Innovation and best practices can be sown throughout an organization - but only when they fall on fertile ground.

Always work hard. Intensity clarifies. It creates not only momentum, but also the pressure you need to feel either friction, or fulfillment.

Getting after this terrible, avoidable waste of human potentiality is what gets me out of bed every morning.

You should know that what wakes me up at night, what gets me running fast in the morning, and, frankly, what prompts me to lose any semblance of my habitual reserve is the conviction that work doesn't have to be this grim. We can do better.

Discover what you don't like doing and stop doing it.

Spend the most time with your best people. ... Talent is the multiplier. THe more energy and attention you invest in it, the greater the yield. The time you spend with your best is, quite simply, your most productive time. ... Persistence directed primarily toward your non-talents is self-destructive. ... You will reprimand yourself, berate yourself, and put yourself through all manner of contortions in an attempt to achieve the impossible.

Managers are, and should be, totally responsible for recognizing individual strengths (both natural talents and skills), getting those strengths in proper alignment (i.e. in the right "seats"), and then leveraging them.