If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either.

If your project or organization depends on knowing things that other people don't know (but could find out if they wanted to), your days are probably numbered. Ask a travel agent The alternative, while difficult, is obvious. Provide enough non-commodity service and customization that it doesn't matter if the ideas spread. In fact, it will help you when they do.

A well-defined backup plan is sabotage waiting to happen. Why push through the dip, why take the risk, why blow it all when there's the comfortable alternative instead? The people who break through usually have nothing to lose, and they almost never have a backup plan.

Two elements of successful leadership: a willingness to be wrong and an eagerness to admit it.

The resistance is not something to be avoided, it's something to seek out.

The only long-term motivation is self motivation. So hire people who are self motivated and get out of their way.

The wettest, weirdest environment is human interaction. Whatever we build gets misunderstood, corroded and chronic, and it happens quickly and in unpredictable ways. That's one reason why the web is so fascinating-it's a collision between the analytic world of code and wet world of people.