"Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable." (Daniel Webster, [speech] 1846)
"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. [...] Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfil it." (George Santayana, "The Life of Reason", 1905-1906)
"To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often." (Winston Churchill, [Speech, House of Commons] 1925)
"When an active individual of sound common sense perceives the sordid state of the world, desire to change it becomes the guiding principle by which he organizes given facts and shapes them into a theory. The methods and categories as well as the transformation of the theory can be understood only in connection with his taking of sides. This, in turn, discloses both his sound common sense and the character of the world. Right thinking depends as much on right willing as right willing on right thinking." (Max Horkheimer, "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics", 1937)
"Many of the obstacles for change which have been attributed to human nature are in fact due to the inertia of institutions and to the voluntary desire of powerful classes to maintain the existing status." (John Dewey, 1938)
"Doing engineering is practicing the art of the organized forcing of technological change." (George Spencer-Brown, Electronics, Vol. 32 (47), 1959)
"People fear change because it undermines their security." (Thomas R Bennett III, Planning For Change, 1961)
"Every part of the system is so related to every other part that a change in a particular part causes a changes in all other parts and in the total system." (Arthur D Hall, "A methodology for systems engineering", 1962)
"To say a system is 'self-organizing' leaves open two quite different meanings. There is a first meaning that is simple and unobjectionable. This refers to the system that starts with its parts separate (so that the behavior of each is independent of the others' states) and whose parts then act so that they change towards forming connections of some type. Such a system is 'self-organizing' in the sense that it changes from 'parts separated' to 'parts joined'. […] In general such systems can be more simply characterized as 'self-connecting', for the change from independence between the parts to conditionality can always be seen as some form of 'connection', even if it is as purely functional […] 'Organizing' […] may also mean 'changing from a bad organization to a good one' […] The system would be 'self-organizing' if a change were automatically made to the feedback, changing it from positive to negative; then the whole would have changed from a bad organization to a good." (W Ross Ashby, "Principles of the self-organizing system", 1962)
"So much has been written about employees' resistance to change that we are sometimes tempted to forget that they can also react favorably." (Nathaniel Stewart, "Leadership in the Office", 1963)
"We have overwhelming evidence that available information plus analysis does not lead to knowledge. The management science team can properly analyse a situation and present recommendations to the manager, but no change occurs. The situation is so familiar to those of us who try to practice management science that I hardly need to describe the cases." (C West Churchman, "Managerial acceptance of scientific recommendations", California Management Review Vol 7, 1964)
"[...] long-range plans are most valuable when they are revised and adjusted and set anew at shorter periods. The five-year plan is reconstructed each year in turn for the following five years. The soundest basis for this change is accurate measurement of the results of the first year's experience with the plan against the target of the plan." (George S Odiorne, "Management by Objectives", 1965)
"Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media works as environments." (Marshall McLuhan, "The Medium is the Massage: An inventory of effects", 1967)
"Technological invention and innovation are the business of engineering. They are embodied in engineering change." (Daniel V DeSimone & Hardy Cross, "Education for Innovation", 1968)
"The systems approach to problems focuses on systems taken as a whole, not on their parts taken separately. Such an approach is concerned with total - system performance even when a change in only one or a few of its parts is contemplated because there are some properties of systems that can only be treated adequately from a holistic point of view. These properties derive from the relationship between parts of systems: how the parts interact and fit together." (Russell L Ackoff, "Towards a System of Systems Concepts", 1971)
"Every goal and every change from the status quo has a price tag on it." (Lyle E Schaller, "The Change Agent", 1972)
"To be productive the individual has to have control, to a substantial extent, over the speed, rhythm, and attention spans with which he is working […] While work is, therefore, best laid out as uniform, working is best organized with a considerable degree of diversity. Working requires latitude to change speed, rhythm, and attention span fairly often. It requires fairly frequent changes in operating routines as well. What is good industrial engineering for work is exceedingly poor human engineering for the worker." (Peter F Drucker, "Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices", 1973)
"Perhaps the fault [for the poor implementation record for models] lies in the origins of managerial model-making - the translation of methods and principles of the physical sciences into wartime operations research. [...] If hypothesis, data, and analysis lead to proof and new knowledge in science, shouldn’t similar processes lead to change in organizations? The answer is obvious-NO! Organizational changes (or decisions or policies) do not instantly pow from evidence, deductive logic, and mathematical optimization." (Edward B Roberts, "Interface", 1977)
"It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. [...] This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking." (Isaac Asimov, "My Own View", Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, 1978)
"All organizations do change when put under sufficient pressure. This pressure must be either external to the organization or the result of very strong leadership." (Bruce Henderson, Henderson on Corporate Strategy, 1979)
"It is rare for any organization to generate sufficient pressure internally to produce significant change in direction. Indeed, internal pressure is likely to be regarded as a form of dissatisfaction with the organization's leadership." (Bruce Henderson, Henderson on Corporate Strategy, 1979)
"The acceptance of project management has not been easy, however. Many executives are not willing to accept change and are inflexible when it comes to adapting to a different environment." (Harold Kerzner, "Project Management", 1979)
"A competent manager can usually explain necessary planning changes in terms of specific facts which have contributed to the change. The existing fear, or attitude of failure, which results from missed completion dates should be replaced by a more constructive fear of failing to keep a plan updated." (Philip F Gehring Jr. & Udo W Pooch, "Advances in Computer Programming Management", 1980)
"[Organizational] change is intervention, and intervention even with good intentions can lead to negative results in both the short and long run. For example, a change in structure in going from application of one theory to another might cause the unwanted resignation of a key executive, or the loss of an important customer. [...] the factor of change, acts as an overriding check against continual organizational alterations. It means that regardless of how well meant a change is, or how much logic dictates this change, its possible negative effects must be carefully weighed against the hoped-for benefits." (William A Cohen, "Principles of Technical Management", 1980)
"[...] strategic change is likely to call for different management techniques than continuous running of well-established business-units.... If effectively done, strategic management can have even greater payoffs in rough seas than in clear sailing." (Boris Yavitz & William H Newman, "Strategy in Action", 1982)
"Every system of whatever size must maintain its own structure and must deal with a dynamic environment, i.e., the system must strike a proper balance between stability and change. The cybernetic mechanisms for stability (i.e., homeostasis, negative feedback, autopoiesis, equifinality) and change (i.e., positive feedback, algedonodes, self-organization) are found in all viable systems." (Barry Clemson, "Cybernetics: A New Management Tool", 1984)
"Change occurs only when there is a confluence of changing values and economic necessity." (John Naisbett & Patricia Aburdene, "Re-inventing the Corporation", 1985)
"With the changes in technological complexity, especially in information technology, the leadership task has changed. Leadership in a networked organization is a fundamentally different thing from leadership in a traditional hierarchy." (Edgar Schein, "Organizational Culture and Leadership", 1985)
"An ability to tolerate ambiguity helps to avoid overdetermining one's goals. [...] As they proceed, peak performers can adjust goals. [...] What they are doing is balancing between change and stasis, between innovation and consolidation." (Charles Garfield, "Peak Performers", 1986)
"Most organizations, left to their own devices, are going to atrophy, to get so institutional, so bureaucratic, that they get to the point where their original reason for existence has been lost, and they stagnate. So you have to have change, and by that I mean dramatic change." (William G McGowan, Inc. Magazine, August 1986)
"[...] strategic planning and crisis management are complimentary. They coexist comfortably because both deal with the management of change. Crisis management concentrates on those brief moments of instability that must be dealt with first in order to get on with the larger and less time-sensitive job of reaching strategic objectives." (Gerald C Meyers, "When It Hits the Fan", 1986)
"The only [management] practice that's now constant is the practice of constantly accommodating to change." (William G. McGowan, Inc. Magazine, 1986)
"Training frequently fails to pay off in behavioral changes on the job: Trainees go back to work and do it the way they've always done it instead of the way you taught them to do it." (Ruth C Clark, "Manager, Training and Information Services", Training, 1986)
"You can change behavior in an entire organization, provided you treat training as a process rather than an event." (Edward W Jones, "Training", 1986)
"Constant change by everyone requires a dramatic increase in the capacity to accept disruption." (Tom Peters, "Thriving on Chaos", 1987)
"People are asking more cogent questions, and they're observing behavior that begins to be amenable to the ideas of chaotic dynamics." (James Ramsey, The New York Times, 1987)
"Problems can be reduced by allowing employees to help plan changes rather than directing them to execute a plan made by others." (Eugene Raudsepp, MTS Digest, 1987)
"There are only two ways to get people to support corporate change. You should give employees the information they need to understand the reasons for change, and put enough influence behind the information to [gain their] support." (Carla O'Dell, 1987)
"[...] a strategic inflection point is a time in the life of business when its fundamentals are about to change. That change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights. But it may just as likely signal the beginning of the end." (Andrew S Grove, "Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career", 1988)
"[...] technology always fosters radical social change." (Neil Postman, "Conscientious Objections", 1988)
"Model is used as a theory. It becomes theory when the purpose of building a model is to understand the mechanisms involved in the developmental process. Hence as theory, model does not carve up or change the world, but it explains how change takes place and in what way or manner. This leads to build change in the structures." (Laxmi K Patnaik, "Model Building in Political Science", The Indian Journal of Political Science Vol. 50 (2), 1989)
"Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing the 'structures' that underlie complex situations, and for discerning high from low leverage change. That is, by seeing wholes we learn how to foster health. To do so, systems thinking offers a language that begins by restructuring how we think." (Peter Senge, "The Fifth Discipline", 1990)
"Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static 'snapshots'. It is a set of general principles- distilled over the course of the twentieth century, spanning fields as diverse as the physical and social sciences, engineering, and management. [...] During the last thirty years, these tools have been applied to understand a wide range of corporate, urban, regional, economic, political, ecological, and even psychological systems. And systems thinking is a sensibility for the subtle interconnectedness that gives living systems their unique character." (Peter Senge, "The Fifth Discipline", 1990)
"The importance of top management commitment to organizational change is so well accepted that it is almost cliché to repeat the fact. We would therefore expect managerial values to be just as important in this area as in others that require strategic direction and leadership" (Thomas A Kochan,"The Mutual Gains Enterprise", 1994)
"Enterprise Engineering is not a single methodology, but a sophisticated synthesis of the most important and successful of today's change methods. 'Enterprise Engineering' first explains in detail all the critical disciplines (including continuous improvement, radical reinvention of business processes, enterprise redesign, and strategic visioning). It then illustrates how to custom-design the right combination of these change methods for your organization's specific needs." (James Martin, "The Great Transition, 1995)
"Even though these complex systems differ in detail, the question of coherence under change is the central enigma for each." (John H Holland," Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity", 1995)
"Commonly, the threats to strategy are seen to emanate from outside a company because of changes in technology or the behavior of competitors. Although external changes can be the problem, the greater threat to strategy often comes from within. A sound strategy is undermined by a misguided view of competition, by organizational failures, and, especially, by the desire to grow." (Michael E Porter, "What is Strategy?", Harvard Business Review, 1996)
"Architecture is that set of design artifacts, or descriptive representations, that are relevant for describing an object, such that it can be produced to requirements (quality) as well as maintained over the period of its useful life (change)." (John A Zachman, "Enterprise architecture: The issue of the century", Database Programming and Design Vol. 10 (3), 1997)
"Issues of quality, timeliness and change are the conditions that are forcing us to face up to the issues of enterprise architecture. The precedent of all the older disciplines known today establishes the concept of architecture as central to the ability to produce quality and timely results and to manage change in complex products. Architecture is the cornerstone for containing enterprise frustration and leveraging technology innovations to fulfill the expectations of a viable and dynamic Information Age enterprise." (John Zachman, "Enterprise Architecture: The Issue of The Century", 1997)
"The basis of leadership is the capacity of the leader to change the mindset, the framework of the other person." (Warren Bennis, "Managing People is Like Herding Cats", 1997)
"Projects sometimes fail long before they deliver anything. At some point they may be determined to be too expensive to continue. Or perhaps they took too long to develop and the business need evaporated. Or perhaps the requirements change so often that the developers can never finish one thing without having to stop and start all over on something new. Certainly these are planning failures." (Kent Beck & Martin Fowler, "Planning Extreme Programming", 2000)
"Strategic planning and strategic change management are really 'strategic thinking'. It’s about clarity and simplicity, meaning and purpose, and focus and direction." (Stephen G Haines, "The Systems Thinking Approach to Strategic Planning and Management", 2000)
"The business changes. The technology changes. The team changes. The team members change. The problem isn't change, per se, because change is going to happen; the problem, rather, is the inability to cope with change when it comes." (Kent Beck, Extreme Programming Explained, 2000)
"Systems thinking means the ability to see the synergy of the whole rather than just the separate elements of a system and to learn to reinforce or change whole system patterns. Many people have been trained to solve problems by breaking a complex system, such as an organization, into discrete parts and working to make each part perform as well as possible. However, the success of each piece does not add up to the success of the whole. to the success of the whole. In fact, sometimes changing one part to make it better actually makes the whole system function less effectively." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience", 2002)
"An Enterprise Architecture is a dynamic and powerful tool that helps organisations understand their own structure and the way they work. It provides a ‘map’ of the enterprise and a ‘route planner’ for business and technology change. A well-constructed Enterprise Architecture provides a foundation for the ‘Agile’ business." (Bob Jarvis, "Enterprise Architecture: Understanding the Bigger Picture - A Best Practice Guide for Decision Makers in IT", 2003)
"An enterprise architecture is a blueprint for organizational change defined in models [using words, graphics, and other depictions] that describe (in both business and technology terms) how the entity operates today and how it intends to operate in the future; it also includes a plan for transitioning to this future state." (US Government Accountability Office, "Enterprise Architecture: Leadership Remains Key to Establishing and Leveraging Architectures for Organizational Transformation", GAO-06-831, 2006)
"Change pressures arise from different sectors of a system. At times it is mandated from the top of a hierarchy, other times it forms from participants at a grass-roots level. Some changes are absorbed by the organization without significant impact on, or alterations of, existing methods. In other cases, change takes root. It causes the formation of new methods (how things are done and what is possible) within the organization." (George Siemens, "Knowing Knowledge", 2006)
"Enterprise architecture is the process of translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change by creating, communicating and improving the key requirements, principles and models that describe the enterprise's future state and enable its evolution. The scope of the enterprise architecture includes the people, processes, information and technology of the enterprise, and their relationships to one another and to the external environment. Enterprise architects compose holistic solutions that address the business challenges of the enterprise and support the governance needed to implement them." (Anne Lapkin et al, "Gartner Clarifies the Definition of the Term 'Enterprise Architecture", 2008)
"Strategy is the serious work of figuring out how to translate vision and mission into action. Strategy is a general plan of action that describes resource allocation and other activities for dealing with the environment and helping the organization reach its goals. Like vision, strategy changes, but successful companies develop strategies that focus on core competence, develop synergy, and create value for customers. Strategy is implemented through the systems and structures that are the basic architecture for how things get done in the organization." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)
"The butterfly effect demonstrates that complex dynamical systems are highly responsive and interconnected webs of feedback loops. It reminds us that we live in a highly interconnected world. Thus our actions within an organization can lead to a range of unpredicted responses and unexpected outcomes. This seriously calls into doubt the wisdom of believing that a major organizational change intervention will necessarily achieve its pre-planned and highly desired outcomes. Small changes in the social, technological, political, ecological or economic conditions can have major implications over time for organizations, communities, societies and even nations." (Elizabeth McMillan, "Complexity, Management and the Dynamics of Change: Challenges for practice", 2008)
"The other element of systems thinking is learning to influence the system with reinforcing feedback as an engine for growth or decline. [...] Without this kind of understanding, managers will hit blockages in the form of seeming limits to growth and resistance to change because the large complex system will appear impossible to manage. Systems thinking is a significant solution." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)
"Enterprise engineering is an emerging discipline that studies enterprises from an engineering perspective. The first paradigm of this discipline is that enterprises are purposefully designed and implemented systems. Consequently, they can be re-designed and re-implemented if there is a need for change. The second paradigm of enterprise engineering is that enterprises are social systems. This means that the system elements are social individuals, and that the essence of an enterprise's operation lies in the entering into and complying with commitments between these social individuals." (Erik Proper, "Advances in Enterprise Engineering II", 2009)
"And even if we make good plans based on the best information available at the time and people do exactly what we plan, the effects of our actions may not be the ones we wanted because the environment is nonlinear and hence is fundamentally unpredictable. As time passes the situation will change, chance events will occur, other agents such as customers or competitors will take actions of their own, and we will find that what we do is only one factor among several which create a new situation." (Stephen Bungay, "The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions, and Results", 2010)
"With each theory or model, our concepts of reality and of the fundamental constituents of the universe have changed." (Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow, "The Grand Design", 2010)
"Without precise predictability, control is impotent and almost meaningless. In other words, the lesser the predictability, the harder the entity or system is to control, and vice versa. If our universe actually operated on linear causality, with no surprises, uncertainty, or abrupt changes, all future events would be absolutely predictable in a sort of waveless orderliness." (Lawrence K Samuels, "Defense of Chaos", 2013)
"Cybernetics studies the concepts of control and communication in living organisms, machines and organizations including self-organization. It focuses on how a (digital, mechanical or biological) system processes information, responds to it and changes or being changed for better functioning (including control and communication)." (Dmitry A Novikov, "Cybernetics 2.0", 2016)
"Information or data is only valuable if it can be used to provide insights which then actually drive change. Sadly the most effort and expertise and applause is given to those who design and deliver incredibly complex statistical reviews of data over time - the beauty is in the complexity and the presentation not in the usability." (Alan Pennington, "The Customer Experience Book", 2016)
"It is not about deep data analysis to predict behaviour, it is about actively designing experiences and then applying data to enable the delivery. Cumulatively making lots of little changes using very specific pieces of data will aggregate to a bigger impact." (Alan Pennington, "The Customer Experience Book", 2016)
"Remember that for change to happen it has to be relevant at a local and individual level" (Alan Pennington, "The Customer Experience Book", 2016)
"Given enough time and enough users, even the most innocuous change will break something; your analysis of the value of that change must incorporate the difficulty in investigating, identifying, and resolving those breakages." (Titus Winters, "Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time", 2020)
"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." (John P Kotter)
"Enterprise architecture (EA) is a discipline for proactively and holistically leading enterprise responses to disruptive forces by identifying and analyzing the execution of change toward desired business vision and outcomes. EA delivers value by presenting business and IT leaders with signature-ready recommendations for adjusting policies and projects to achieve target business outcomes that capitalize on relevant business disruptions. EA is used to steer decision making toward the evolution of the future state architecture." (Gartner)
"The normal 'cascade' strategy for implementing change is usually ineffective, because memories remain embedded in the way the organization works after the change. This applies particularly if the change relates to the culture rather than to work practices or systems." (Dick Beckhard)
"There is a remarkable agreement upon the definition of learning as being reflected in a change of behavior as the result of experience." (Ernest A Haggard)
