Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor, described this as “A good rule of thumb in a major change effort.” In his 2002 sequel The Heart of Change (written with Dan S. Cohen), Kotter offered these three additional rules of thumb that might be derived from the study of human history and the observation of people in organizations:
Never underestimate the power of a good story.
Never underestimate the power of the mind to disempower.
Never underestimate the power of clever people
to help others see the possibilities,
to help them generate a feeling of faith, and to change behavior.
Never underestimate an enemy!LOUIS L’AMOUR, in Last of the Breed (1986)
Never underestimate the power of appealing to a person’s ego.
Sometimes you want to inflate it, and other times you want to attack it.DAVID J. LIEBERMAN, in Never Be Lied to Again (1999)
Never underestimate the impact of the law of unexpected consequences.HARVEY B. MACKAY, in Pushing the Envelope
All the Way to the Top (1998)
Never underestimate the power of
a simple thank-you note . . . or a note of congratulations.HARVEY B. MACKAY, in Dig Your Well
Before You’re Thirsty (1997)
In Management Mess-Ups (2008), Mark Eppler echoed the theme: “Never underestimate the power of a handwritten note of concern or appreciation.”
Never underestimate the power of a single individual to affect the world.
Remember, one candle in a cave lights everything.ABRAHAM H. MASLOW, from an unpublished essay,
found in Maslow’s papers after his death
1. Never underestimate the importance of money.
2. Never overestimate the importance of money.MARK H. MCCORMACK
These were at the very top of McCormack’s “Ten Commandments of Street Smarts” offered in What They Still Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School (1989).
Never underestimate the booberie of the booboisie.H. L. MENCKEN
Mencken coined the term “booboisie” (BOOB-wah-ZEE, a blend of boob and the French term bourgeoisie) to capture his contempt for uncultured Americans—especially those in powerful positions—and their tendency to become consumed with superficialities or guided by idiotic ideas.
Never underestimate the wrath you can incur
by taking more than one parking place.RICHARD A. MORAN, in his 2006 book Nuts, Bolts, & Jolts:
Fundamental Business and Life Lessons You Must Know
Never underestimate the power of looking cute.MICHAEL NASTASI
This was the caption to a photograph of an adorable puppy in Nastasi’s Never Bite When a Growl Will Do, his 2006 book of endearing dog photographs.
Never underestimate the ignorance of the American audience.GEORGE JEAN NATHAN,
noted American theater critic
Never underestimate the power
of the unwritten rules of organizational politics.BEN NELSON & PETER ECONOMY, in
Managing for Dummies, 2nd ed. (2003)
The authors added that “The unwritten rules carry just as much importance, if not more, than the written rules contained in the company’s policy manuals.”
Never underestimate the potential power of
your opening line to hook your reader from the start.ALICE ORR, in No More Rejections: 50 Secrets
to Writing a Manuscript That Sells (2004)
Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself.FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, on Gen. Douglas MacArthur
Never underestimate the power of an irate customer.JOEL E. ROSS & MICHAEL J. KAMI, in Corporate
Management in Crisis (1973)
Never underestimate the power of passion.EVE SAWYER
This is an enormously popular observation, found on almost every quotation website, and in many quotation anthologies. After years of searching, I’ve been unable to locate any biographical information on Sawyer, except that she was an American journalist.
Never underestimate the power of what you wear.OSCAR SCHOEFFLER
Schoeffler, the longtime fashion editor at Esquire magazine, added: “After all, there is just a small bit of you sticking out at the collar and cuff. The rest of what the world sees is what you drape on your frame.”
Never underestimate a problem or your power to cope with it.ROBERT H. SCHULLER, in Tough Times
Never Last, but Tough People Do (1996)
Never underestimate the mental health benefits of exercise.DAVID SERVAN-SCHREIBER, in “Run for Your Life,”
a 2004 article in Psychotherapy Networker
Never underestimate the power of a woman spurned.MARCELLA SHIELDS, in Once Upon a
Time There Was a Little Girl (2008)
Never underestimate the power of jealousy
and the power of envy to destroy. Never underestimate that.OLIVER STONE
Stone, with his characteristic fondness for conspiracy theories, said this in an interview with Harry Kreisler of the University of California at Berkeley in 1977. He began by saying:I think that many people in history who had power were bumped off because they had power. This is a rule of life to me. We learn it in the first grade. If you’ve got power, you better watch your back because people are going to be jealous, and envy and jealousy are reigning emotions in this life.
Never underestimate the appeal of anything that was fun at age seven.NEIL STRAUSS, offering a principle of pickup artists,
in Rules of the Game (2007)
Never underestimate the heart of a champion.RUDY TOMJANOVICH
This saying—now something of a cliché in sports circles—was repeatedly used by coach Tomjanovich when his Houston Rockets won back-to-back NBA titles in 1994 and 1995.
Never underestimate intuition.BRAD TONINI, in The New Rules of
the Game for Entrepreneurs (2006)
Never underestimate a man’s ability to underestimate a woman.KATHLEEN TURNER, in the film
V. I. Warshawski (1991)
Turner, as hardboiled private investigator V. I. Warshawski, dispensed this womanly wisdom to Angela Goethals, who played the daughter of a professional hockey player who had been murdered. The film’s producers had hoped the Warshawski character would become a franchise for Turner, but the movie fared badly at the box office, despite some great one-liners. The movie was based on the fictional character created by writer Sara Peretsky, but this never underestimate line does not appear in any of her novels.