Brad Feld Quotes

Multiple mergers can be challenging because people come from different backgrounds.

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.

In any merger, the biggest challenge is always integration of human resources because the people who are coming in have a lot of apprehension.

I know a lot of companies that have a very well defined post-acquisition process. However, many of them don't take into consideration the dynamics and personalities of the acquiree. Instead, they assume that everyone will happily be assimilated.

In any merger, when you have large organisations coming together, there will be challenges in terms of culture.

When it comes to communicating change at any time, the mission must be clear, and it must inspire.

Today, no leader can afford to be indifferent to the challenge of engaging employees in the work of creating the future. Engagement may have been optional in the past, but it's pretty much the whole game today.

Most of my work has been in corporations, studying how you build an organization that helps people to identify and work to their strengths.

I think one of the main challenges that the World Bank faces is creating an organizational structure that doesn't get in the way of its staff. We have fantastic staff. People told me as I was coming into the organization that the greatest asset of the World Bank Group is its staff, and I think there's no question that that's the case.

Many corporate leaders and employees have the right intentions, but it can be overwhelming when you consider how everything is affected from leadership styles, to organizational structure, to employee engagement, to customer service an marketplace.

Vision is dandy, but sustainable company excellence comes from a huge stable of able managers.

When I was a CEO, the books on management that I read weren't very much help after the first few months on the job. They were all designed to give you directions on how not to screw up your company.

Innovation and best practices can be sown throughout an organization - but only when they fall on fertile ground.

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

I think whenever you come in, whenever you try to evolve a company, people will get nervous. But, if you articulate a clear vision, a clear mission to help them understand their roles in it and ask them to buy into the system, everyone will band together to make it happen.

What is clear is that business leaders must commit to champion change - to be transparent about their goals for change, to align their incentives systems to drive the change, and to make sure their work environments are flexible in a way that allows men and women who choose to work to be able to achieve all of their potential.

New leaders must also expect and manage setbacks. In post-revolutionary times, expectations are high, and the obstacles to meeting them are enormous.

I described the CEO job as knowing what to do and getting the company to do what you want. Designing a proper company culture will help you get your company to do what you want in certain important areas for a very long time.

The development of our human resources is an area in which we need to do well as it is decisive in determining the success of our diversification programme.

I want to deploy the leadership to meet the challenges that face us and to restore America's greatness.

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.

People have come to me over the years and said to me: 'I admire the culture of Starbucks. Can you come give a speech and help us turn our culture around?' I wish it were that easy. 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.

There are lots of lessons to learn from Amazon. Never stop innovating or questioning the fundamentals of your business. Disrupt yourself before others do. Continually motivate employees so that they never get too complacent - see Yahoo, AOL and many other Internet companies for evidence of what happens when they do.

You get a culture of entrepreneurship after you have successfully changed the accountability system so that people can use a better process. Process drives culture, not the other way around, so you can't just change the culture, you have to change the system.

Managers develop organisations; leaders develop people.