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.

Your goal, in other words, should be to make your bosses smarter, your team more effective, and the whole company more competitive because of your energy, creativity, and insights.

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 never put myself out there as an employment agency.

Globalization is now no longer an objective but an imperative, as markets open and geographic barriers become increasingly blurred and even irrelevant.

If you have a reputation as a big, stiff bureaucracy, you're stuck.

You can't behave in a calm, rational manner. You've got to be out there on the lunatic fringe.