Face reality as it is, not as it was, or as you wish it were. Be candid with everyone. Don't manage, lead. Change before you have to. If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete. Control your own destiny, or someone else will.

Strategy is simply resource allocation. When you strip away all the noise, that's what it comes down to. Strategy means making clear cut choices about how to compete. You cannot be everything to everybody, no matter what the size of your business or how deep its pockets.

Too many people believe that one big, public success will solve their self-confidence problems forever. That only happens in the movies. In real life, the opposite strategy is what works. Call it the small victo-ries approach. In time you will discover that all failing really does teach you something you needed to know- so you can regroup and stretch again, with ever more...nerve.

I believe that in any initiative, you can't have a flavor of the month. When you believe something is profound in a company, you can not be a logical leader. You have to go to the lunatic fringe. There is no way that logic is what you need to change people.

You hang around with good people, you play a lot of golf, and you have a pretty good life. That's what success is all about. It's getting people you like, who want to take the hill with you, who want to win, who have the passion. This is not rocket science.

The biggest opportunity for big companies has come by far in the digitization of internal processes.

No one is doing something in your business - getting a sale, having a key customer, working on an R&D project - doing anything that's more important than something you say is going to change the company.