A company has only so much money and managerial time. Winning leaders invest where the payback is the highest. They cut their losses everywhere else.

That's all managing is: just coming up with the right questions and getting the right answers.

Excellence and competitiveness aren't incompatible with honesty and integrity.

Simple messages travel faster, simpler designs reach the market faster and the elimination of clutter allows faster decision making.

In the end, your integrity is all you've got.

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.

Nothing of any importance has ever been accomplished by a pessimist.