David, [Michelangelo] was reported to have said: ‘It’s easy. You just chip away the bits that don’t look like David.”

Quoted by Valerie Stewart in The David Solution

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Wizardry
“A wizard exists in all of us. The wizard sees and knows everything.”

Deepak Chopra in The Way of the Wizard

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