Passion isn't something that lives way up in the sky, in abstract dreams and hopes. It lives at ground level, in the specific details of what you're actually doing every day.

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

Obviously, you have to know what you need now and what you will soon need, then hire or promote from within to meet those needs.

You shouldn't take pride in your natural talents any more than you should take pride in your sex, your race or color of your hair

Born of the impossibly varied options we have to amuse ourselves, cutting-edge companies are finding innovative ways to tailor our entertainment choices to who we are, relieving us of the burden of finding the diamond in the rough of 500 TV channels or thousands of movies and music albums released every year.

Too many companies waste time trying to eliminate their employees' weaknesses when, in fact, they should concentrate on developing their strengths.

Forcing your employees to follow required steps only prevents customer dissatisfaction. If your goal is truly to satisfy, to create advocates, then the step-by-step approach alone cannot get you there. Instead, you must select employees who have the talent to listen and to teach, and then you must focus them toward simple emotional outcomes like partnership and advice....Identify a person's strenths. Define outcomes that play to those strengths. Find a way to count, rate or rank those outcomes. And then let the person run.