Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.

...I think that ideally that is how a company works. It becomes a place of ideas, not a place of position.

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.

Trust is enormously powerful in a corporation. People won't do their best unless they believe they'll be treated fairly. The only way I know how to create that kind of trust is by laying out your values and then walking the talk. You've got to do what you say you'll do, consistently, over time.

I am often asked if leaders are born or made. The answer, of course, is both. Some characteristics, like IQ and energy, seem to come with the package. On the other hand, you learn some leadership skills, like self-confidence, at your mother's knee, and at school, in academics and sports. And you learn others at work-trying something, getting it wrong and learning from it, or getting it right and gaining the self-confidence to do it again, only better.

Keep learning; don't be arrogant by assuming that you know it all, that you have a monopoly on the truth; always assume that you can learn something from someone else.

Six Sigma is a quality program that, when all is said and done, improves your customers' experience, lowers your costs, and builds better leaders.