Andy Stanley Quotes

Failed plans should not be interpreted as a failed vision. Visions don't change, they are only refined. Plans rarely stay the same, and are scrapped or adjusted as needed. Be stubborn about the vision, but flexible with your plan.

Founders go wrong when they start to believe their business plan will materialize as written. I advise entrepreneurs to burn their business plan - it's simply too dangerous to the health of your business.

Any leader needs to be constantly interested in what's going on in the world, and constantly ready - even when things are going well - to change.

We cannot assume that past successes will insure future successes.

Change before you're forced to change.

Uncertainty is a permanent part of the leadership landscape. It never goes away.

When you play against different people from all walks of life you can't do the same thing against every player defensively or offensively. You have to change up the way you go at a player.

Your ability to shape your future depends on how well you communicate where you want to be when you get there. When ideas are communicated effectively, people follow and change.

I spent 26 years in the business without ever knowing what I was doing a month from now.

Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals.

I always try to adjust to the situation.

One of the best paradoxes of leadership is a leader's need to be both stubborn and open-minded. A leader must insist on sticking to the vision and stay on course to the destination. But he must be open-minded during the process.

How you manage change can make all the difference.

Memorizing a playbook is like memorizing a script. When they change the script at the last minute it's like changing a play in a game.

When you deal with change, you have a couple choices: you can lead it and make the rules, or you can be a fast follower, or you can be a slow follower.

The underlying principles of strategy are enduring, regardless of technology or the pace of change.

The essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.

Never change a winning game; always change a losing one.

There is still need to think and plan, but on a different scale, and along different lines.

One of my great values that my father intuited, and indirectly taught me, is that you should always have a plan but be open to opportunity.

What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you - what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind - you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn't a strategy.

What an entrepreneur does is to build for the long run. If the market is great, you get all of the resources you can. You build to it. But a good entrepreneur is always prepared to throttle back, put on the brakes, and if the world changes, adapt to the world.

In my view, a political vision is not a grab-bag of discrete problems and solutions. It is the visionary anticipation of a direction.

Companies that change best over time know first and foremost what should not change.

If one has a flexible attitude, one knows how to deal with changing situations