Never set out to be the best. It's too low a standard. Set out to be good. Do Your best.

We have great managers who havent spent a day in management school. Do we have great surgeons that havent spent a day in surgical school?

The real challenge in crafting strategy lies in detecting subtle discontinuities that may undermine a business in the future. And for that there is no technique, no program, just a sharp mind in touch with the situation.

This obsession with leadership... It's not neutral; it's American, this idea of the heroic leader who comes in on a white horse to save the day. I think it's killing American companies.

What we call a financial crisis is really at its core a crisis of management, and not just a crisis of management, but a crisis of management culture. ...In other words, what you had is a detachment of people who know the business from people who are running the business.

Empowerment is what managers do to people. Engagement is what managers do with people.

To 'turn around' is to end up facing the same way. Maybe that is the problem, all the turning organizations around.