Gary Hamel Quotes

I think I've changed my business strategy every year since 2003. You have to be watching the horizon constantly. The rug has been pulled out from under our feet so many times.

You don't know what's going to happen in our business a year from now... so you have to be flexible and adaptable, and that's what we try to do.

I want to be like water. I want to slip through fingers, but hold up a ship.

There are any number of conditions as to why your life didn't turn out the way you intended it to. My whole philosophy has always been that there is no way to change anything else in the world if you don't have the capacity to change yourself.

Life is a continuous process of adjustment.

The sudden and abrupt removal of my all-consuming goal ... well, it was like I was a donut, and somebody had sucked all the jelly out of me. But I could stuff new jelly in there. It would just get my hands a little sticky in the process.

I really have always thought of myself as somebody who lives in the middle of the wheel and is able to go to the extreme, to the outside of the wheel in any direction. The best case scenario for me is to be able to be centered and then go out.

When the worms are scarce, what does a hen do? Does she stop scratching? She does not. She scratches all the harder. A lot of businessmen have been showing less sense than a hen since orders became scarce. They have laid off salesmen; they have stopped or reduced their advertising; they have simply resigned themselves to inaction and, of course, to pessimism. If a hen knows enough to scratch all the harder when the worms are scarce, surely businessmen ... ought to have gumption enough to scratch all the harder for business.

The only way to avoid disruption is to constantly do what you would if you were just starting out.

Life and business is like the changing seasons. You cannot change the seasons, but you can change yourself. Therein lies the opportunity to live an extraordinary life, the opportunity to change yourself.

Quantum mechanics is just completely strange and counterintuitive. We can't believe that things can be here [in one place] and there [in another place] at the same time. And yet that's a fundamental piece of quantum mechanics. So then the question is, life is dealing us weird lemons, can we make some weird lemonade from this?

Life has three rules: Paradox, Humor, and Change. - Paradox: Life is a mystery; don't waste your time trying to figure it out. - Humor: Keep a sense of humor, especially about yourself. It is a strength beyond all measure - Change: Know that nothing ever stays the same.

The only sane response to change is to find the opportunity in it.

To finish first you have to first finish. Don't get in a position where you go back to go. What's interesting is that some guy whose grandfather was a lawyer and a judge-hurriedly going to Harvard Law with a wave of veterans-I was willing to go into so many different businesses. I was constantly going right into the other fellow's business and doing better than the other fellow did. The reason it was possible? Self-education- developing mental discipline, big ideas that really work.

Strange that creatures without backbones have the hardest shells.

And remember: Everything in business is a paradox. To be excellent, you have to be consistent. When you're consistent, you're vulnerable to attack. Yes, it's a paradox. Now deal with it!

It is not balance you need but adaptability.

Maybe weakness is a strength of a kind.

Many things are linked to being able to live with uncertainty, ...with paradoxes. But this can be a strength of an organisation and a situation.

Go around the problem; get the system sufficiently resilient so that it is able to change, and it will change, It doesn't have to be forced. It's that forcing that you have to avoid at all costs.

Just because your environment or living space changes doesn't mean that your attitude necessarily has to change.

Look, I learned from your uncle that when the universe turns out to be insane, the wise man embraces insanity.

Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations

One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it.