Culture Quotes

“Your culture is your competitive advantage.” - Gavin Patterson, CEO BT

“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.” - Henry Ford

“We shape our environment, then our environment shapes us.” - Winston Churchill

“If you don't transform your company, you're stuck.” - Ursula Burns, CEO, Xerox

" I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game—it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value. Vision, strategy, marketing, financial management—any management system, in fact can set you on the right path and can carry you for a while. But no enterprise—whether in business, government, education, health care, or any area of human endeavor—will succeed over the long haul if those elements aren't part of its DNA.” - Louis V. Grestner

"A mantra for business transformations - Change before you have to" - Jack Welch

“The business model that sustained us for decades is no longer sufficient to sustain profitability.” - Bill Ford, to all employees, 2006

“Abandon yesterday.” - Peter Drucker

“In the end, management doesn’t change culture. Management invites the workforce itself to change the culture.” —Lou Gerstner

“You could pretty well summarize the history of society and the institutions in it in four words: Nothing fails like success. - Arnold Toynbee, great historian

“To change an organization you have to change its stories” - Richard Stone

“ A strong culture by itself is not a guarantee of economic success.” - Janelle Barlow

“I did not realize the importance of culture when I became CEO.” - John Chambers, Cisco CEO

“When you are changing the culture, people look to se you react when the required behaviour is not delivered. If every time people fail your treat it as ok, then failure becomes ok.” - Dominique Fournier

“Your brand is your culture.” - Tony Hsieh

“A culture of execution requires constancy and discipline - you can’t give up.” - Liz Mellon & Simon Carter

“To stay ahead, you must have your next idea waiting in the wings.” - Rosabeth Kanter

“The drive for progress doesn't wait for the external world to say "It's time to change.” - Jim Collins

“If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.” - Jack Welch

“Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove we'll settle for intense.” - Jeff Bezos

“There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity.” - Tom Peters

“Small groups of people can have a really huge impact” - Larry Page

“Money motivates neither the best people nor the best in people. Purpose does.” - Nilofer

“Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” - Warren Buffett

“It's the sustained ability to change that really counts.” - Jeff Immelt

“When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place.” - Mark Zuckerberg

"Going to work for a large company is like getting on a train. Are you going sixty miles an hour or is the train going sixty miles an hour and you're just sitting still?" - J. Paul Getty

”When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.” - Henry J. Kaiser

“In most organizational change efforts, it is much easier to draw on the strengths of the culture than to overcome the constraints by changing the culture.” - Edgar Schein