Jason Jennings > Quotes

“Remember, the most common thing about common sense is how uncommon it is.”
― Jason Jennings, Think Big, Act Small: How America's Most Profitable Companies Keep the Start-up Spirit Alive

“We're not very good when we're spending other people's money.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“There are two ways to run a big company: by rules or by values,”
― Jason Jennings, Think Big, Act Small: How America's Best Performing Companies Keep the Start-up Spirit Alive

“Conventional wisdom won't provide continual growth.”
― Jason Jennings

“If it’s DOA, bury it.”
― Jason Jennings

“Today, every business, including yours, is being observed and studied by others who want your revenues.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“Remind yourself daily to spend more time being interested then interesting.”
― Jason Jennings

“Millner is just as excited about the culture of continuous improvement that is at the core of Cabela’s. “Adaptation is critical. You’ve got to adapt. No matter how successful you are, the minute you can’t do what you’ve done, you’ve got to let it go. If you don’t continuously improve, you die.”
― Jason Jennings, Think Big, Act Small: How America's Best Performing Companies Keep the Start-up Spirit Alive

“Innovators "view failure not as a fatal character flaw but as a learning experience.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“wanting to improve one’s financial condition and achieve one’s full potential are universal desires. Buried in the shared hopes of workers are two mammoth problems with huge consequences for the owners and leaders of businesses of every size and that speak directly to the need for constant radical change and reinvention: If a business isn’t growing, the people who want to make more money and have more responsibility won’t get what they want when they want it, and they’ll find a reason to leave and pursue better opportunities elsewhere.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“Your job as you know it and your business as it is currently run will eventually change. The only chance any of us have for prosperity is to constantly reimagine, rethink, and reinvent everything we do and how we do it in order to remain relevant. We must all become reinventors, and we’d better do it quickly.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“It’s significant that the revenue generated by the large numbers of small bets Howard Schultz made after retaking control of Starbucks is almost equal to the company’s total annual profit. In a good year Starbucks earns about one billion dollars on revenues of ten billion; the incremental revenue generated by his many small bets exceeds the company’s total average annual profits. A strong argument can be made that without the many small bets he made—excluding their potential effect on future revenues and profits—the company would still be struggling to make a profit.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” when he added that those words are, in Powell’s perspective, “a slogan for the complacent, the arrogant, or the scared.” How can such a commonsense maxim be so insidious and disastrous? It’s because of an immutable law of business: By the time you figure out it’s broke, it’s been broke for a very long time.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“A.T. Kearney research shows that the best performing companies had five hundred fewer managers per billion dollars in sales than poorer performing organizations.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“A culture of small bets is a learning culture in which people discover the right paths to new destinations. In these organizations work is often less like executing a blueprint and more like crossing a fast-moving stream by jumping from rock to rock. Decisions are made in the moment, without perfect information, and people experiment by changing variables, staying in motion, and conquering their fears, with the ultimate destination always clear in their mind’s eye. “This takes skills we don’t learn in school, even business school,” author Peter Sims explains.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“THE REINVENTION KILLERS Yesterday’s Breadwinners Every product or service has a natural life cycle that begins with an introduction, followed by growth, maturity, and inevitably a decline as it becomes yesterday’s breadwinner. There are no exceptions”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“there are two honest reasons so many people hate the thought of the functions they perform being systematized: Either they’re too inflexible to learn a new way of doing things, or they’re scared to death of the accountability that systematization will bring.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“Having a good work ethic means taking the initiative to get the job done, delivering as agreed without excuses or blame, being willing to make personal sacrifice for the good of the organization, and being loyal to the company and people with whom you work.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“But basic smarts are just half of the necessary mind-set. The second half is the ability to learn new things, something a surprising number of people find incredibly difficult.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“Pope says, “Engage your critics, and don’t confront them in an argumentative way.” We’re taught in school to debate. We’re taught to take a stand and use knowledge, skills, and cleverness to win converts and disable the other side. I remember in high school and university classes being asked to take a position out of a hat and then stand up and win the argument. I grew up good at winning, but looking back I see that I wasn’t getting opponents on the same page. I was shutting them up with powerful advocacy. I’ll bet you’ve seen the same thing from the outspoken in meetings and in conversation with your bosses. Getting people on the same page begins with getting rid of the need to always win the debate.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“It’s not the sense of entitlement shared by spoiled rich kids. Instead it’s the misguided and arrogant belief shared by so many business owners and executives that their business has a right to continue to exist and do well simply by virtue of either being in business or having been successful at some point.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“After twenty years of systematic observation I’ve decided the most common mistake is for one to get stuck on the “plains of hesitation.” The plains of hesitation are a metaphorical place where the best laid plans and good intentions expire.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“Make as many small bets as you have people responsible for making them happen and sufficient financial resources to maximize the odds of success. If there aren’t enough resources to give the small bet a chance, you’ll never know if it might have worked out or been a possible home run.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“awake at night?” The response is practically unanimous: Leaders worry about creating a sense of urgency in their organizations and operating quickly in an increasingly complex world. They want to create strong teams that are primed to handle any hurdle that comes their way and”
― Jason Jennings, The High-Speed Company: Creating Urgency and Growth in a Nanosecond Culture

“Lancaster says that the magic around a reinvention intervention is that the people involved in the process have a say but the establishment—the leadership—doesn’t. “I was there as one member of a team wearing jeans and working alongside everyone else,” says Lancaster, “not as a boss, owner, or CEO.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“Poorly led teams “systematically underreported” their mistakes. In layman’s terms, they covered up their mistakes.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“When you hire someone with a strong work ethic, who shares your values and fits your culture, you don’t need a lot of rules or bureaucracy,” he says. “All the rules you find inside most companies are there for the two percent of all people who don’t do the right thing, and in the process of having rules for them they adversely affect the other ninety-eight percent of all people who don’t need rules. It’s a lot easier to not hire those two percent.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“not having enough money brought everyone together at Southwest. Twelve different job functions, from flight crews to baggage handlers, all put aside status concerns, job descriptions, and work rules to become a team with a big objective: the ten-minute turn.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“Mean systems scapegoat and demoralize. They attack people instead of problems. They’re a relic of a primitive and superstitious past. They are not data driven.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

“The more simple you can make it allows your people to get really focused.”
― Jason Jennings, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change