No financial man will ever understand business because financial people think a company makes money. A company makes shoes, and no financial man understands that. They think money is real. Shoes are real.

Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.

Every first-rate editor I have ever heard of reads, edits and rewrites every word that goes into his publication.... Good editors are not 'permissive'; they do not let their colleagues do 'their thing'; they make sure that everybody does the 'paper's thing.' A good, let alone a great editor is an obsessive autocrat with a whim of iron, who rewrites and rewrites, cuts and slashes, until every piece is exactly the way he thinks it should have been done.

Morale in an organization does not mean that "people get along together"; the test is performance not conformance.

Never ask who's right. Start out by asking what is right. And you find that out by listening to dissenting, disagreeing opinions.

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.