Change Implementation Quotes

Change is incremental and real change, enduring change, occurs one step at a time.

Designing and implementing a strategy for change is a waste of time until you have discovered and embraced the current reality. If you don't know where you really are, it is impossible to get where you need to be.

One of the most common ways to overcome resistance to change is to educate people about it beforehand. Communication of ideas helps people see the need for and the logic of a change. The education process can involve one-on-one discussions, presentations to groups, or memos and reports.

I came in 1949, and all of us thought the climate was not just ripe for change. We often delay adjudication. [I]t’s [sic] not a question of evading at all. It’s just the practicalities of life – common sense.

The most effective way to manage change is to create it.

It's very difficult to evaluate a leader in a very short-term perspective because to be a leader you must be able to have a long-term perspective. You must be able to carry changes which take many years. And this is why you can really only see whether it has been a good leadership after some years have passed.

Change is hardest at the beginning, messiest in the middle and best at the end.

Kotter International is about leading large-scale change, not just managing it.

Everybody wants change. But the problem is how you manage change.

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.

And I've tried to give us a higher profile. Typically, at a board meeting, we'd pass resolutions about the civil-rights issue of the day, but we'd never tell anyone. So I've instituted a policy of announcing our resolutions at the end of our meetings.

The oldest habit in the world for resisting change is to complain that unless the remedy to the disease should be universally applied it should not be applied at all. But you must start somewhere.

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

Change is a process which has to be managed.

In my position, I can make changes. I can make changes across the entire organization. If John Ireland doesn't do his job, in his radio broadcast play-by-play, then we would make that change. If the Laker Girls drop down in caliber and couldn't do a dance number, then we'd make changes there.

Change is a process which has to be managed. If it's managed and managed well in the interest of the nation and the people, the likelihood is that it will end well.

The vast majority of large scale change efforts fail. Which means that the probability that you have actually experienced a failure, and your people know that and are pessimistic, therefore, about trying something again, is very high.

I have been very clear about the necessity for doing whatever is required to move the VA into the 21st century.

I went to government for making these changes. I remember a number of guys among these important figures.

If it's one thing we do really well as a company, it's that we take big change slowly and deliberately and bring the community along with us.

I didn't have any idea what politics was like. I was surprised at how difficult it is to get something done. In the private world, if I have an idea, I just do it.

Most people don't like change. They revolt against it unless they can clearly see the advantage it brings. For that reason, when good leaders prepare to take action or make changes, they take people through a process to get them ready for it.

What we have got to do now is use this event, the resignation of the whole commission, to drive through root and branch reform.

We keep a change in place by helping to create a new, supportive, and sufficiently strong organizational culture.

Changing things from the top down works when things are stable.