Bill Gates Quotes

When you're coming into a company and, you know, have to do a transformation, what you really want to do is look at the company and say, 'Okay, here are the parts that the company does well. How do we get those genes to hyper-express? The genes that are getting in the way, how do you turn those off?'

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.

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.

The company-as-a-machine model fits how people think about and operate conventional companies. And, of course, it fits how people think about changing conventional companies: You have a broken company, and you need to change it, to fix it.

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

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

The cardinal responsibility of leadership is to identify the dominant contradiction at each point of the historical process and to work out a central line to resolve it.

The best way to make change is to know how something works. If you're going to go build something or change whatever it is, if you don't know how it works and you're trying to go make a change in it, the first thing you're doing is you're spending time figuring out how it works. The same thing happens in organizations.

And the reason for focusing on that time frame is that it's going to take us a considerable period of time to develop the new capabilities, processes and organizations that will be needed.

The consolidation that we started in 2009 was clearly the requirement of that time.

The success, or failure, of a CEO to implement AI throughout the organization will depend on them hiring a leader to build an organization to do this. In some companies, CIOs or chief data officers are playing this role.

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.

I know firsthand the complexities of leading an enterprise through business and technology transformation. It takes intense focus, a strong drive, and a clearly communicated vision to inspire and take an organization from where they are, to where they need to be - or where they want to go.

You have to be sort of an emotional steward to really get a business to do something hard - to take people up the hill, to conquer the mountain, to sack the city. You have got to be a maniac.

I am good at conceptualizing and building institutions.

Instead of focusing the traditional planning cycles where companies benchmark their businesses against existing competition, teams need to be developed to foster internal change and disruption. Self-disruption is akin to undergoing major surgery, but you are the one holding the scalpel.

Any company faces big challenges during transformation. People are accustomed to going ahead on the existing track. Even when they know there are problems, the first reaction is to protect the old way.

When any great design thou dost intend, Think on the means, the manner, and the end.

Management is clearly different from leadership. Leadership is primarily a high-powered, right-brain activity. It's more of an art it's based on a philosophy. You have to ask the ultimate questions of life when you're dealing with personal leadership issues.

Ideas really do matter. But in any organization a good idea will only go so far unless its proponents are willing to fight the political games to get the idea adopted.

When asked, -How is that you pick better moves than your opponents?, I responded: I'm very glad you asked me that, because, as it happens, there is a very simple answer. I think up my own moves, and I make my opponent think up his

If we think long term, we can accomplish things that we couldn't otherwise accomplish.

The transition strategies are more important than understanding what the outcome state will be.

"What would I do if?.." By thinking tactically, we can more easily arrive at correct tactical solutions, and practice - even theoretical practice - tends to produce confidence in our solutions which, in turn, makes it easier for us, and thus quicker, to reach a decision.

So it's worth some real up front time to think through the long term value and the defensibility of the business.