Corporate Resilience Quotes

So it takes years to make a solid company.

AIG would be doing fine today. It was one of the ten largest companies in the United States in terms of market value, over 200 billion, the most respected insurer and everything in the world.

Many companies don't exist after 25 years. It's a rarity. Or if they do exist, they're like IBM, with a totally changing personality.

Big companies are like marching bands. Even if half the band is playing random notes, it still sounds kind of like music. The concealment of failure is built into them.

It pains me to see my old company, which has meant so much to America, on the ropes. But Chrysler has been in trouble before, and we got through it, and I believe they can do it again... Let's face it, if your car breaks down, you're not going to take it to the White House to get fixed. But, if your company breaks down, you've got to go to the experts on the ground, not the bureaucrats.

You have family-owned businesses that have been around for 500 years. You cannot name a corporation that survives intact for even a few decades.

In business, there’s such a thing as an invaluable person, but no such thing as an indispensable one.

If you have spent your life building Ineos, and you find yourself in a crisis, you are going to do anything you can to save what you have been building.

So if I die, somebody else from the corporation will take over the business.

When trouble strikes, which it always does - bad economy, bad quarter, activists, takeover - when trouble strikes, those board members who don't understand or are not committed are not helpful.

Small companies tend to go out of business. Large ones don't.

In many cases, companies use the crisis moments to pivot to do better. We like to be part of that.

The BP president said yesterday that the company would survive. That's like someone running over your dog and saying, 'Don't worry, my car is fine.'

Very few companies can perform at scale over the course of decades, and Yahoo has done that.

Unilever has been around for 100-plus years. We want to be around for several hundred more years.

What I see in the corporate sector is very clearly an issue of a major shortfall in the issue of, what some people call confidence, but whatever you want to call it. Clearly people are looking out in the very distant future and they are saying that it is too complex.

Resilience is based on the ability to embrace the extremes -- while no becoming an extremist. ... **Most companies don't do paradox very well.** (emphasis by author) [2002] p.25f

If you're a wounded company, the other companies that have been around for a hundred years will smell it, and they will take advantage of you in a heartbeat. It takes a long time to get back in fighting form.

We must start with the reality that corporations cannot guarantee anyone a lifetime job any more than corporations have a guarantee of immortality.

In a difficult and uncertain environment, Renault remains on track to meet its 2012 objective.