I think that people still naturally want to be part of a team and participate in the success and achievement of a group effort. So we tend to be enthusiastic and productive - and even loyal. I believe that there are very few people who purposefully try to undermine the efforts of their organization. When people do act against the objectives of a change initiative, it's often because they genuinely believe it's not the right thing for the company to do. You could argue that it's a form of misguided loyalty.

Without ambition no conquests are made, and no business created. Ambition is the root of all achievement.

I used to believe that you could change the culture or behavior of a company. I still believe it's possible, but it is at least a five to ten year process, if you are successful at all. More recently, I have been attracted to the ideas of the behavioralist, Edgar Schein. Schein has argued that you cannot change the culture of a company, but you can use the culture of a company to create change. It's an interesting approach to overcoming resistance. And if you can change how a company does its work, you might eventually be able to change how its people think.

We are a great capitalist society, that works most of the time. We do need to take better care of our people and fix the access, cost, and quality of healthcare. But we need to act intelligently. We needed the intervention of government to keep the economy from falling into an abyss, but we must now encourage the creation of business - not burden it.

People must know that their ideas will be listened to and, if they have merit, acted upon. If they do, it is possible to mobilize individual creativity on a very broad scale.

There is not much new in management, but there is a lot new in business.

My engineering training taught me to be a systems thinker. I looked at companies as "systems" and saw work as a system of tasks - that needed to be reengineered. I was also focused on operations, getting things done and built. My engineering training taught me to be a pragmatist.