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

The most important quality of leadership is intellectual honesty. The reality principle - the ability to see the world as it really is, not as you wish it were.

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.

You got to be rigorous in your appraisal system. The biggest cowards are managers who don't let people know where they stand.

I might not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I'm pretty good at getting most of the other bulbs to light up.

My job is to find great ideas, exaggerate them, and spread them like hell around the business with the speed of light...And to put resources in to support them. Keep finding ideas. That's the job of just about all of our CEOs.

Lack of candor blocks smart ideas, fast action, and good people contributing all the stuff they've got. It's a killer.