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

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

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

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.

Organizational effectiveness does not lie in that narrow minded concept called rationality. It lies in the blend of clearheaded logic and powerful intuition

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

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.