Amit Chatterjee > Amit's Quotes

“The Practising Manager’s Growth Mantra

-Growth in an enterprise is created through remarkable achievements, not incremental achievements like efficiency or effectiveness.

-Remarkable achievements are possible only in complexity.

-Only volitional engagement can work in complexity. Luckily, there is no certainty in complexity. Hence, motivational engagement cannot work.

-People who make choices based on the purpose can only be volitionally engaged—they are the growth managers, the leaders.”
― Amit Chatterjee, Ascent: A Practising Manager’s Growth Mantra

“We have good leadership only by chance, not by management.

And we need to change that!”
― Amit Chatterjee, Ascent: A Practising Manager’s Growth Mantra

“Success comes from people (leaders) who are motivated by the change, not who need to be motivated by the change.”
― Amit Chatterjee

“Happiness comes from what you love to do, not necessarily from what you need to do; to succeed!”
― Amit Chatterjee

“Success is a drink you enjoy on the journey towards happiness. Risk is, you could get drunk!”
― Amit Chatterjee

“Parents need to be lucky to be good in parenting; children have to be lucky to have great parents!”
― Amit Chatterjee

“Leaders are made when people discover and express their own authority. This is the powerful message of this book (Ascent: A Practising Managers Growth Mantra), spoken with honest insight by a man who has been there and done it himself. I know—Amit Chatterjee has been a student, colleague, and correspondent of mine for many years and now, with this book, he becomes my teacher too.”
― Jonathan Gosling

“What it's like to be a parent: It's one of the hardest things you'll ever do but in exchange it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Wedding

“We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt, Great Speeches

“To be in your children's memories tomorrow,
You have to be in their lives today.”
― Barbara Johnson

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Leaders are passionate about the Purpose, while Managers need to be passionate about the Results!”
― Amit Chatterjee, Ascent: A Practising Manager’s Growth Mantra

“Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they're able to handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lose the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately have. When they're treated like that, children start to crawl inside a shell and keep everything inside. It takes a lot of time and effort to get them to open up again. Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“No! Leadership is not the business of people who need to be motivated!”
― Amit Chatterjee, Ascent: A Practising Manager’s Growth Mantra

“But what the measured prose of psychiatrists and the carefully calculated statistics of social scientists rarely capture is the experience of inner struggle. These "significant changes" do not occur automatically. In fact, they must often fight against our resistance. In this sense, midlife is a drama more worthy of a playwright than a scholar. We are characters in the play, caught at the opening of the second act, and we do not know what will happen next.”
― Mark Gerzon, Listening to Midlife: Turning Your Crisis into a Quest

“In the second half of life, our old compasses no longer work. The magnetic fields alter. The new compass that we need cannot be held in our hand, only in our heart. We read it not with our mind alone, but with our soul.

Now we yearn for wholeness. We yearn to remember the parts of ourselves that we have forgotten, to nourish those that we have starved, to express those we have silenced, and to bring into the light those we have cast into the shadows. On this quest for wholeness, we must let go of cliches of adult life, both positive and negative . . . Using the best information available , each of us must find his own way.

To varying degrees, all of us are trying to break out of . . . the "life structure" that we have built during the first part of our lives.”
― Mark Gerzon

“The moment will arrive when you are comfortable with who you are, and what you are– bald or old or fat or poor, successful or struggling- when you don't feel the need to apologize for anything or to deny anything. To be comfortable in your own skin is the beginning of strength.”
― Charles Handy

“Paradoxes are what draws Wisdom like bees to honey! Hence, where there is no paradox (Complexity), there is no need for Wisdom....”
― Amit Chatterjee

“Wisdom is available free of charge, but one has to give away somethings to acquire it!”
― Amit Chatterjee

“Management is the kitchen that produces a delicious meal, where Leadership is the Chef hooked by a purpose across the canyon of risks that adds the fragrance and taste to make it go beyond expectations.”
― Amit Chatterjee, Ascent: A Practising Manager’s Growth Mantra

“Unless the distant goals of meaning, greatness, and destiny are addressed, we can’t make an intelligent decision about what to do tomorrow morning—much less set strategy for a company or for a human life. Nothing is more practical than for people to deepen themselves. The more you understand the human condition, the more effective you are as a businessperson. Human depth makes (even) business sense.”
― Peter Koestenbaum

“Future has a scheming, naughty and intelligent mind. It is never fully predictable!”
― Amit Chatterjee

“The most prevalent form of slavery is being a slave of your own insecurities Or exploiting another's vulnerabilities.

Lust, greed and anger are the pitfalls of the short sighted. Long term business is not possible through lust, greed, anger or guile; it is done based on 'sustainable' relationships; And that is possible when happiness is your goal and each individual you transact with, is a 'strong adult Individual'. We need to invest in ourselves to make us one and in others to help them become the same.

It IS in my Selfish interest to have strong, adult individuals around!”
― Amit Chatterjee