Teach your children how to identify their own strengths and challenge them to contribute these strengths to others.

The secret to living a strong life is right in front of you, calling to you every day. It can be found in your emotional reaction to specific moments in your life.

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.

There has to be a way to redirect employee's driving ambition and to channel it more productively. There is. Create heroes in every role. Make every role, performed at excellence, a respected profession.

Remember the Golden Rule? "Treat people as you would like to be treated." The best managers break the Golden Rule every day. They would say don't treat people as you would like to be treated. This presupposes that everyone breathes the same psychological oxygen as you. For example, if you are competitive, everyone must be similarly competitive. If you like to be praised in public, everyone else must, too. Everyone must share your hatred of micromanagement.

The best strategy for building a competitive organization is to help individuals become more of who they are.

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.