Doing deals doesn't yield the deep rewards that come from building up people.

Management has to provide the coordinating mechanism between what the supplier provides and what the user needs in not-good-enough situations where product architecture is consequently interdependent. Management always beats markets when there is not sufficient information.

Many think of management as cutting deals and laying people off and hiring people and buying and selling companies. That's not management, that's deal making. Management is the opportunity to help people become better people. Practiced that way, it's a magnificent profession.

We don't hire ministers or priests to teach and care for us. This forces us to teach and care for each other - and in my view, this is the core of Christian living as Christ taught it.

What you need is a fundamental humility - the belief that you can learn from anyone.

Often they [writers on the study of management] have a point of view based upon intuition and experience. They then offer a cadence of two-paragraph examples carefully selected to "prove" their theory, and then they write "one size fits all" books. The message is, "If you'd do what these companies did, you'd be successful too."

Investing in our people is going to be costly and scarce - we need to start doing that!