It is willingness of people to give of themselves over and above the demands of the job that distinguishes the great from the merely adequate.

The next thing to be said about what long-range planning is not, is that it does not deal with future decisions. It deals with the futurity of present decisions. Decisions exist only in the present. The question that faces the long-range planner is not what we should do tomorrow.

The effective executive knows that it is easier to raise the performance of one leader than it is to raise the performance of a whole mass. She therefore makes sure she puts into the leadership position, into the standard-setting, the performance-making position the person who has the strength to do the outstanding pacesetting job. This always requires focus on the one strength of a person and dismissal of weaknesses as irrelevant unless they hamper the full deployment of the available strength.

An executive should be a realist; and no one is less realistic than the cynic.

Meetings are a symptom of bad organization. The fewer meetings the better.

There is nothing worse than doing the wrong thing well.

Every single social and global issue of our day is a business opportunity in disguise.