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.

Corporations are social institutions. If they don't serve society, they have no business existing

No job is more vital to our society than that of the manager. It is the manager who determines whether our social institutions serve us well or whether they squander our talents and resources.

Strategy is not the consequence of planning, but the opposite: its starting point.

Organizations should be built and managers should be functioning so people can be naturally empowered. If someone's doing their job, if someone's working in one of your warehouses, say, they should know their job better than anybody. They don't need to be 'empowered,' but encouraged and left alone to be able to do what they know best.

Management is a curious phenomenon. It is generously paid, enormously influential, and significantly devoid of common sense

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.