John P. Kotter Quotes

I'm a person who likes to tackle challenges. Google was a challenge when I got there. I think AOL's a challenge. The way we run the company is a very team-focused environment.

As a director, you have to understand what is happening - if I don't understand it, you can't make changes.

I think the varied backgrounds in the beginning were a plus. It took a while for people to understand what they were trying to do and get started, but it did provide for a lot of new ideas.

Collaboration is important not just because it's a better way to learn. The spirit of collaboration is penetrating every institution and all of our lives. So learning to collaborate is part of equipping yourself for effectiveness, problem solving, innovation and life-long learning in an ever-changing networked economy.

Organizations can get in the way of innovation, because if people are all bound up, and if they don't know if they get to make the decision or somebody else, and if they do, what happens to them, and so on and so forth.

The general fact is that the most effective way of utilizing human energy is through an organized rivalry, which by specialization and social control is, at the same time, organized co-operation.

We must improvise, and we must experiment, and we must do things that might go wrong, and everything we bring - the people and the equipment - must serve us in that goal.

When you collaborate, you have to be willing to scrap a lot.

With each job that you're given an opportunity to do, you're asked to use new parts of yourself and to figure the play out with other tools that you perhaps didn't use with the last show.

What I'm trying to do is teach people how to actually get individuals in organizations to do the kinds of things to make a difference. It starts with not just studying the mechanics but really understanding how people operate.

You have to think that the answer - and the right answer - for you and your organization might not be something that's been done before. And it's up to you to discover and work with your team to form and figure out how to do successfully.

FCA is a culture of leaders and employees that were born out of adversity and who operate without sheet music.

I am always open to when someone says, 'Let's do it this way.'

I think that I, because of student government and because of working in Baltimore, knew how to be creative with very little resources.

As the world we live in is so unpredictable, the ability to learn and to adapt to change is imperative, alongside creativity, problem-solving, and communication skills.

Big ideas developed in a vacuum are doomed from the start. Feedback is the essential tool for building and growing a successful company.

It's all about communication, culture and competing every day.

In an age of exponential change, we need the power of diverse thinking, and we cannot afford to leave any talent untapped.

I love the flexibility of saying, "Today we're making 50-foot paintings, and we're going to have to join hands and figure out how that's going to work." But in the end, it's a possibility.

The virtue of small-to-midsize companies is that they tend to be more flexible and it is easier to experiment with new ways of working. So just try to tackle one problem you're really struggling with, together with your team. Get started and see what happens. Chances are you will be happy with the outcome.

You just pick up a little bit of whatever the ones you think are appropriate, and you try and, you know, combine them. And then you bring in other people that are great for the things that you're not so good at.

In the creative process you come to loggerheads and you just have to keep the process moving forward, even if that requires jumping on a plane and flying to London. It's a good thing it's fun, otherwise it would be too much work.

Find a way to get back in to the game, find a way to build a partnership, find a way to catch a ball, find a way to stop it.

I'm really a big believer in working with people. It's challenging for me to come into already integrated brands and find a way where I can put my own flair on it.

When you can't rely on sticking a pipe in the ground, what you have to rely on is unlocking the energy and talent of all your people - men and women.