Every managerial act must be seen as an unequivocal support for urgency in pursuit of constant testing, change, and improvement.

Many flagship state universities have wonderful digital libraries that are accessed by people around the world. In future, if not current, budget crises, trustees, board members, and administrators may wonder why these state institutions - with an articulated primary clientele of students, faculty, and staff members and a secondary clientele of all citizens of the state - should be spending resources on a digital library that is used by many people beyond the primary and secondary service populations.

It's relatively simple. If we're not getting more, better, faster than they are getting more, better, faster, then we're getting less, no better or more worse.

The little people will get even, which is one of a thousand reasons why they are not little people at all. If you're a jerk as a leader, you will be torpedoed. And usually it won't be by your vice presidents; it will be on the loading dock at 3am when no supervisors are around.

In today's economy there are no experts, no 'best and brightest' with all the answers. It's up to each one of us. The only way to screw up is to not try anything.

In McKinsey's world, all of life is one of two things: strategy or organization.

A vibrant, rich, growing corpus of public-domain books is a vital public good - similar to parks, the infrastructure of basic services, and other hallmarks of any advanced society.