Innovation is an outgrowth of initiative, and initiative - taking positive actions in a belief that your actions can make a difference - is a big part of confidence.

The way innovating companies are designed leaves ambiguities, overlaps, decision conflicts or decision vacuums in some parts of the organisation. People rail at this, curse it-and invent innovative ways to overcome it.

Power is the ability to get things done

Leaders is the new organisation do not lack motivational tools, but the tools are different from those of traditional corporate bureaucrats. The new rewards are based not on status but on contribution, and they consist not of regular promotion and automatic pay rises, but of excitement about the mission and a share of the glory of success.

Peter Drucker being one of the most important influences because he has helped to think differently about organizational leadership and management. Frankly, I learn something of value from everyone I meet. My Harvard colleagues. My students. The executives I work with. For an eager student, which is what I am, there is so much to be learned from everyday experiences. I'm a sponge. Always will be.

Even the new feminist research on sex-role socialization and sex differences has sometimes had the unfortunate consequence of creating a new set of stereotypes about what women feel and how women behave. Despite the large amount of overlap between the sexes in most research, the tendency to label and polarize and thus to exaggerate differences remains in much reporting of data, which may, for example, report the mean scores of male and female populations but not the degree of overlap.

I've found that small wins, small projects, small differences often make huge differences.