LEADERS ARE PRECIPITATORS
their procedures, and organizations that were designed to
achieve some goal become obstacles in the path to that goal.^22
- Organizational change requires individual change and
growth, first and foremost among our leaders...Change agents
lead not on the basis of power or position, but on the force
of their arguments. They challenge the status quo...with the
very values and principles that define the organization...that
is what it means to be a change agent: to plant and to sow new
possibilities, and to tend them with passion and conviction.^23
- No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards
a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We
cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or by
emotional appeal.^24
- People can’t live with change if there’s not a changeless core
inside them. The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense
of who you are, what you are about and what you value.^25
- Leaders face the danger of contentment with the status quo.
After all, if a leader already possesses influence and has
achieved a level of respect, why should he keep growing?
The answer is simple: Your growth determines who you
are. Who you are determines who you attract. Who you
attract determines the success of your organization.^26
- Henry Ford reminds us that it isn’t the incompetent who
destroys an organization. The incompetent never get into a
position to destroy it. It is those who have achieved something
and want to rest on their achievements...To keep an industry
pure, you’ve got to keep it in perpetual ferment.^27
- “There is nothing more vulnerable than entrenched success. You
become a prisoner of what you’ve done in the past.” (George
Romney)^28
- So beware of the comfortable rut! Comfort comes as a guest,
lingers to become a host, and stays to enslave us. If you are
a leader...you must never let up. The longer you stay in a
position of leadership the harder this becomes...But in the
