Outsight gives insight!
Challenge the Process
Achieving your vision means change, challenging the status quo. The fifth leadership commitment is to search for opportunities to innovate, to grow and to improve. You will accomplish this by seizing the initiative and by exercising outsight, looking everywhere for useful ideas. The sixth is to experiment and take risks. Incremental changes, generating small wins and learning from mistakes are all excellent strategies for you: ordinary people can achieve extraordinary things in a step-by-step process. Great leaders are great learners.
Inspiring Quotes … from our collection. Will some suggest adjustments to your attitudes and behaviours?
“Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.
Leo Rosten”
“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
Winston Churchill”
“Don’t be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard.
Colin Powell”
“Don’t be afraid to go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.
Unknown”
“Entrepreneurs see change as the norm and as healthy. Usually they do not bring about the change themselves. But - and this defines entrepreneur and entrepreneurship - the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as opportunity.
Peter Drucker
Management Writer”
“For every hundred men hacking away at the leaves of a diseased tree, only one man stoops to inspect the roots.
Chinese Proverb”
“I can’t understand why people are frightened by new deas. I’m frightened of old ones.”
John Cage”
“Ideas, Relationships & Adventure
Ideas are the basis for change, for re-invention, for, yes, intellectual capital. Relationships have to do with outstanding people working in harmony and openness, where everyone feels empowered, where all members feel included and at the center of things, where they feel competent and significant. And adventure has to do with risk, with a bias toward action, with curiosity and courage. And the challenge of leadership is to create the social architecture where ideas, relationships, and adventure can flourish.
Warren Bennis”
“If everyone is thinking alike then somebody isn’t thinking.”
George S. Patton, Jr.”
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said, “Faster horses.”
Henry Ford”
“If our people can’t speak openly, they won’t be able to think openly.
Aaron Yohnke”
“Routine work drives out non-routine work and smothers to death all creative planning, for fundamental change in any institution.
Warren Bennis”
“How many people are trapped in their everyday habits: part numb, part frightened, part indifferent? To have a better life, we must keep choosing how we’re living.”
Albert Einstein,
1879 – 1955, German theoretical physicist”
“If you want to truly understand something, try to change it.
Kurt Lewin”
“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.”
Maya Angelou”
“If you want to be successful, put your effort into controlling the sail, not the wind.
Unattributed”
“Insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein”
“In time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. Those who have finished learning find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)
Longshoreman and philosopher”
“Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
Dalai Lama”
“Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
James Joyce”
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead”
“Leadership is inextricably connected with the process of innovation, of bringing new ideas, methods, or solutions into use.”
Rosabeth Moss Kanter”
“Never test the depth of the water with both feet.
Old African Proverb”
“No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions.
Stenmetz”
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
James Baldwin
American Writer and Social Critic”
“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.
Emile Chartier
French Philosopher”
“Only challenge produces the opportunity for greatness.
Kouzes & Posner”
“Patterns become our prisons.
Dewitt Jones”
“The big thing is don’t be afraid to fail … I think when you have a rough day, you’re feeling you can’t – failure is a part of your life. I wouldn’t be up here if I hadn’t failed a million times. When you struggle In your life, it’s an opportunity to grow. If there’s something going on in your life, embrace it.
Nick Foles
Philadelphia Eagles Quarterback”
“The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension between opposites.
Carl Gustav Jung”
“Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.
Henry J. Kaiser”
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually fearing that you’ll make one.
Elbert Hubbard
American Writer and Philosopher”
“The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot lead ... It will be the person who does not know how to learn.
Alvin Toffler”
“The important thing is to never stop questioning.
Albert Einstein”
“The power to command frequently causes failure to think.
Barbara Tuchman”
“The road to wisdom? - Well, it’s plain and simple to express:
Err and err and err again
but less and less and less.
Piet Hein”
“We have to learn how to abandon ourselves to people who can do things we can’t do. That requires humility and vulnerability. It’s a high risk business. But it’s not nearly as high-risk as the herd mentality.
Max Depree
Miller Chairman Emeritus”
“The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences. . . The world doesn’t fear a new idea. It can pigeon-hole any idea. But it can’t pigeon-hole a real new experience.
D.H. Lawrence,
English novelist”
“When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
Dalai Lama”
“There’s always a creative solution to what looks like a dead-end.
Anthony Von Mandl”
“When you’re through changing, you’re through.
Bruce Barton”
“You know, I’m all for progress. It’s change I object to.
Mark Twain”
“The way to your dreams can only be found with one foot in eternity and the other on shaky ground.
Rick Tarquinio,
from the lyrics of One Foot in Eternity”
““You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper.
Dr. Edward de Bono”
Experiences, thoughts, insights, perspectives, personal stories/principles/maxims, different quotes … on Challenge the Process are posted here. Want to comment and share your own? Hit the button, read the blogs, offer up some of your ‘self’! Here’s an example of what you can find on the post page:
Blog 1: Faith, Fire, Focus. The delightful and instructive Alan Fine, in You Already Know How to be Great, talks of removing the interferences that get between our faith, our fire, our focus and our performance:
“… much of the interference that affects our performance is internal. A good deal of it comes from our response to external interference. It’s reflected in the stories we tell ourselves, the way we approach situations in watch-our mode, the way we worry about the past or the future or think of all of the things we should be doing instead of focusing on the present.”
To be able to challenge the process effectively, to search for opportunities to innovate, or to experiment and take risks, what better mindset than to be as free as possible of both internal and external interferences? As Timothy Gallwey, Inner Game creator and author, says:
“Focus is what distracts us from whatever is distracting us.”
Personal example of an interference: I have set myself a goal of becoming a more skilled golfer and for those of you who share this goal, you will know how challenging it can be to have to clear a water or sand hazard. For me, it turns out that my major interference has been my lack of faith in my own ability to accomplish the task. My head would fill with images of what not to do … and guess what, that’s exactly what would happen. I have since taught myself to focus on the landing zone and to picture the sequence of getting there. Thank you, Alan!