Great managers know they don't have 10 salespeople working for them. They know they have 10 individuals working for them . A great manager is brilliant at spotting the unique differences that separate each person and then capitalizing on them.

American culture is CEO obsessed. We celebrate the hard-charging heroes and mythologize the iconoclastic visionaries. Those people are important.

You cannot learn very much about excellence from studying failure.

There is no shortage of mechanisms by which to measure almost anything.

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.

Most of my work has been in corporations, studying how you build an organization that helps people to identify and work to their strengths.

We live with them every day, and they come so easily to us that they cease to be precious.