Top 89 Quotes & Sayings by John P. Kotter

We worry about appearing awkward in a presentation. But up to a point, most people seem to feel more comfortable with less-than-perfect speaking abilities. It makes the speaker more human - and more vulnerable, meaning he is less likely to attack our decisions or beliefs.

If the culture you have is radically different from an 'experiment and take-risk' culture, then you have a big change you going to have to make - and no little gimmicks are going to do it for you.

Innovation is kind of a sub-piece of change.

Many years ago, I think I got my first insight on how an incredibly diverse team can work together and do astonishing things, and not just misunderstand each other and fight.

All organizations start with a structure that looks like a dynamic solar system. They can be very fast, agile. They attract people who play around with crazy ideas.

Great leaders understand that historical success tends to produce stable and inwardly focused organizations, and these outfits, in turn, reinforce a feeling of contentment with the status quo.

Every organization goes through a lifecycle where they eventually lose their initial speed or agility at a strategic level.

Tradition is a very powerful force.

I am always looking for stories that will shed light on how companies define themselves - for better or for worse. When shared with others, such stories can have an enormous impact on how well we move forward in the changing world around us.

Over the years I have become convinced that we learn best - and change - from hearing stories that strike a chord within us.

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 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.

If people think the boss is manipulating them to get them to work harder, it backfires.

A higher rate of urgency does not imply ever-present panic, anxiety, or fear. It means a state in which complacency is virtually absent.

It's very difficult to innovate without requiring people to do something different. And whenever you require people to do something different, you're talking about change.

In terms of getting people to experiment more and take more risk, there are at least three things that immediately come to my mind. Number one, of course, is role-modeling it yourself. Number two is, when people take intelligent, smart risks and yet it doesn't work out, not shooting them. And number three, being honest with yourself.

Leadership is always about change: it's not about mobilising people to do what they've always done well to continue to do it well.

The world has 6 billion people and counting. We need to help 500 million people become better leaders so that billions can benefit.

Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there.

In an ever changing world, you never learn it all, even if you keep growing into your 90s.

True urgent leadership doesn't drain people. It does the opposite. It energizes them. It makes them feel excited.

Because management deals mostly with the status quo and leadership deals mostly with change, in the next century we are going to have to try to become much more skilled at creating leaders.

Managers are trained to make incremental, programmatic improvements. They aren't trained to lead large-scale change.

Urgency is unbelievably important when you're talking about, not little changes, but big changes.

Neurologists say that our brains are programmed much more for stories than for abstract ideas. Tales with a little drama are remembered far longer than any slide crammed with analytics.

Those in leadership positions who fail to grasp or use the power of stories risk failure for their companies and for themselves.

Sometimes it doesn't hurt to talk around a little and see what lights people's eyes up and what makes them cloud over.

If you're overbooked, you can't manage pressing problems or even recognize they're pressing until too late.

I'm impatient. Typically people think they know all about change and don't need help. Their approach tends to be more management-oriented than leadership-oriented. It's very frustrating.

Low lights signal to our senses that the workday may be over and it's time for sleep, making it hard for an audience to pay careful attention. When we stand behind a big wooden podium, it can feel as if there's a shield between us and the audience.

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

We are always creating new tools and techniques to help people, but the fundamental framework is remarkably resilient, which means it must have something to do with the nature of organizations or human nature.

More and more I'm finding that I'm reading history, I'm reading biography, I'm reading autobiography for a sense of people who've been able to provide leadership. I don't read leadership books anymore.

We started Kotter International to improve leaders' ability to deal with big, important transformations in organizations - and in their lives.

Globalization is going to bring us closer and closer together across nations and technology you can't stop.

The rate of change is not going to slow down anytime soon. If anything, competition in most industries will probably speed up even more in the next few decades.

The dry academic tomes I wrote very early in my career were earnest reflections of the research I conducted, the analysis I applied and the conclusions I drew. And they had few readers, mostly other academics. I learned along the way and started including more and more stories in my work.

At any one time the world has a very limited number of Steve Jobs or Winston Churchills or Thomas Watson the firsts. These are wonderful people and we can learn much from them, but praying for a few more of them to solve the world's problems is not a great idea.

Congress is full of people who get reelected and reelected. How can you have urgency when there are all of those safe seats?

Leadership produces change. That is its primary function

Motivation and inspiration energize people, not by pushing them in the right direction as control mechanisms do but by satisfying basic human needs for achievement, a sense of belonging, recognition, self-esteem, a feeling of control over one's life, and the ability to live up to one's ideals. Such feelings touch us deeply and elicit a powerful response.

A culture truly changes only when a new way of operating has been shown to succeed over some minimum period of time.

We learn best - and change - from hearing stories that strike a chord within us.

The heart of change is in the emotions.

In a change effort, culture comes last, not first.

We see, we feel, we change.

Changing behavior is less a matter of giving people analysis to influence their thoughts than helping them to see a truth to influence their feelings.

Leadership defines what the future should look like, aligns people with that vision, and inspires them to make it happen despite the obstacles.

Effective leaders help others to understand the necessity of change and to accept a common vision of the desired outcome.

Without credible communication, and a lot of it, the hearts and minds of others are never captured.

Never underestimate the power of a good story.

Never underestimate the magnitude of the power of the forces that reinforce the status quo.

Good communication is not just data transfer. You need to show people something that addresses their anxieties, that accepts their anger, that is credible in a very gut-level sense, and that evokes faith in the vision.

Producing major change in an organization is not just about signing up one charismatic leader. You need a group - a team - to be able to drive the change. One person, even a terrific charismatic leader, is never strong enough to make all this happen.

Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there; they cause change. They motivate and inspire others to go in the right direction and they, along with everyone else, sacrifice to get there.

Leadership is about coping with change

The central issue is never strategy, structure, culture, or systems. The core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people.

Overcoming complacency is crucial at the start of any change process, and it often requires a little bit of surprise, something that grabs attention at more than an intellectual level. You need to surprise people with something that disturbs their view that everything is perfect.

Leadership is about setting a direction. It's about creating a vision, empowering and inspiring people to want to achieve the vision, and enabling them to do so with energy and speed through an effective strategy. In its most basic sense, leadership is about mobilizing a group of people to jump into a better future.

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.