To stay ahead, you must have your next idea waiting in the wings.

It takes courage to speak up against complacency and injustice while others remain silent. But that's what leadership is.

... people are capable of more than their organizational positions ever give them the tools or the time or the opportunity to demonstrate.

A basic truth of management - if not of life - is that nearly everything looks like a failure in the middle.

Lack of opportunity breeds dreams of escape. But professionals and managers who have invested in their careers do not leave the work force as frequently as discouraged workers in lower status occupations. Instead, they keep working, but they escape emotionally by defining achievement in professional, not company, terms. ... Thus, the potential for being stuck as career uncertainty grows takes its toll in weakening attachment to any particular employer.

In the most innovative companies there is a significantly higher volume of thank yous than in companies of low innovation.

Competition has never been more threatening than it is now. Innovative thinkers challenge the status quo in their organizations. They are often viewed as "troublemakers." They threaten the defenders of the status quo. So competition within an organization can also be brutal. The most effective leaders overcome "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom" by being change agents themselves. They encourage and reward innovative thinking. I have observed that people only resist changes imposed on them by other people.