James C. Collins Quotes

When a plan or strategy fails, people are tempted to assume it was the wrong vision. Plans and strategies can always be changed and improved. But vision doesn't change. Visions are simply refined with time.

It takes a little bit more mentally to figure out what I need to do to be most effective. The game is ever evolving. So you have to constantly pay attention to the change because you don't want to be left behind.

Managers are trained to make incremental, programmatic improvements. They aren't trained to lead large-scale change.

The No. 1 criticism most managers get is that they don't ever change or wait too long to make changes... It's very simple: Either things are performing or they're not. And if it's not performing, we have to make changes.

I never stop making sure that what I say is the best of what could be said about a particular thing. It's a constant evolution. If I planted a tree one way yesterday, and somebody tells me of a better way to plant a tree, I think, 'You know, they're right, that's better.' Then I change my way to accommodate the new way of planting trees.

There's always, I guess, a philosophy that if you come in, you want to change all the parts, you want to change everything over. I've always tried to preach that consistency and continuity are very, very important. So if I know the baseball people, and I know they're competent and could do the job, I don't see any reason to replace them.

We need to build change in to our systems and let these systems evolve as circumstances change. Change is inevitable, but we need to do a better job of dealing with it, because when we start building huge gleaming monoliths, I think we start getting into trouble.

We cannot assume that past successes will insure future successes.

Everybody wants change. But the problem is how you manage change.

… in an age of accelerating change, when even the most sophisticated skills are quickly outdated, we will find many allies in the developing world who are coming to understand that the most important skill anyone can learn is the ability to go on learning.

Agility is fundamental to leading a team through times of change.

Change has to be fundamental to a company's culture, or there is no way it can survive.

In a moving world readaptation is the price of longevity.

Success today requires the agility and drive to constantly rethink, reinvigorate, react, and reinvent.

Progress and growth are impossible if you always do things the way you've always done things.

Never accept or be too comfortable with the status quo, because the companies that get into trouble are historically the ones that aren't able to adapt to change and respond quickly enough.

We must change to master change.

To survive you have to withstand the changes in the business. This business has gone through so many changes since I was young and now it is on to something else. It is all weird today, for me, because I am from the old times. You just have to keep adapting. Isn't that Darwinism? The creature that adapts to its environment survives.

If nothing is declared unchangeable, then the organization will resist all change.

Nothing ever stands still, and neither should you.

Leaders never outgrow the need to change.

If you pivot, do it fully and with conviction. The worst thing is to try to do a bit of the old and the new-it's hard to kill your babies.

Every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision and change. A company that stands still will soon be forgotten. Trying to provoke positive change is a principle we've embedded across the Virgin family for more than four decades.

In order to keep up with the rapid evolution of the sport, you've got to keep an open mind.

The business changes. The technology changes. The team changes. The team members change. The problem isn't change, per se, because change is going to happen; the problem, rather, is the inability to cope with change when it comes.