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

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

Strategy is a pattern in a stream of decisions

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.

Strategies grow initially like weeds in a garden, they are not cultivated like tomatoes in a hothouse.

You can teach all sorts of things that improve the practice of management with people who are managers. What you cannot do is teach management to somebody who is not a manager, the way you cannot teach surgery to somebody whose not a surgeon.

What you get out of an M.B.A. programme, no matter how much experience, is functional tools and understanding in disciplines: you'll understand economics, you'll understand marketing, finance, accounting. That, M.B.A. programmes do very well.