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" If corporate leaders and their acolytes are not slaves to some meritorious social purpose, they run the risk of being enslaved by their own ignoble appetites. "

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" An adaptable company is one that captures more than its fair share of new opportunities. It's always redefining its 'core business' in ways that open up new avenues for growth. "

Gary Hamel

Opportunities

Company

Business

" An enterprise that is constantly exploring new horizons is likely to have a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining talent. "

" A titled leader relies heavily on positional power to get things done; a natural leader is able to mobilize others without the whip of formal authority. "

" Obviously, you don't have to be religious to be moral, and beastly people are sometimes religious. "

" It's not just that individuals have lost faith in the integrity of their leaders, it's that they no longer believe society's most powerful institutions are acting in their interests. "

" In most companies, the formal hierarchy is a matter of public record - it's easy to discover who's in charge of what. By contrast, natural leaders don't appear on any organization chart. "

" A well-conceived product excels at what it does. It's close to being functionally flawless - like a Ziploc bag, a radio from Tivoli Audio, a Philips Sonicare toothbrush, a Nespresso coffee maker or Google's home page. "

" A noble purpose inspires sacrifice, stimulates innovation and encourages perseverance. "

" To escape the curse of commoditization, a company has to be a game-changer, and that requires employees who are proactive, inventive and zealous. "

" Building human-centered organizations doesn't imply a return to the paternalistic, corporate welfare practices of the 19th century. Most of us don't want to be nannied. "

" Today, no leader can afford to be indifferent to the challenge of engaging employees in the work of creating the future. Engagement may have been optional in the past, but it's pretty much the whole game today. "

" In most languages, 'control' is the first synonym for the word 'manage.' Control is about spotting and correcting deviations from pre-defined standards; thus to control, one must first constrain. "

" Top-down authority structures turn employees into bootlickers, breed pointless struggles for political advantage, and discourage dissent. "

" We owe our existence to innovation. Our species exists thanks to four billion years of genetic innovation. "

" What's true for churches is true for other institutions: the older and more organized they get, the less adaptable they become. That's why the most resilient things in our world - biological life, stock markets, the Internet - are loosely organized. "

" It's not unusual for a would-be entrepreneur to get turned down half a dozen times before finding a willing investor - yet in most companies, it takes only one 'nyet' to kill a project stone dead. "

" If organized religion has become less relevant, it's not because churches have held fast to their creedal beliefs - it's because they've held fast to their conventional structures, programs, roles and routines. "

" The fact is, society is made more hospitable by every individual who acts as if 'do unto others' really was a rule. "

" Management innovation is going to be the most enduring source of competitive advantage. There will be lots of rewards for firms in the vanguard. "

" I live a half mile from the San Andreas fault - a fact that bubbles up into my consciousness every time some other part of the world experiences an earthquake. I sometimes wonder whether this subterranean sense of impending disaster is at least partly responsible for Silicon Valley's feverish, get-it-done-yesterday work norms. "

" To create an organization that's adaptable and innovative, people need the freedom to challenge precedent, to 'waste' time, to go outside of channels, to experiment, to take risks and to follow their passions. "

" In a world of commoditized knowledge, the returns go to the companies who can produce non-standard knowledge. "

Gary Hamel

World

Companies

" As the great grandchildren of the industrial revolution, we have learned, at last, that the heedless pursuit of more is unsustainable and, ultimately, unfulfilling. Our planet, our security, our sense of equanimity and our very souls demand something better, something different. "

" An uplifting sense of purpose is more than an impetus for individual accomplishment, it is also a necessary insurance policy against expediency and impropriety. "

Gary Hamel

Insurance

Accomplishment

" The biggest barriers to strategic renewal are almost always top management's unexamined beliefs. "

" Trust is not simply a matter of truthfulness, or even constancy. It is also a matter of amity and goodwill. We trust those who have our best interests at heart, and mistrust those who seem deaf to our concerns. "

" Most of us do more than subsist. From the vantage point of our ancestors, we live lives of almost unimaginable ease. Here again, we have innovation to thank. "

" At the pinnacle of great design are products so gorgeous and lust-worthy that you want to lick them: a Porsche 911, Samsung's Luxia TV, an Eames lounge chair or anything by Loro Piana. "

" In most organizations, change comes in only two flavors: trivial and traumatic. Review the history of the average organization and you'll discover long periods of incremental fiddling punctuated by occasional bouts of frantic, crisis-driven change. "

" While one should never underestimate the ability of risk-besotted financiers to wreak havoc, the real threat to capitalism isn't unfettered financial cunning. It is, instead, the unwillingness of executives to confront the changing expectations of their stakeholders. "