Kevin Systrom Quotes

Changing things from the top down works when things are stable.

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

Reorganization to me is shuffling boxes, moving boxes around. Transformation means that you're really fundamentally changing the way the organization thinks, the way it responds, the way it leads. It's a lot more than just playing with boxes.

To me, it's really important to drive change through a team because one person, while the buck has to stop with somebody, the company is just too big for one person.

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

Because management deals mostly with the status quo and leadership deals mostly with change, in the next century we are going to have to try to become much more skilled at creating leaders.

Change should be a friend. It should happen by plan, not by accident.

The biggest barriers to strategic renewal are almost always top management's unexamined beliefs.

I've seen, all too often in my career, people coming in to lead agencies and organizations and trying to impose change from the top down. Never works. You never have enough time.

If the culture you have is radically different from an 'experiment and take-risk' culture, then you have a big change you going to have to make - and no little gimmicks are going to do it for you.

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

Major organizational changes create uncertainty. But the point is to move quickly - faster than you are comfortable - because in hindsight, you will always wish you had made changes even sooner.

I don't think it's my job, single-handedly, to fix anything. I think it's my job to have a vision and have a plan that is reasonable and workable and get as many people to the table to effect change as possible.

Designing and implementing a strategy for change is a waste of time until you have discovered and embraced the current reality. If you don't know where you really are, it is impossible to get where you need to be.

The most effective way to manage change is to create it.

Don't wait for someone to tell you what to do. Develop an innovative solution and work as a team to make it happen.

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

The first step in changing a culture, I believe, starts with the senior leadership team - and with the CEO.

I am often asked about the difference between 'change management' and 'change leadership,' and whether it's just a matter of semantics. These terms are not interchangeable.

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.

When a change in how some element of one's business is conducted becomes an order of magnitude larger than what that business is accustomed to, then all bets are off.

You need to set a tone at the top that inspires trust - and encourages open and honest 2-way communication. So you hear the brutal facts, and you listen to the good news and the bad news - so that, in the spirit of continuous improvement, you can make changes.

Change is a process which has to be managed.

Evolving our culture to operate and think differently is no small task. We are challenging our employees to be the best of both small and big companies - they should operate with the soul and spirit of a startup, while leveraging the scale, resources and capabilities of Campbell - with the goal of ultimately becoming the biggest small company.

Command-and-control isn't the kind of corporate culture people want to be in anymore.