People who don't have as much power as they would like often begin by attributing their difficulties to the environment - competitors, bosses, economic circumstances, and so forth. But in reality people are customarily their own biggest impediment to being as powerful as they would like.

I don't think eliminating the knowing-doing gap depends on the amount of knowledge around. It depends much more on people's attitudes and intentions - do they actually want to turn knowledge into action, or just go through the motions of acting as if they are busy or are accomplishing something.

We need to reexamine and reassess the purpose of the corporation, and go back to the idea that senior leadership has responsibilities not just to shareholders but also to customers and employees.

My overall recommendation: for decades corporate policy manuals and HR departments have told people they are responsible for their own careers. It's about time people really heeded those warnings.

People will envy you to the extent that you start out with a group of people and you rise up the organization faster than them. Get over what your peers are thinking about you because your peers are also your competitors.

Business school graduates from the best schools earn large salaries and frequently rise to positions of great power. It would be nice if they used that power to truly make the world a better place - which entails more than just maximizing their own organization's profits and their own economic well-being.

Consider the many financial industry executives who walked away with many millions as their organizations failed - I think the expression is "failing upward." People also need to understand that their "technical" job performance is correlated with their career success, but again, many other factors such as educational credentials, length of service, and yes, political skills, also contribute to success. So people need to understand business and technical issues but they also need to master organizational dynamics.