Daniel Okrent Quotes

If you take over a programme from a longstanding incumbent, not everyone's going to like it.

It appears that PepsiCo views structural change as a sign of weakness, an admission of failure, and an untenable break with past traditions.

There's always a transition if you go to a new territory or a new company or a new country or wherever because there's different styles and different crowds that you perform in front of. Of course, it always takes a little bit of time to find your groove.

Persuading employees to let go of old values and beliefs and adopt new ones can be challenging.

Change is not a four letter word...but often your reaction to it is!

John Akers once said that changing IBM's culture was more difficult than getting elephants to dance. Of course it's really difficult, as Lou Gerstner also found out years later. The title of his own book is Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? He and his top executives were change masters at IBM. All organizations, especially the larger ones, will always need change masters. Dissatisfaction with the status quo and efforts to improve it should be encouraged rather than discouraged. Regrettably, that is often not the case.

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

It's generally much easier to kill an organization than to change it substantially.

Turning a culture around is very difficult to do because it's based on a series of many, many decisions, and the organization is framed by those decisions.

Major organizational changes create uncertainty.

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

In any business that grows big on one business model, transitions can throw everything in the air.

If you go through some big corporate change, it's just not going to be the same. If we sold to Yahoo, they would have done something different; if you want to continue your vision of the company, then don't sell because there's inevitably going to be some change.

Most people don't like change. They revolt against it unless they can clearly see the advantage it brings. For that reason, when good leaders prepare to take action or make changes, they take people through a process to get them ready for it.

If you want to change the culture, you will have to start by changing the organization.

We do as much harm holding onto programs and people past their natural life span as we do when we employ massive organizational air strikes. However, destroying comes at the end of life's cycle, not as a first response.

There is nothing like proposals for intelligence reform to activate the anti-bodies of the affected agencies.

With every new idea, it takes a generation or two until it becomes obvious that there's no real problem.

Senior military officers will not accept defense reform unless it is forced upon them.

We’ve already decided to change. The question is: In which direction do we change, and from where do we start?

I literally worked at research labs where the staff really tried to steer management away from the modern technology that was actually better.

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

Culture change means we will do things differently.

Change is a process which has to be managed.

I think there's always an adjustment when somebody new is runnings things, from the top down.