I have been saying for many years that we are using the word 'guru' only because 'charlatan' is too long to fit into a headline.

The productivity of people requires continuous learning, as the Japanese have taught us. It requires adoption in the West of the specific Japanese Zen concept where one learns to do better what one already does well.

As with every phenomenon of the objective universe, the first step toward understanding work is to analyze it.

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.

The one to distrust is the person who never makes a mistake, never commits a blunder, never fails in what he tries to do. Either he is a phony, or he stays with the safe, the tried and the trivial.

The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths so strong that it makes the system's weaknesses irrelevant.

Succession planning often results in the selection of a weaker representation of yourself.