Gary Hamel Quotes

The Pentagon isn't a place that champions individuality and innovation.

The reality is, some people don't want you to change or go anywhere different.

A lot of what is wrong with corporate America has to do with a culture filled with antibodies trained to expel anything different. HR departments often want cookie cutter employees, which inevitably results in cookie cutter solutions.

Status quo just means that everyone's doing it. It doesn't mean that this was divinely ordained, and of course this is the right decision.

Folks will always, always, always go back to the comfortable status quo, with its silent voices and lack of conflict, if you give them the chance.

Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation.

When everyone thinks alike, no one is thinking clearly.

The East Coast, and certainly Boston, has a provincial quality to it that makes it harder to bust out and move up. Try to be too different and they'll pull you down.

Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.

Throughout my years in business, I discovered something. I would always ask why you do things. The answers that I would invariably get are: 'Oh, that's just the way things are done around here.' Nobody knows why they do what they do. Nobody thinks very deeply about things in business.

The herd instinct among forecasters makes sheep look like independent thinkers.

People are very open-minded about new things - as long as they're exactly like the old ones.

The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You're encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren't that smart, who aren't that creative.

I'm at the depot, and I'm not going anywhere. That's better to deal with than having to deal with the unknown. And the unknown is they don't want to fail. They don't want to pay the price unless there's a guarantee they're going to get there.

Conservatism clings to what has been established, fearing that, once we begin to question the beliefs that we have inherited, all the values of life will be destroyed.

The hazing experience and then the subsequent participation in the group forces its members to maintain the status quo and traditions at all costs. It demands mindlessness and unquestioned loyalty, resulting in boring people who have little ability to think for themselves or have an opposing viewpoint from those who have the most social power.

Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future.

Should bureaucratic ways prevail and paper reign supreme? Should red tape and the Status Quo become our nation’s dream?

I have read their platform, and though I think there are some unsound places in it, I can stand upon it pretty well. But I see nothing in it both new and valuable. "What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable.

Tradition" is very often an excuse word for people who don't want to change.

Where all think alike, none thinks very much.

France has chosen to ignore the great transformation of the 21st century and cultivate a [culture of] status quo and rigidity.

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common

I feel uneasy at the very idea of a Movement. I see every insight degenerating into a dogma, and fresh thoughts freezing into lifeless party line.

Nothing is more difficult, in general, than to make a nation perceive anything as true, or seek its own interest, in any manner but as its forefathers have opined and acted.