Rosabeth Moss Kanter Quotes

Creativity is a lot like looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. You look at a set of elements, the same ones everyone else sees, but then reassemble those floating bits and pieces into an enticing new possibility.

One of the symptoms of a losing streak is a turnover of top executives. It's a revolving door.

Change is a threat when done to me, but an opportunity when done by me.

A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more.

Too many people let others stand in their way and don't go back for one more try.

Leaders are more powerful role models when they learn than when they teach.

The middle of every successful project looks like a disaster.

The most radical thing we can do is connect people to one another. That starts conversations toward a vision for change.

Mindless habitual behavior is the enemy of innovation.

People often resist change for reasons that make good sense to them, even if those reasons don't correspond to organizational goals. So it is crucial to recognize, reward, and celebrate accomplishments.

I've found that small wins, small projects, small differences often make huge differences.

Change masters are - literally - the right people in the right place at the right time. The right people are the ones with the ideas that move beyond the organization's established practice, ideas they can form into visions. The right places are the integrative environments that support innovation, encourage the building of coalitions and teams to support and implement visions. The right times are those moments in the flow of organizational history when it is possible to reconstruct reality on the basis on accumulated innovations to shape a more productive and successful future.

I've been looking at companies that are on a positive path vs. a negative path and I've come to use the language of sports, winning streaks and losing streaks.

Everything looks like a failure in the middle. In neary every change project, doubt is cast on the original vision because problems are mounting and the end is nowhere in sight.

Leaders must wake people out of inertia. They must get people excited about something they've never seen before, something that does not yet exist.

People who are making decisions about the future often don't have access to some of the best ideas in the company, which may be at the periphery or at lower levels.

Innovative organizations provide the freedom to act which arouses the desire to act.

The Martha Stewart trial makes clear how far women have risen in the business world. America can be proud of our equal-opportunity prosecution and conviction.

America can restore its strengths as the world-respected land of opportunity by returning to open-society principles. An open society invests in people and new ideas, rewards talent and hard work, values dialogue and learns from dissent, operates to high standards with transparent information, looks for common ground, sees problems as opportunities for creative change, and encourages those who are fortunate to help others get the same chance, because service is the highest ideal. With such standards in mind, America the Beautiful can return to its admired role as America the Principled.

Leaders must pick causes they won't abandon easily, remain committed despite setbacks, and communicate their big ideas over and over again in every encounter.

Everything looks like a failure in the middle.

To stay ahead, you must have your next idea waiting in the wings.

Embrace change as an opportunity to learn, to improve, to make a difference in others' lives as well as in your own. Have the courage to challenge the status quo. Remember that preparation and ambition in combination with opportunity equals success. And have fun!

Leaders is the new organisation do not lack motivational tools, but the tools are different from those of traditional corporate bureaucrats. The new rewards are based not on status but on contribution, and they consist not of regular promotion and automatic pay rises, but of excitement about the mission and a share of the glory of success.

... people are capable of more than their organizational positions ever give them the tools or the time or the opportunity to demonstrate.

in most important ways, leaders of the future will need the traits and capabilities of leaders throughout history: an eye for change and a steadying hand to provide both vision and reassurance that change can be mastered, a voice that articulates the will of the group and shapes it to constructive ends, and an ability to inspire by force of personality while making others feel empowered to increase and use their own abilities.

It takes courage to speak up against complacency and injustice while others remain silent. But that's what leadership is.

The architecture of change involves the design and construction of new patterns, or the reconceptualization of old ones, to make new, and hopefully more productive, actions possible.

Lack of opportunity breeds dreams of escape. But professionals and managers who have invested in their careers do not leave the work force as frequently as discouraged workers in lower status occupations. Instead, they keep working, but they escape emotionally by defining achievement in professional, not company, terms. ... Thus, the potential for being stuck as career uncertainty grows takes its toll in weakening attachment to any particular employer.

Passion for a goal doesn't guarantee success, but without it, you can't even begin.

A great thinker once described innovative thinkers this way: "Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why?' I dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not?'" Innovative thinkers are constantly asking questions such as these. How can we improve recruiting, hiring and training. How can be add greater value to our products and services by making them even better? How can we do more to nourish the personal as well as professional development of our people? What more can we do as a good citizen where we do business?

Power is the ability to get things done

If world problems feel too big to tackle, think small. Step by step. Small wins build confidence, lead the way to change.

Confidence makes you willing to try harder and attracts the kind of support from others that makes "winning" possible.

The boomers' biggest impact will be on eliminating the term 'retirement' and inventing a new stage of life... the new career arc.

Powerlessness corrupts: absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely.

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.

The degree to which the opportunity to use power effectively is granted to or withheld from individuals is one operative difference between those companies which stagnate and those which innovate.

What being among the 'right people' entails is the possession of human capital, rather than organizational capital: an individual reputation, portable skills, and network connections. Career responsibility is squarely in the hands of individuals, a function of their knowledge and networks. Transferable knowledge is more important to a career than firm-specific knowledge.

The difference between "winners" and "losers" is not whether they face obstacles and setbacks - we all do, and it is inevitable that plans do not unfold exactly as imagined or that unexpected events surprise us or that a few mistakes happen. The real difference is that "winners" bounce back from a fumble or a loss by refusing to panic, analyzing the situation and looking for positive actions they can take to correct the problem, and then go on to resume winning.

Our future will be shaped by the assumptions we make about who we are and what we can be.

Confidence isn't optimism or pessimism, and it's not a character attribute. It's the expectation of a positive outcome.

Confidence is the bridge connecting expectations and performance, investment and results.

Change is like putting lipstick on a bulldog. The bulldog's appearance hasn't improved, but now it's really angry.

Change demands new learning.

"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.

The very lack of opportunity the group faces creates a self-defeating cycle and puts pressure on members to limit their aspirations.

The commune movement is part of a reawakening of belief in the possibilities for utopia that existed in the nineteenth century and exist again today, a belief that by creating the right social institution, human satisfaction and growth can be achieved.

I was determined to achieve the total freedom that our history lessons taught us we were entitled to, no matter what the sacrifice.

The goal of winning is not losing two times in a row.