On the Broader Issue of Change

“The first policy…and the foundation of all others…is to abandon yesterday.”
(Peter Drucker, Management Challenges for the 21^st Century, 1999)

“The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget old ideas.” 
(John Maynard Keynes in Tom Peters “The Circle of Innovation”)

A recent study of businesses concluded that, “A pattern emphasized in the cases…is the degree to which powerful competitors not only resist innovative threats, but actually resist all efforts to understand them, preferring to further entrench their positions in the older products. This results in a surge of productivity and performance that may take the old technology to unheard-of heights. But, in most cases, this is a sign of impending death.” (Jim Utterback, “Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation” in Tom Peters “The Circle of Innovation,” 1999)

“…business - and every other organization today has to be designed…to create change rather than react to it… The starting point is not a company’s own performance. It is a careful record of the innovations in the entire field during a given period.”  
(Peter Drucker, Management Challenges for the 21st Century, 1999)

“Incrementalism is innovation’s worst enemy.”  
(Nicholas Negroponte, MIT Media lab)

From or About the Transit Industry

“…changes will not be easy for many organizations… Part of the resistance comes from attitudes, some in both labor and management. They see changes to the way they have historically operated as a denigration of their role and status.” 
(John Bartosiewicz, Metro magazine, 2000)

“The real crisis is the traditional mindset held by public transportation operators, participants and stakeholders.”  
(TCRP Research Results Digest 24, 1998)

“Some of the basic organizations that we’ve set up to deal with and help deliver transit services are also major problems…We can’t change that without rethinking the structure…if we want to be successful 10 and 20 years from now, we have to set up agencies that are more dynamic than they are today.”  
(Robert Lingwood, Mass Transit Magazine, 1998)

“We cannot afford, either literally or figuratively, to do business as usual. Let us recognize that our focus should be on using our skills as mobility managers, not necessarily as service providers, to improve mobility and efficiency.”  
(James F. McLaughlin, TRB Research Circular 460)

“Without changes in the enabling environment, the transportation system would continue down the path of incremental change, rather than enable the kind of paradigm shifts that would bring us to a truly ‘sustainable’ transportation system.” 
(Tom Deen/Robert Skinner, TCRP Report 53, “Forces and Factors that Require Consideration of New Paradigms,” 1999)

From Other Businesses and Industries

“Organizations will be critically important in the world, but as organizers, not employers.”
(Charles Handy in Tom Peters “The Circle of Innovation.”)

“We can go from quote to cash without even touching a physical asset or piece of paper. You’ve heard of ‘just-in-time manufacturing.’ Well, this is ‘not-at-all’ manufacturing.”
(Donald J. Listwin, Executive Vice president, Cisco Systems)

“…SeaLand for many years believed that working alone with dedicated assets was the way to maintain competitive advantage in the marketplace. During the last decade, the operating philosophy at SeaLand evolved to…one of an obsession for the consumer.”
(Jack Helton, Vice President of SeaLand)

“We try to keep strategic direction located as high as possible in the organization, while keeping accountability as low as possible within the organization.” 
(Tom Hardeman, former Vice President, UPS)

“It’s quite possible that FDX’s system will route deliveries [for Cisco systems] on ships airplanes and trucks owned by other companies, even UPS.”  
(Wall Street Journal, November 4, 1999)

“…the 21st century corporation…must be predicated on constant change, not stability, organized around networks, not rigid hierarchies, built on shifting partnerships and alliances, not self-sufficiency, and constructed on technological advantages, not bricks and mortar…”
(“The 21st Century Corporation,” Business Week, August 28, 2000)

“[Cemex was] able to substitute the management of information for the deployment of costly assets such as trucks, ships and employees.” 
(Adrian J. Slywotsky, Mercer Management, in Business Week, August 28, 2000)

“Markets will no longer be driven by what manufacturers choose to make and sell but by what customers want to buy… People are starting to bundle together services that were once in different industries because their customers want them to… The company of the future will tailor its products to each individual by turning customers into partners and giving them the technology to design and demand what they want.”  
(Business Week, August 28, 2000)

“If you had to pick two words to describe the state of the American corporation today,[and our public transit agencies??] ‘triumphant’ and ‘beleaguered’ spring to mind.”
(Business Week, August 28, 2000)