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Leadership produces change. That is its primary function
John P. Kotter
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Leadership is fundamentally about facilitating progress and transformation.

This quote by John P. Kotter emphasizes that the core role of leadership is to drive change within an organization or community. Effective leaders not only envision what needs to be transformed but also inspire and mobilize their followers to embrace and enact that change, ultimately resulting in growth and advancement.

Themes

LeadershipChangeTransformationGrowthProgress

In practice

Example use cases

During a conference on business strategy, one might say, 'As John P. Kotter states, leadership produces change; we need to embrace new practices to adapt to market demands.'

More from John P. Kotter

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.
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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.
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Managers are trained to make incremental, programmatic improvements. They aren't trained to lead large-scale change.
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Because management deals mostly with the status quo and leadership deals mostly with change, in the next century we are going to have to try to become much more skilled at creating leaders.
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Outsiders have the intuitive ability to continually view problems in fresh ways and to identify ineffective practices and traditions.
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Those in leadership positions who fail to grasp or use the power of stories risk failure for their companies and for themselves.
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