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.

A basic truth of management - if not of life - is that nearly everything looks like a failure in the middle.

Too many people let others stand in their way and don't go back for one more try.

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

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

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.

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