A leader needs enough understanding to fashion an intelligent strategy.

People change what they do less because they are given an analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings.

Complacency is almost always the product of success or perceived success

Great leaders understand that historical success tends to produce stable and inwardly focused organizations, and these outfits, in turn, reinforce a feeling of contentment with the status quo.

Never underestimate the power of a good story.

Leadership is about setting a direction. It's about creating a vision, empowering and inspiring people to want to achieve the vision, and enabling them to do so with energy and speed through an effective strategy. In its most basic sense, leadership is about mobilizing a group of people to jump into a better future.

Because management deals mostly with the status quo and leadership deals mostly with change, in the next century we are going to have to try to become much more skilled at creating leaders.