John C. Malone Quotes

The last thing we need to do now is reorganize and create a new department.

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

Anyone in a large organization who thinks major change is impossible should probably get out.

Most organizations fail in driving change.

This extraordinary arrogance that change must start at the top is a way of guaranteeing that change will not happen in most companies.

The transformation at the corporate level was achieved by selling off business units in old markets and by creating new business units to pursue the new opportunities. But the individual business units themselves within those transformed corporations were almost inert to change.

Change the leader, change the organization.

People in any organization, including bureaucrats and politicians, are always attached to the obsolete; the obsolescent; the things that should have worked but didn't; the things that once were productive and no longer are.

Competence is the enemy of change!

It follows that acceleration in the rate of change will result in an increasing need for reorganization. Reorganization is usually feared, because it means disturbance of the status quo, a potential threat to peoples vested interests in their jobs, and an upset to established ways of doing things. For these reasons, needed reorganization is often deferred. With a resulting loss in effectiveness and increase in costs.

Society, community, family are all conserving institutions. They try to maintain stability and to prevent, or at least slow down, change. But the organization of the post-capitalist society of organizations is a destabilizer. Because its function is to put knowledge to work - on tools, processes, and products; on work; on knowledge itself - it must be organized for constant change.

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

Those who will not face improvements because they are changes, will face changes that are not improvements.

Every change is being forced upon us.

The only thing that can be safely predicted is that sometime soon your organization will be challenged to change in ways for which it has no precedent.

One of the most common ways to overcome resistance to change is to educate people about it beforehand. Communication of ideas helps people see the need for and the logic of a change. The education process can involve one-on-one discussions, presentations to groups, or memos and reports.

The new idea either finds a champion or it dies. No ordinary involvement with a new idea provides the energy required to cope with the indifference and resistance that change provokes.

The only things that evolve by themselves in an organization are disorder, friction and malperformance.

A powerful new idea can kick around unused in a company for years, not because its merits are not recognized, but because nobody has assumed the responsibility for converting it from words into action.

Revitalizing General Motors is like teaching an elephant to tap dance. You find the sensitive spot and start poking.

Companies have got to learn to eat change for breakfast.

The architecture of change involves the design and construction of new patterns, or the reconceptualization of old ones, to make new, and hopefully more productive, actions possible.

Your organization can start tweeting, but that wont change its DNA.

People often resist change for reasons that make good sense to them, even if those reasons don't correspond to organizational goals. So it is crucial to recognize, reward, and celebrate accomplishments.

Producing major change in an organization is not just about signing up one charismatic leader. You need a group - a team - to be able to drive the change. One person, even a terrific charismatic leader, is never strong enough to make all this happen.