Change Readiness Quotes

Designing and implementing a strategy for change is a waste of time until you have discovered and embraced the current reality. If you don't know where you really are, it is impossible to get where you need to be.

Competent people are the most resistant to change

The world is changing quickly and we must be ready to change with it or risk being left behind.

I came in 1949, and all of us thought the climate was not just ripe for change. We often delay adjudication. [I]t’s [sic] not a question of evading at all. It’s just the practicalities of life – common sense.

But I was always a bit of a gypsy, anyway. I spent five years at Oklahoma State, five years at Miami and moved on after winning the national championship, and five years with the Cowboys. So, I was ready to move on. We won back-to-back Super Bowls, and I felt that I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish.

In spite of warnings, nothing much happens until the status quo becomes more painful than change.

We're betting, at this place and this time, we have people ready for change in the state of Maryland.

I'm always ready for a change. I'm Irish. I'm a leprechaun.

You need to be ready, to adapt quickly and learn fast.

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

There are companies which are prepared to change the way they work. They realize that nothing can be based on what used to be, that there is a better way. But, 99 percent of companies are not ready, [they are] caught in an industrial Jurassic Park.

I still believe we wasted a golden opportunity to make significant changes in our country. I think people in America would have been ready and willing to do it, but the Bush administration took a kind of simplistic, almost moronic approach to it, all because people were so afraid.

Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation. To do a ritual, you must be willing to be transformed in some way. The inner willingness is what makes the ritual come alive and have power. If you aren't willing to be changed by the ritual, don't do it.

A revolution without a prior reformation would collapse or become a totalitarian tyranny. A reformation means that masses of our people have reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values. They don't know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating, and hopeless. They won't act for change but won't strongly oppose those who do. The time is then ripe for revolution

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'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.

The business changes. The technology changes. The team changes. The team members change. The problem isn't change, per se, because change is going to happen; the problem, rather, is the inability to cope with change when it comes.

Remember that life's big changes rarely give advance warning.

Those that recognize the inevitability of change stand to benefit the most from it.

If nothing is declared unchangeable, then the organization will resist all change.

Anyone in a large organization who thinks major change is impossible should probably get out.

My father was a progressive farmer, and was always ready to lay aside an old plough if he could replace it with one better constructed for its work. All through life, I have ever been ready to buy a better plough.

People in both parties are restless for change, ready to break free of old patterns in Washington. And Democrats are about to anoint someone who represents everything this country is tired of.

The letters I get on the Internet and the responses to my books make it very clear that something is trying to happen. And I'm just one person. There are millions of people really ready to go. We're just not sure where to go yet.