Always find different ways to accomplish the mission. Then run a counter-analysis and list the advantages and disadvantages. When you have done that, you are ready to make a decision.

We are not dictating. We are not telling them [Saudi Arabia] how they should do it or who they should look like. We are their friends. We have mutual interests and we will help them in any way that is possible.

With vision only, you get no follow-through. With enforcers only, the vision is realized but leaves a lot of wreckage.

Policies that emanate from ivory towers often have an adverse impact on the people out in the field who are fighting the wars or bringing in the revenues.

Each of us must work to become a hardheaded realist, or else we risk wasting our time and energy on pursuing impossible dreams. Yet constant naysayers pursue no less impossible dreams. Their fear and cynicism move nothing forward. They kill progress. How many cynics built empires, great cities, or powerful corporations?

I went to graduate school as a lieutenant colonel after I had been in the army for 12 or 13 years. I learned so much from all the great management theorists. It gave me a greater understanding of my army experience and showed me the gaps in my knowledge.

Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.