Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it.

Companies are communities. Theres a spirit of working together. Communities are not a place where a few people allow themselves to be singled out as solely responsible for success.

If you ask managers what they do, they will most likely tell you that they plan, organise, co-ordinate and control. Then watch what they do. Don't be surprised if you can't relate what you see to those four words.

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.

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

Corporations are economic entities, to be sure, but they are also social institutions that must justify their existence by their overall contribution to society.

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?