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.

In any branding strategy, you need to figure out what is the image you want to project. Then behave accordingly. And above all, cultivate the media and those who will help you burnish your reputation.

Successful organizations understand the importance of implementation, not just strategy, and, moreover, recognize the crucial role of their people in this process.

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.

Great strategy, not executed, can't possibly have any effect on performance because it doesn't actually affect anything. It's like planning for a successful surgery to remove a tumor. If no one picks up the knife and actually operates effectively, the diseases will persist.

Many of our students want to do what they have done and that has made them successful thus far in their lives: play by the rules, and do what is expected. But as much social science research and writing by Malcolm Gladwell, among others, make clear, the rules are mostly created by those already in power so obtaining power often entails standing out and breaking rules and social conventions.

Knowledge is only useful if you do something with it.