A Quote by John P. Kotter

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.

John P. Kotter

Quote Topics

Contentment Feeling Focused Great Great Leader Great Leaders Historical Leaders Organizations Outfits Produce Quo Reinforce Stable Status Status Quo Success Tends Turn Understand

Quote Author

John P. Kotter
American - Educator
Born: February 25, 1947

Organizations that destroy the status quo win. Whatever the status quo is, changing it gives you the opportunity to be remarkable.

Seth Godin

It is time to put policy ahead of politics and success ahead of the status quo. It is time for a new strategy to produce what we need: a stable Iraq government that takes over for its own people so our troops can finish their job.

Hillary Clinton

Managers maintain an efficient status quo while leaders attack the status quo to create something new.

Orrin Woodward

Competition has never been more threatening than it is now. Innovative thinkers challenge the status quo in their organizations. They are often viewed as "troublemakers." They threaten the defenders of the status quo. So competition within an organization can also be brutal. The most effective leaders overcome "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom" by being change agents themselves. They encourage and reward innovative thinking. I have observed that people only resist changes imposed on them by other people.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Our feeling is that the status quo often gets a boost and this is the new status quo.

Nigel Farage

As a black woman, I have no particular interest in maintaining the status quo. Why would I? The status quo is harmful; the status quo is significantly racist and sexist and a whole bunch of other things that I think need to change.

N. K. Jemisin

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

John P. Kotter

Innovation often originates outside existing organizations, in part because successful organizations acquire a commitment to the status quo and a resistance to ideas that might change it

Nathan Rosenberg

In the face of ambiguity, uncertainty, and conflicting demands, often under great time pressure, leaders must make decisions and take effective actions to assure the survival and success of their organizations. This is how leaders add value to their organizations. They lead them to success by exercising good judgment, by making smart calls when especially difficult and complicated decisions simply must be made, and then ensuring that they are well executed.

Warren G. Bennis

By going from the bottom-up again, we see where successes work, and you can also see where the status quo can be the biggest obstacle or roadblock to success. The kind of entrepreneurs in whom we need to invest are the kind who are willing to fight that status quo, bureaucracy, complacency, and corruption.

Jacqueline Novogratz

"Leadership" is a big topic today. We know that the world - nations and communities in addition to companies - needs more and better leaders. So I wanted to explore how leaders make a difference, how they can shift a negative cycle, turn around a losing organization, propel a team to victory when conditions aren't perfect. I saw that what leaders do is build confidence in advance of victory. Then the confidence they produce makes the hope of success turn into the reality of success, because people behave differently when they are surrounded by a culture of confidence.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter

What we [writers] do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.

Junot Diaz

In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.

Barbara Tuchman

Greatness is telling the truth & being courageous in pursuit of justice. The worst thing you could tell young people is to be successful but become well-adjusted to an unjust status quo as opposed to being great & being maladjusted to an unjust status quo.