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.

Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence.

If you've got a company that has a mentality inside that is filled with searching for a better idea every day, not just as a slogan but as a real concept, you will have innovation around you all the time.

Stretch targets energize. We have found that by reaching for what appears to be the impossible, we often actually do the impossible; and even when we don't quite make it, we inevitably wind up doing much better than we would have done.

You measure your people and you take action on those that don't measure up.

Don't make the process harder than it is.

Globalization has taken a hit in that there is some sand in the gears because most of us have supply chains that are all over the world that we've had to lengthen.