The only things that evolve by themselves in an organization are disorder, friction and malperformance.

Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.

Adequacy is the enemy of excellence.

You cannot build performance on weaknesses. You can build only on strengths.

If a business is to be considered a continuous process, instead of a series of disjointed stop-and-go events, then the economic universe in which a business operates-and all the major events within it-must have rhyme, rhythm, or reason.

To improve communications, work not on the utter, but the recipient.

No organization can depend on genius; the supply is always scarce and unreliable. It is the test of an organization to make ordinary people perform better than they seem capable of, to bring out whatever strength there is in its members, and to use each person's strength to help all the other members perform.