When there is genuine vision(as opposed to the all-too-familiar vision statement), people excel and learn, not because they are told to, but because they want to.

Consider prejudice. Once a person begins to accept a stereotype of a particular group, that "thought" becomes an active agent, "participating" in shaping how he or she interacts with another person who falls in that stereotyped class. In turn, the tone of their interaction influences the other person's behaviour. The prejudiced person can't see how his prejudice shapes what he "sees" and how he acts. In some sense, if he did, he would no longer be prejudiced. To operate, the "thought" of prejudice must remain hidden to its holder

Sharing knowledge is not about giving people something, or getting something from them. That is only valid for information sharing. Sharing knowledge occurs when people are genuinely interested in helping one another develop new capacities for action; it is about creating learning processes.

Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as shared vision.

How has the world of the child changed in the last 150 years?" The answer is. "It's hard to imagine any way in which it hasn't changed.They're immersed in all kinds of stuff that was unheard of 150 years ago, and yet if you look at schools today versus 100 years ago, they are more similar than dissimilar.

Most leadership strategies are doomed to failure from the outset. As people have been noting for years, the majority of strategic initiatives that are driven from the top are marginally effective - at best.

In a sluggish system, aggressiveness produces instability. Either be patient or make the system more responsive.