An institution which is financed by a budget - or which enjoys a monopoly which the customer cannot escape - is rewarded for what it deserves rather than what it earns. It is paid for 'good intentions' and 'programs'. It is paid for not alienating important constituents rather than satisfying any one group. It is misdirected by the way it is being paid into defining performance and results as what will produce the budget rather than as what will produce contribution.

Never underrate the boss! The boss may look illiterate. He may look stupid. But there is no risk at all in overrating a boss. If you underrate him he will bitterly resent it or impute to you the deficiency in brains and knowledge you imputed to him.

A primary task of management in the developed countries in the decades ahead will be to make knowledge productive.

Our society has become an employee society.

It takes far less energy to move from first-rate performance to excellence than it does to move from incompetence to mediocrity.

If something fails despite being carefully planned, carefully designed, and conscientiously executed, that failure often bespeaks underlying change and, with it, opportunity.

The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present, the decline will be fast.