Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity.

Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.

Judgment without character is expediency... or worse.

Leaders are people who believe so passionately that they can seduce other people into sharing their dream.

Almost without exception, members of great groups see themselves as winning underdogs, as a feisty David hurling fresh ideas at a big, backward-looking Goliath. They always have an "enemy."

Followers who tell the truth, and leaders who listen to it, are an unbeatable combination.

I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation. Someone once wrote that the sound of surprise is jazz, and if there's any one thing that we must try to get used to in this world, it's surprise and the unexpected. Truly, we are living in world where the only thing that's constant is change.