I often say that leadership is deeply personal and inherently collective. That's a paradox that effective leaders have to embrace.

An accurate, insightful view of current reality is as important as a clear vision.

Business has a way of talking about how to create value, which is in some way isn't bad... We just need to start thinking about if the value we want to create is consistent with all social and environmental well being.

Mastery of creative tension brings out the capacity for perseverance and patience. Time is an ally.

If you want real, significant, sustainable change, you need talented, committed local line leaders. If the line manager is not innovating, then innovation is not going to occur.

Businesses and other human endeavors are also systems. They, too, are bound by invisible fabrics of interrelated actions, which often take years to fully play out their effects on each other. Since we are part of that lacework ourselves, it's doubly hard to see the whole pattern of change. Instead we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems never seem to get resolved.

Governments, especially democratic ones, are short-term and nationalistic.