Best 89 quotes of Rosabeth Moss Kanter on MyQuotes

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.

A great idea is not enough.

A great thinker once described innovative thinkers this way: "Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why?' I dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not?'" Innovative thinkers are constantly asking questions such as these. How can we improve recruiting, hiring and training. How can be add greater value to our products and services by making them even better? How can we do more to nourish the personal as well as professional development of our people? What more can we do as a good citizen where we do business?

America can restore its strengths as the world-respected land of opportunity by returning to open-society principles. An open society invests in people and new ideas, rewards talent and hard work, values dialogue and learns from dissent, operates to high standards with transparent information, looks for common ground, sees problems as opportunities for creative change, and encourages those who are fortunate to help others get the same chance, because service is the highest ideal. With such standards in mind, America the Beautiful can return to its admired role as America the Principled.

A self-reinforcing upward spiral: performance stimulating pride stimulating performance.

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.

Change is a threat when done to me, but an opportunity when done by me.

Change is like putting lipstick on a bulldog. The bulldog's appearance hasn't improved, but now it's really angry.

Change masters are - literally - the right people in the right place at the right time. The right people are the ones with the ideas that move beyond the organization's established practice, ideas they can form into visions. The right places are the integrative environments that support innovation, encourage the building of coalitions and teams to support and implement visions. The right times are those moments in the flow of organizational history when it is possible to reconstruct reality on the basis on accumulated innovations to shape a more productive and successful future.

Companies used to be able to function with autocratic bosses. We don't live in that world anymore.

Competition has never been more threatening than it is now. Innovative thinkers challenge the status quo in their organizations. They are often viewed as "troublemakers." They threaten the defenders of the status quo. So competition within an organization can also be brutal. The most effective leaders overcome "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom" by being change agents themselves. They encourage and reward innovative thinking. I have observed that people only resist changes imposed on them by other people.

Confidence is not just in people's heads; it comes from the culture of the organization. It's easier to expect success when working in an organization that has a culture of accountability, collaboration, and initiative. Without this, it's easier - and more self-protective - to assume failure so the person is not disappointed and instead pleasantly surprised.

Confidence is not lodged in people's brains, it comes from the support system that surrounds them. Let's not confuse confidence overall with just self-confidence. Self-confidence is only one part of confidence. People also need confidence in others - their colleagues and leaders - that they can count on them to do the right thing and not to let them down.

Confidence isn't optimism or pessimism, and it's not a character attribute. It's the expectation of a positive outcome.

Confidence is the bridge connecting expectations and performance, investment and results.

Confidence is the sweet spot between arrogance and despair-consisting of positive expectations for favorable outcomes.

Confidence makes you willing to try harder and attracts the kind of support from others that makes "winning" possible.

Corporate men and women, once divided by striking differences in opportunity for career growth, have come to share career chaos.

Creativity does not derive from order but from the attempt to impose order where it does not exist, to make new connections.

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.

During the Boom Years, it was so easy to lose sight of basic values. For example, there was lots of nonsense said and written about the so-called "New Economy." Some people said all economic laws have been overturned! Then all the problems developed. Corporations were heavily fined for illegalities. Many of their senior-level executives were indicted, convicted, and sent to prison.

Embrace change as an opportunity to learn, to improve, to make a difference in others' lives as well as in your own. Have the courage to challenge the status quo. Remember that preparation and ambition in combination with opportunity equals success. And have fun!

Even the new feminist research on sex-role socialization and sex differences has sometimes had the unfortunate consequence of creating a new set of stereotypes about what women feel and how women behave. Despite the large amount of overlap between the sexes in most research, the tendency to label and polarize and thus to exaggerate differences remains in much reporting of data, which may, for example, report the mean scores of male and female populations but not the degree of overlap.

Friendly people are caring people, eager to provide encouragement and support when needed most.

if networks of women are formed, they should be job related and task related rather than female-concerns related. Personal networks for sociability in the context of a work organization would tend to promote the image of women contained in the temperamental model - that companies must compensate for women's deficiencies and bring them together for support because they could not make it on their own. But job-related task forces serve the social-psychological functions while reinforcing a more positive image of women.

If world problems feel too big to tackle, think small. Step by step. Small wins build confidence, lead the way to change.

in most important ways, leaders of the future will need the traits and capabilities of leaders throughout history: an eye for change and a steadying hand to provide both vision and reassurance that change can be mastered, a voice that articulates the will of the group and shapes it to constructive ends, and an ability to inspire by force of personality while making others feel empowered to increase and use their own abilities.

Innovation is an outgrowth of initiative, and initiative - taking positive actions in a belief that your actions can make a difference - is a big part of confidence.

Innovative organizations provide the freedom to act which arouses the desire to act.

In the most innovative companies there is a significantly higher volume of thank yous than in companies of low innovation.

It is crucial to recognize, reward, and celebrate accomplishments.

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.

It takes courage to speak up against complacency and injustice while others remain silent. But that's what leadership is.

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.

I've found that small wins, small projects, small differences often make huge differences.

I was determined to achieve the total freedom that our history lessons taught us we were entitled to, no matter what the sacrifice.

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.

John Akers once said that changing IBM's culture was more difficult than getting elephants to dance. Of course it's really difficult, as Lou Gerstner also found out years later. The title of his own book is Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? He and his top executives were change masters at IBM. All organizations, especially the larger ones, will always need change masters. Dissatisfaction with the status quo and efforts to improve it should be encouraged rather than discouraged. Regrettably, that is often not the case.

Lack of opportunity breeds dreams of escape. But professionals and managers who have invested in their careers do not leave the work force as frequently as discouraged workers in lower status occupations. Instead, they keep working, but they escape emotionally by defining achievement in professional, not company, terms. ... Thus, the potential for being stuck as career uncertainty grows takes its toll in weakening attachment to any particular employer.

Leaders are more powerful role models when they learn than when they teach.

"Leadership" is a big topic today. We know that the world - nations and communities in addition to companies - needs more and better leaders. So I wanted to explore how leaders make a difference, how they can shift a negative cycle, turn around a losing organization, propel a team to victory when conditions aren't perfect. I saw that what leaders do is build confidence in advance of victory. Then the confidence they produce makes the hope of success turn into the reality of success, because people behave differently when they are surrounded by a culture of confidence.

Leadership is one of the most enduring, universal human responsibilities.

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.

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.

Life is full of cycles that have a way of perpetuating themselves. Success and failure both feed on themselves. Things can go downhill quickly, with people bogged down by ineffective behavior and poor teamwork, unless leaders intervene to shift the cycle.

Mindless habitual behavior is the enemy of innovation.

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.

Nations need to understand their own strengths and weaknesses, and India's tradition of dissent and democratic debate is a positive aspect.

Not everyone in an organization is in a position to accumulate power through competent performance because most people are just carrying out the ordinary and the expected - even if they do it very well. The extent to which a job is routinized fails to give an advantage to anyone doing it because 'success' is seen as inherent in the very establishment of the position and the organization surrounding it. Neither persons nor organizations get 'credit' for doing the mandatory or the expected.

One of the symptoms of a losing streak is a turnover of top executives. It's a revolving door.