The Pertinent Question is NOT how to do things right - but how to find the right things to do, and to concentrate resources and efforts on them.

We will have to learn to lead people rather then to contain them.

There are companies that are good at improving what they're already doing. There are companies that are good at extending what they're doing. And finally there are companies that are good at innovation. Every large company has to be able to do all three - improve, extend, and innovate - simultaneously.

Above all, innovation is not invention. It is a term of economics rather than of technology.

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.

You can either take action, or you can hang back and hope for a miracle. Miracles are great, but they are so unpredictable.

Systematic decision review also shows executives their own weaknesses, particularly the areas in which they are simply incompetent. In these areas, smart executives don't make decisions or take actions. They delegate.