CHARLES HANDY

The companies that survive longest are the one's that work out what they uniquely can give to the world not just growth or money but their excellence, their respect for others, or their ability to make people happy. Some call those things a soul.

Instead of a national curriculum for education, what is really needed is an individual curriculum for every child.

I like less the story that a frog if put in cold water will not bestir itself if that water is heated up slowly and gradually and will in the end let itself be killed, boiled alive, too comfortable with continuity to realize that continuous change at some point may become intolerable and demand a change in behaviour.

Learning is experience understood in tranquility.

A consultant solves other people"s problems. I could never do that. I want to help other people solve their own problems.

The best learning happens in real life with real problems and real people and not in classrooms.

A good team is a great place to be, exciting, stimulating, supportive, successful. A bad team is horrible, a sort of human prison.

Profit has to be a means to other ends rather than an end in itself.

You have to stand outside the box to see how the box can be re-designed.

Creativity needs a bit of untidiness. Make everything too neat and there is no room for experiment.

A leader shapes and shares a vision, which gives point to the work of others.

Presidents, leaders, to be effective have to represent the whole to the parts and to the world outside. They may live in the centre but they must not be the centre. To reinforce the common sense they must be a constant teacher, ever travelling, ever talking, ever listening, the chief missionary of the common cause.

Competition is healthy ... but there is more to life than winning or we should nearly all be losers

Creativity is born of chaos, even if it is somewhat difficult to glimpse the possibilities in the midst of the confusion.

The first step is to measure whatever can easily be measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.

Some of my unhappiest moments have been in organizations. Somehow it seems to be quite respectable to do things in organizations that you would never do in private life. I have had people insult me to my face in front of colleagues. I have had my feelings rammed down my throat on the pretext that it would do me good. I have been required to do things which I didn't agree with because the organization wished it... In my worst moments I have thought organizations were places designed to be run by sadists and staffed by masochists.

Most of us prefer to walk backward into the future, a posture that may be uncomfortable but which at least allows us to keep on looking at familiar things as long as we can.

Purpose, pattern, and people, the three P's at the heart of life.

In a knowledge economy, a good business is a community with a purpose, not a piece of property.

An economy that adds value through information, ideas, and intelligence-the Three I Economy-offers a way out of the apparent clash between material growth and environmental resources.

The moment will arrive when you are comfortable with who you are, and what you are- bald or old or fat or poor, successful or struggling- when you don't feel the need to apologize for anything or to deny anything. To be comfortable in your own skin is the beginning of strength.

If there is one general law of communication it is that we never communicate as effectively as we think we do.

The sobering thought is that individuals and societies are not, in the end, remembered for how they made their money, but for how they spent it.

Forget land, buildings, or machines-the real source of wealth today is intelligence, applied intelligence. We talk glibly of "intellectual property" without taking on board what it really means. It isn't just patent rights and brand names; it is the brains of the place.

Life can only be understood backwards but you have to live it forward. You can only do that by stepping into uncertainty and by trying, within this uncertainty, to create your own islands of security....The new security will be a belief that ...if this doesn't work out you could do something else. You are your own security.