High personal standards aren't enough for organizational excellence. You've got to be intolerant of low standards in others. . . . If you accommodate questionable practices in others who touch your organization, you risk soiling its reputation. Anybody whose hands aren't clean can get the place dirty.

We've got to start thinking of school as a lifelong process. That's the only way we'll keep abreast and be able to share in the wealth of the new "knowledge society."

In these times of self-directed teams, empowered employees, and "boundaryless" organizations, your worth as an individual employee will also get measured by your work group's collective results.

We can't win the struggle for high standards if we just talk a good game . . . we've got to play a good game.

Trust is the glue that holds relationships together.

The ethics of excellence are grounded in action - what you actually do, rather than what you say you believe. Talk, as the saying goes, is cheap.

Too much attention on problems kills our faith in possibilities.