Self-awareness gives you the capacity to learn from your mistakes as well as your successes. It enables you to keep growing.

People tend to look at their businesses from the inside out - that is, they get so focused on making and selling their products that they lose awareness of the needs and buying behaviors of their customers.

Execution is the ability to mesh strategy with reality, align people with goals, and achieve the promised results.

Execution is the job of the business leader.

If you can't describe your strategy in twenty minutes, simply and in plain language, you haven't got a plan. 'But,' people may say, 'I've got a complex strategy. It can't be reduced to a page.' That's nonsense. That's not a complex strategy. It's a complex thought about the strategy.

In its most fundamental sense, execution is a systematic way of exposing reality and acting on it. Most companies don't face reality very well. ... Realism is the heart of execution, but many organizations are full of people who are trying to avoid or shade reality. Why? It makes life uncomfortable.

I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day you bet on people, not on strategies.