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

If you defer investing your time and energy until you see that you need to, chances are it will already be too late.

Innovation almost always is not successful the first time out. You try something and it doesn't work and it takes confidence to say we haven't failed yet. Ultimately you become commercially successful.

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."

Watching how customers actually use a product provides much more reliable information than can be gleaned from a verbal interview or a focus group.

The outsourcing gurus have been driving the theory, and they are saying everybody ought always to do this. But it is really contingent on where you are on the spectrum from "not good enough" to "more than good enough," relative to each tier of the market.

Don't worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people.