John P. Kotter Quotes

To me, success in the job is setting a vision, guiding an organization through change - which is exactly what I did at Digitas, and I'm very proud of that - and bringing people together and with you. That, to me, is what it takes to be successful.

My leadership style is to produce a fear of not changing..

If I can impact an executive and his or her team, I can help to change the culture of an organization.

For success of any mission, it is necessary to have creative leadership. Creative leadership is vital for government, non-governmental organisations as well as for industries.

Don't manage - lead change before you have to.

The ability to have influence and create change and drive the strategy of an organization is really what excites me.

Very often, we think of leadership being at the very top of an organisation. I think what's unique about ABG is that we have a very strong cadre of leaders across the organisation who are highly empowered and therefore play a very major role in the growth and evolution of the organization.

As for whether I am a 'new age guru', I am not at all. I help companies build employees who lead without a title and become high performers.

I try to find, celebrate and teach leaders how to build platforms that will inspire others.

Most leadership strategies are doomed to failure from the outset.

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

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

Leadership is hard to train on.

Turnaround or growth, it's getting your people focused on the goal that is still the job of leadership.

It all sounds almost silly, but the fact is that the only way to change a corporate culture is to just change it.

I think whenever you come in, whenever you try to evolve a company, people will get nervous. But, if you articulate a clear vision, a clear mission to help them understand their roles in it and ask them to buy into the system, everyone will band together to make it happen.

The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.

The role of leadership is to transform the complex situation into small pieces and prioritize them.

Managers develop organisations; leaders develop people.

I fell in love with the topic of leadership. For three decades, that has been a major focus of my hands-on work: listening to and working with leaders, their teams and their organizations.

Leaders create a sense of urgency. And along with that you have to create a sense of hope and a direction.

Our next CEO needs to thrive in a highly dynamic environment, to be capable of accelerating what is working very well for Cisco and disrupting what needs to change.

What I'm trying to do is teach people how to actually get individuals in organizations to do the kinds of things to make a difference. It starts with not just studying the mechanics but really understanding how people operate.

As one grows their company and brand, you have to learn to be a leader, and there's no formula.

Leading Eventbrite has taught me a lot about how to connect with people to drive results.