Promotion should not be more important than accomplishment, or avoiding instability more important than taking the right risk.

Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information.

We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a knowledge workers should not take on work, jobs and assignments. It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.

Follow effective action with quiet reflection.

Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you.

Universities won't survive. The future is outside the traditional campus, outside the traditional classroom. Distance learning is coming on fast.

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.