Top 75 Rosabeth Quotes
#1. The middle of every successful project looks like a disaster. - Rosabeth Moss Cantor
Anonymous
#2. When you fail at something, the best thing to do is think back to your successes, and try to replicate whatever you did to make them happen.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#3. Confidence makes you willing to try harder and attracts the kind of support from others that makes "winning" possible.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#4. Power is America's last dirty word. It is easier to talk about money - and much easier to talk about sex - than it is to talk about power.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#5. 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.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#6. If world problems feel too big to tackle, think small. Step by step. Small wins build confidence, lead the way to change.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#7. I wonder whether there has been too much emphasis on teaching women to conform, to fit into the system. Certainly that suits conservative organizations in conservative times. But now ... innovation and creativity are necessary.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#8. Cheap labor is not going to be the way we compete in the United States. It's going to be brain power.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#10. 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.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#11. Companies used to be able to function with autocratic bosses. We don't live in that world anymore.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#12. 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.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#13. Leaders are more powerful role models when they learn than when they teach.
Rosabeth Moss Kantor
#15. The more closed the circle, the more difficult it is for 'outsiders' to break in. Their very difficulty in entering may be taken as a sign of incompetence, a sign that the insiders were right to close their ranks.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#16. Change is disturbing when it is done to us, exhilarating when it is done by us.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#17. In the most innovative companies there is a significantly higher volume of thank yous than in companies of low innovation.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#18. Passion for a goal doesn't guarantee success, but without it, you can't even begin.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#19. You can always buy something in English, you can't always sell something in English.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#22. The very lack of opportunity the group faces creates a self-defeating cycle and puts pressure on members to limit their aspirations.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#23. Tribalism reflects strong ethnic or cultural identities that separate members of one group from another, making them loyal to people like them and suspicious of outsiders, which undermines efforts to forge common cause across groups.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#24. The way innovating companies are designed leaves ambiguities, overlaps, decision conflicts or decision vacuums in some parts of the organisation. People rail at this, curse it-and invent innovative ways to overcome it.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#25. 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.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#26. Innovative organizations provide the freedom to act which arouses the desire to act.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#27. Creativity does not derive from order but from the attempt to impose order where it does not exist, to make new connections.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#28. I was determined to achieve the total freedom that our history lessons taught us we were entitled to, no matter what the sacrifice.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#29. Friendly people are caring people, eager to provide encouragement and support when needed most.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#30. We have a large pool of talented and educated women, and yet workplaces haven't necessarily changed to accommodate the reality of their lives.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#31. 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.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#32. 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.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#33. I see the level of sophistication and knowledge about business growing dramatically. Several decades ago, only a few companies thought about international business.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#34. 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.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#35. I've found that small wins, small projects, small differences often make huge differences.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#36. Confidence isn't optimism or pessimism, and it's not a character attribute. It's the expectation of a positive outcome.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#37. The boomers' biggest impact will be on eliminating the term 'retirement' and inventing a new stage of life ... the new career arc.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#39. Too many people let others stand in their way and don't go back for one more try.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#40. Corporate men and women, once divided by striking differences in opportunity for career growth, have come to share career chaos.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#41. After years of telling corporate citizens to 'trust the system,' many companies must relearn instead to trust their people - and encourage their people to use neglected creative capacities in order to tap the most potent economic stimulus of all: idea power.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#42. Ambivalence about family responsibilities has a long history in the corporate world.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#44. To take full advantage of the potential in e-business, leaders must lead differently, and people must work together differently. Let's call this new way of working e-culture-the human side of the global information era, the heart and soul of the new economy.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#45. My creative process involves that old saying: It's 90% perspiration and only 10% inspiration.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#46. The most radical thing we can do is connect people to one another. That starts conversations toward a vision for change.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#47. The importance of discretion increases with closeness to the top of a hierarchical organization.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#48. People are capable of more than their organizational positions ever give them the tools or the time or the opportunity to demonstrate.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#49. 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.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#52. Change is like putting lipstick on a bulldog. The bulldog's appearance hasn't improved, but now it's really angry.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#53. A basic truth of management - if not of life - is that nearly everything looks like a failure in the middle.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#55. Confidence is the sweet spot between arrogance and despair-consisting of positive expectations for favorable outcomes.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#56. Nations need to understand their own strengths and weaknesses, and India's tradition of dissent and democratic debate is a positive aspect.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#57. The creative process for me doesn't work as well without an image of an audience in mind.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#58. Power stems from 'rainmaking,' as law firms put it: the ability to bring resources into the company.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#59. It takes courage to speak up against complacency and injustice while others remain silent. But that's what leadership is.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#60. 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.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#61. 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.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#63. 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.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#64. The best way for business to move out of the Hall of Shame is to demonstrate a commitment to social causes. This also makes business sense. A focus on solving social problems has motivational benefits in lean economic times.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#66. Winning becomes easier over time as the cornerstones of confidence become habits.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#67. Perpetuating success or sliding into decline is the result of many intersecting forces that reinforce one another directly and indirectly. They are both cause and effect of winning or losing. Winning generates positive forces, losing generates negative forces.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#68. It is easier to talk about money
and much easier to talk about sex
than it is to talk about power. People who have it deny it; people who want it do not want to appear to hunger for it; and people who engage in its machinations do so secretly.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#69. Confidence is contagious, but so is failure. Even the Yankees will lose if you persuade them that they will.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#70. One of the symptoms of a losing streak is a turnover of top executives. It's a revolving door.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#71. Throughout human history, people have developed strong loyalties to traditions, rituals, and symbols. In the most effective organizations, they are not only respected but celebrated. It is no coincidence that the most highly admired corporations are also among the most profitable.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#72. Confidence is the bridge connecting expectations and performance, investment and results.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#73. Pessimists see problems as stemming from stable and universal causes, thus making them less susceptible to corrective action. Optimists, in contrast, view problems as temporary and resulting from specific factors that will either change or be changed.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#74. Our future will be shaped by the assumptions we make about who we are and what we can be.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
#75. Money should never be separated from values. Detached from values it may indeed be the root of all evil. Linked effectively to social purpose it can be the root of opportunity.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
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