Schools are generally feminine places, institutions where conformity is valued, taught largely by conformist women.

When people in organizations feel too secure, it's because there aren't any significant outcomes as a result of what they do. Whatever you do, nothing much different happens. This also means there are no important pay-offs if you risk by innovating. As there are no rewards for taking risks, then there's no sense of push in that institution's culture.

If the mood is overly anxious, then anxiety must be reduced by lowering uncertainty. Very simply, uncertainty is reduced when people are told what's going on and what will happen to them. In the vacuum of no news, people imagine the worst. Since disappointment is much easier to handle than anxiety, then, good news or bad, honesty is honestly the best policy.

Very few people are ambitious in the sense of having a specific image of what they want to achieve. Most people's sights are only toward the next run, the next increment of money.

The message to organizations is this: You have to increase the number of categories of contributing, or the types of career paths, which people can experience as successful. You cannot restrict esteem to the fewer and fewer who will be climbing up the management ladder. You need to have the majority of your people feeling like winners.

Nothing creates more self-respect among employees than being included in the process of making decisions.

Credibility is lost when there are big discrepancies between what leaders say and what they do. ... Increasing credibility requires openness. Hidden agendas will destroy trust.