What we are good at comes easy, and we believe that unless it comes hard, it can't be very good.

Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.

In business school classrooms they construct wonderful models of a non- world.

One does not start with facts. One starts with opinions.

There is one qualification the manager cannot acquire but must bring to the task. It is not genius; it is character.

Successful people know they need to get many things done-and done effectively. Therefore, they concentrate their time and energy on doing one thing at a time-and on doing first things firs.

In most organizations, the bottleneck is at the top of the bottle.