I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don’t think that’s quite it; it’s more like jazz. There is more improvisation.
WARREN G. BENNISIt is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguishes leaders from followers.
More Warren G. Bennis Quotes
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That is the key challenge facing management today; change is the only constant.
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Success in management requires learning as fast as the world is changing.
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Power is the basic energy needed to initiate and sustain action or, to put it another way, the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it. Leadership is the wise use of this power: Transformative leadership.
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Great leaders love talent and know where to find it. They surround themselves with talented people who can work effectively together.
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At the time, Sculley was destined to be the head of Pepsico. The clincher came when Jobs asked him, “How many more years of your life do you want to spend making colored water when you can have an opportunity to come here and change the world?”
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The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
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Ineffective leaders often act on the advice and counsel of the last person they talked to.
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Companies which get misled by their own success are sure to be blind sided.
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If great teams don’t have an “enemy,” they create one for themselves because, as former Coca-Cola CEO Roberto Goizueta pointed out, “you can’t have a war without one.”
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Find the appropriate balance of competing claims by various groups of stakeholders. All claims deserve consideration but some claims are more important than others.
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In great groups, the right people always have the right job.
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You need people who can walk their companies into the future rather than back them into the future.
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That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.
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To become a leader, then, you must become yourself, become the maker of your own life
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Effective leaders make a full commitment to be a learner, to keep increasing and nourishing their knowledge and wisdom.
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Great things are accomplished by talented people who believe they will accomplish them.
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Those who take risks walk the high wire with no fear of falling.
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Leaders keep their eyes on the horizon, not just on the bottom line.
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Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.
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Those who re-enter the workplace filled with new enthusiasm and new ideas often find a chilly response on the part of their supervisors.
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People in great groups have blinders on. Their work is all they see. They value failures as learning opportunities. They are optimistic, not realistic, as they proceed from one challenge and crisis to the next.
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Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.
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Followers who tell the truth and leaders who listen to it are an unbeatable combination.
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People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out.
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Followers who tell the truth, and leaders who listen to it, are an unbeatable combination.
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Understand the “Gretzky Factor”: Cultivate an instinct, a “touch”, call it what you will, that enables you to know both where the “puck” is now and where it will be soon.
WARREN G. BENNIS