John P. Kotter

Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there.

If the culture you have is radically different from an 'experiment and take-risk' culture, then you have a big change you going to have to make - and no little gimmicks are going to do it for you.

Tradition is a very powerful force.

Great leaders understand that historical success tends to produce stable and inwardly focused organizations, and these outfits, in turn, reinforce a feeling of contentment with the status quo.

True urgent leadership doesn't drain people. It does the opposite. It energizes them. It makes them feel excited.

I am often asked about the difference between 'change management' and 'change leadership,' and whether it's just a matter of semantics. These terms are not interchangeable.

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

We are always creating new tools and techniques to help people, but the fundamental framework is remarkably resilient, which means it must have something to do with the nature of organizations or human nature.

Urgency is unbelievably important when you're talking about, not little changes, but big changes.

Over the years I have become convinced that we learn best - and change - from hearing stories that strike a chord within us.

Managers are trained to make incremental, programmatic improvements. They aren't trained to lead large-scale change.

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.