We all want the chance to express the very best of ourselves and to be challenged to keep reaching for more. Our time at work affords us this chance - not the only chance, to be sure, but, given that we're there forty or fifty hours a week, it's one of the best.

You will excel only by maximizing your strengths, never by fixing your weaknesses.

CEOs hate variance. It's the enemy. Variance in customer service is bad. Variance in quality is bad. CEOs love processes that are standardized, routinized, predictable. Stamping out variance makes a complex job a bit less complex.

Clarity is the preoccupation of the effective leader. If you do nothing else as a leader, be clear.

If the manager really is the problem, try to get reassigned elsewhere in the organization or start looking for one in which you can play to your strengths.

Google and Facebook, each in their own way, have revolutionized the delivery of advertising based on search and social networking, creating a sort of anti-Spam: targeted, relevant ads that a consumer might actually welcome rather than spurn.

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.