Fortunately or unfortunately, the one predictable thing in any organization is the crisis. That always comes. That's when you do depend on the leader: The job of the leader is to build an organization that is battle-ready, that has high morale, that knows how to behave, that trusts itself, and where people trust one another.

What people in business think they know about the customer and market is likely to be more wrong than right...the customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him.

Objectives are not commands; they are commitments.

Every first-rate editor I have ever heard of reads, edits and rewrites every word that goes into his publication.... Good editors are not 'permissive'; they do not let their colleagues do 'their thing'; they make sure that everybody does the 'paper's thing.' A good, let alone a great editor is an obsessive autocrat with a whim of iron, who rewrites and rewrites, cuts and slashes, until every piece is exactly the way he thinks it should have been done.

A man should never be appointed into a managerial position if his vision focuses on people's weaknesses rather than on their strengths.

The most important work of the executive is to identify the changes that have already happened. The important thing . . . is to exploit the changes that have already occurred and to use them as opportunities.

A fundamental responsibility of leadership is make sure that everybody knows the mission, understands it, lives it.