Warren Bennis Quotes

We know that leadership is very much related to change. As the pace of change accelerates, there is naturally a greater need for effective leadership.

Startups are rapidly changing systems. If you use an annual review cycle, you aren't getting feedback at the same pace that you need to adapt and change the business.

Change before you're forced to change.

Well, if you look back, in almost two and a half years, the biggest change probably was in late 2000 when we decided to totally change the CA business model.

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.

You don't implement change easily in Japan unless you explain very clearly why you need to do this change, how you're going to do this change and what's going to be the outcome of this change. If you offset or you forget to explain one of these three steps you're not going to do it.

Managing bottom-up change is its own art.

So in one leap we had gone from being a friendly society to something almost professional.

You can't build an adaptable organization without adaptable people - and individuals change only when they have to, or when they want to.

I'm impatient. Typically people think they know all about change and don't need help. Their approach tends to be more management-oriented than leadership-oriented. It's very frustrating.

I think there are certain business matters which we must now conduct differently than we used to.

Business is constantly changing, constantly evolving.

Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.

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.

In the mid-'80s when the business took a big change, everybody was living their character.

Companies can change. Culture can change.

You must be on top of change or change will be on top of you.

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.

Learning has replaced control as the fundamental role of management.

I believe in evolution and I think when it comes to business and the roots of business and the fundamentals of business, I don't think that ever changes. I think the idea of change is an illusion, but in nature it's necessary to change and perhaps business is a part of nature. I'm not totally sure.

Leadership deals with people and their dynamics, which are continually changing. The challenge of leadership is to create change and facilitate growth.

What worked yesterday doesn't always work today.

The world is changing. We all know this. And as that world changes, if you don't transform your company, you're stuck.

There is an inexorable correlation between leadership and change.

The transformation will come from leadership.