The rewards system is a powerful driver of behavior and therefore culture.

I look for people who work to solve problems and help colleagues, I sack politicians.

You can’t mandate [cultural change], can’t engineer it. What you can do is create the conditions for transformation. You can provide incentives. You can define the marketplace realities and goals. But then you have to trust. In fact, in the end, management doesn’t change culture. Management invites the workforce itself to change the culture.

I want to become a student. I want to read Chinese history and go on a dig.

Lou Gerstner knows how to do a deal, and George Bush Sr., less so.

The more successful enterprises are the more they try to replicate, duplicate, codify what makes us great. And suddenly they're inward thinking. They're thinking how can we continue to do what we've done in the past without understanding that what made them successful is to take risks, to change and to adapt and to be responsive. And so in a sense success breeds its own failure. And I think it's true of a lot of successful businesses.

Watch the turtle. He only moves forward by sticking his neck out.