A while back, I came across a line attributed to IBM founder Thomas Watson. If you want to achieve excellence, he said, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.

Unless you walk out into the unknown, the odds of making a profound difference in your life are pretty low.

I urge you to set a tough, quantitative target for adding "differentiators" as I call them, to every service you provide.

We must reject all notions of 'reform' that serve up more of the same: more testing, more 'standards', more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy.

In the great city of San Francisco, where I used to live, at 2 in the morning every other Victorian house has somebody who is writing the great American novel. And the city is not loaded with James Joyces or Virginia Woolfs. But entrepreneurship is about distorted views of reality.

An ability to embrace new ideas, routinely challenge old ones, and live with paradox will be the effective leader's premier trait.

A good collection is more than just the sum of its parts.