In a rural society communities are "given" for the individual. Community is a fact, whether family or religion, social class or caste.

Communication always makes demands. It always demands that the recipient become somebody, do something, believe something. It always appeals to motivation.

Some of the best business and nonprofit CEOs I've worked with over a sixty-five-year consulting career were not stereotypical leaders. They were all over the map in terms of their personalities, attitudes, values, strengths, and weaknesses.

The great mystery isn't that people do things badly but that they occasionally do a few things well. The only thing that is universal is incompetence. Strength is always specific! Nobody ever commented, for example, that the great violinist Jascha Heifetz probably couldn't play the trumpet very well.

The only things that evolve by themselves in an organization are disorder, friction and malperformance.

The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.

Institutions mistake good intentions for objectives. They say "health care"; that's an intention, not an objective.