Effective listening is a professional achievement-achieved only through hard work.

The hyperfast-moving, wired-up, reengineered, quality-obsessed organization will succeed or fail on the strength of the trust that its managers place in the folks working on the front line.

The manager, in today's world, doesn't get paid to be a steward of resources, a favored term not so many years ago. He or she gets paid for one and only one thing: to make things better (incrementally and dramatically), to change things, to act - today.

Leaders understand the ultimate power of relationships.

You have to stand out if you want to move up.

Community. A friend started a real estate brokerage a few years ago. By the time she'd added her second employee, she was a pillar of her 35,000-person community. No rule says that only the local banker or car dealer can organize the program to raise supplemental funds for the public library or send the high school band on a well-earned special trip. Participating in community affairs, with time more than dollars, is good business from day one. It gets your name around, adds to your distinctiveness, and, best of all, makes you an attractive employer (which is the key to sustained success).

The whole secret to our success is being able to con ourselves into believing that we're going to change the world because statistically we are unlikely to do it.