Most of the time, strategies should not be formulating strategy at all; they should be getting on with implementing strategies they already have.

What I have against M.B.A.s is the assumption that you come out of a two-year program probably never having been a manager - at least for full-time younger people M.B.A. programs - and assume you are ready to manage.

That is the trouble with flying: We always have to return to airports. Thank of how much fun flying would be if we didn't have to return to airports.

The great myth is the manager as orchestra conductor. It's this idea of standing on a pedestal and you wave your baton and accounting comes in, and you wave it somewhere else and marketing chimes in with accounting, and they all sound very glorious. But management is more like orchestra conducting during rehearsals, when everything is going wrong.

I describe management as arts, crafts and science. It is a practice that draws on arts, craft and science and there is a lot of craft - meaning experience - there is a certain amount of craft meaning insight, creativity and vision, and there is the use of science, technique or analysis.

The prime occupational hazard of a manager is superficiality.

We're all flawed, but basically, effective managers are people whose flaws are not fatal under the circumstances. Maybe the best managers are simply ordinary, healthy people who aren't too screwed up.