Success Quote by Lee Iacocca

The imperative is to move. Not recklessly, but with the courage to accept that perfect certainty never arrives. Lee Iacocca built his reputation on turning paralysis into progress, and these lines capture the ethos that drove his leadership at Ford and, most famously, at Chrysler. When he took over Chrysler in 1979, the company was bleeding cash, beset by the oil crisis, rising Japanese competition, and a demoralized workforce. He negotiated government loan guarantees, extracted concessions from unions and suppliers, trimmed bureaucracy, and pushed out pragmatic products like the K-car and the minivan. None of that happened because the data said success was assured. It happened because waiting would have killed the company.

Anything. Something. Those clipped phrases are aimed at inertia, the deadliest force in a crisis. They reject the fantasy of complete information and elevate disciplined experimentation. Try, measure, adjust. If you screw it up, start over. That is not a license for chaos; it is a call to build feedback loops into decision-making. The real risk is not failure but stasis, because uncertainty compounds and windows close.

This mindset anticipates ideas later popularized by entrepreneurship and product design: prototypes over grand plans, pilots over perfection, iteration over analysis paralysis. It also demands humility. To start over, leaders must admit error quickly, conserve resources for the next attempt, and keep teams focused on learning rather than blame. Courage and humility become twin virtues: the nerve to act and the grace to pivot.

Beyond business, the message speaks to public policy and personal agency. Complex problems rarely yield to exhaustive forecasting. The only way to reduce uncertainty is to engage with reality and gather information through action. Delay masquerades as prudence until it becomes negligence. Progress belongs to those who move, listen to the results, and move again before it is too late.