Warren Bennis Quotes

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. Someone once wrote that the sound of surprise is jazz, and if there's any one thing that we must try to get used to in this world, it's surprise and the unexpected. Truly, we are living in world where the only thing that's constant is change.

Diplomacy is a little bit like Jazz. It’s improvisation on a theme.

Government tends to stifle innovation, and it abhors improvisation. Any good military strategist will tell you that a battle plan rarely survives past the first engagement. After that, you have to improvise to survive and to win.

The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions. Not me. I don't want to be a manager or a dictator. I want to be a leader-and leadership is ongoing, adjustable, flexible, and dynamic. As such, leaders have to maintain a certain amount of discretion

I think there is a big and significant difference between being a leader and being a manager-leaders lead from the heart. You have to be analytical and flexible. Flexibility is one of the key ingredients to being successful. If you feel like it's difficult to change, you will probably have a harder time succeeding.

Every ‘mistake’ is an opportunity in jazz.

F.D.R. achieved greatness not by means of imposing his temperament and intellect on the world but by reacting to what the world threw at him.

The beauty of jazz is that it's malleable. People are addressing it to suit their own personalities.

Diplomacy is like jazz: endless variations on a theme.

Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.

Negotiating is a little like jazz. You improvise on a theme. You know where you want to go, but you’re not always sure how to get there.

The basic DNA we've got to implant in leaders now is adaptability: not to get wedded to the solution to a particular problem, because not only the problem but the solution changes day to day. Creating people who are hardwired for that is going to be our challenge for the future.

You are not always going to be able to knock it and run. You are going to have to use the other foot, mix things up, use the brain.

Rigidity is the enemy of acting. And I think that people who stay up all night focusing on every beat they're going to do the next day always end up getting screwed.

Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself.

All great leaders constantly seek new information and new ways of thinking.

Also I can come up with new bits - people yell stuff out and it's a new subject or a subject that I've been thinking about that I haven't done onstage yet and I'll just run with it.

Jazz is an octopus. It will take whatever it can use and it will work with it.

When someone says to me, do you do stand-up I say absolutely not. I like to think of it as a theatrical performance. With me the show changes maybe five to ten percent every night. Of course, whatever I see in front of me and sometimes I get on a little run about it and it changes the show. And my delivery is such that people who have seen me many times say Gee, I never heard that before. Actually, they have, but I might have changed it around.

[Donald] Trump, I think, is the sort of guy that if he maybe thought he'd made a little bit of a mistake, would find a way out, he wouldn't want to say, "Well, that's what I've done and I'm sticking to it, and I don't give a damn." Which is what the other people in America would be like.

Every now and then I'll think of something to put back in the show. I just kind of play it off the top of my head. If I do it that way it keeps it kinda fresh.

When you work with an actor and then you discover new things that are better, I think you gotta be free to be able to go with the new things that you're finding. I think that's very important. I have a strong idea when I go to shoot a movie but I also love to discover things when I'm on set as well.

A leader is a man who can adapt principles to circumstances.

Jazz, like leadership, combines the unpredictability of the future with the gifts of individuals.

What makes people and companies and artistic directors and choreographers interested in working with dancers is the ability to kind of let go of everything you think you know and be a blank canvas.