Real change agents comprise less than 10% of all business people.

Insecure managers create complexity. Frightened, nervous managers use thick convoluted planning books and busy slides filled with everything they’ve known since childhood……. They worry that if they’re simple, people will think they’re simple minded. In reality, of course, it’s just the reverse. Clear, tough minded people are the most simple.

Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.

An overburdened, overstretched executive is the best executive, because he or she doesn't have the time to meddle, to deal in trivia, to bother people.

Failing to differentiate among employees — and holding on to bottom-tier performers — is actually the cruelest form of management there is.

Some think that it is cruel or brutal to remove the bottom 10 percent of our people. It isn't. It's just the opposite. What I think is brutal and "false kindness" is keeping people around who aren't going to grow and prosper. There's no cruelty like waiting and telling people late into their careers that they don't belong - just when the options are limited and they're putting their children through college or paying off big mortgages.

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.