The toughest thing about the power of trust is that it's very difficult to build and very easy to destroy. The essence of trust building is to emphasize the similarities between you and the customer.

Once an organization loses its spirit of pioneering and rests on its early work, its progress stops.

Failure is a teacher; a harsh one, but the best.

If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.

You can be discouraged by failure, or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes, make all you can. Because, remember that's where you'll find success - on the far side of failure.

Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?

Every time we've moved ahead in IBM, it was because someone was willing to take a chance, put his head on the block, and try something new.