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

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.

Confidence is not lodged in people's brains, it comes from the support system that surrounds them. Let's not confuse confidence overall with just self-confidence. Self-confidence is only one part of confidence. People also need confidence in others - their colleagues and leaders - that they can count on them to do the right thing and not to let them down.

if networks of women are formed, they should be job related and task related rather than female-concerns related. Personal networks for sociability in the context of a work organization would tend to promote the image of women contained in the temperamental model - that companies must compensate for women's deficiencies and bring them together for support because they could not make it on their own. But job-related task forces serve the social-psychological functions while reinforcing a more positive image of women.

I wonder whether there has been too much emphasis on teaching women to conform, to fit into the system. Certainly that suits conservative organizations in conservative times. But now ... innovation and creativity are necessary.

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

Creativity does not derive from order but from the attempt to impose order where it does not exist, to make new connections.