Don't take on things you don't believe in and that you yourself are not good at. Learn to say no. Effective leaders match the objective needs of their company with the subjective competencies. As a result, they get an enormous amount of things done fast.

Of all the decisions an executive makes, none is as important as the decisions about people, because they determine the performance capacity of the organization.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Leaders grow; they are not made.

Teaching 23-year-olds in an MBA programme strikes me as largely a waste of time. They lack the background of experience. You can teach them skills - accounting and what have you - but you can't teach them management.

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

We can't make people better by trying to eliminate their weaknesses, but we can help then perform better by building on their strengths.