No one can guarantee you a job other than satisfied customers. That's the only thing that works. Nothing creates work other than products and services you provide that create satisfied customers.

If you can't energize others, you can't be a leader.

Strategy means making clear-cut choices about how to compete.

Common mission trap for companies: trying to be all things to all people at all times.

If you reward candor, you'll get it.

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.

The 3Ss of Winning in business are speed, simplicity, and self-confidence.