Elephants have a hard time adapting. Cockroaches outlive everything.

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.

The effective executive knows that it is easier to raise the performance of one leader than it is to raise the performance of a whole mass. She therefore makes sure she puts into the leadership position, into the standard-setting, the performance-making position the person who has the strength to do the outstanding pacesetting job. This always requires focus on the one strength of a person and dismissal of weaknesses as irrelevant unless they hamper the full deployment of the available strength.

Everything requires time. It is the only truly universal condition. All work takes place in time and uses up time. Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable, and necessary resource. Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time.

Entrepreneurs believe that profit is what matters most in a new enterprise. But profit is secondary. Cash flow matters most.

The most probable assumption is that no currently working 'business theory' will be valid 10 years hence.

More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than at any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.