You cannot prevent a major catastrophe, but you can build an organization that is battle-ready, where people trust one another. In military training, the first rule is to instill soldiers with trust in their officers – because without trust, they won’t fight.
Trust is congruence between what you say and what you do.
Luck never built a business. Prosperity and growth come only to the business that systematically finds and exploits its potential.
No financial man will ever understand business because financial people think a company makes money. A company makes shoes, and no financial man understands that. They think money is real. Shoes are real.
The critical question is not “How can I achieve?” but “What can I contribute?”
All good strategy eventually degenerates into work.
The relevant question is not simply what shall we do tomorrow, but rather what shall we do today in order to get ready for tomorrow.
When it rains manna from heaven, some people put up an umbrella. Others reach for a big spoon.
For the first four years, no new enterprise produces profits. Even Mozart didn’t start writing music until he was four.
Marketing and innovation make money. Everything else is a cost.
Promotion should not be more important than accomplishment, or avoiding instability more important than taking the right risk.
Adversarial power relationships only work if you never have to see or work with the bastards again.
What managers decide to stop doing is often more important than what they decide to do.
The productivity of people requires continuous learning, as the Japanese have taught us. It requires adoption in the West of the specific Japanese Zen concept where one learns to do better what one already does well.
Leadership is all hype. We’ve had three great leaders in this century-Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
Cultivate a deep understanding of yourself – not only what your strengths and weaknesses are but also how you learn, how you work with others, what your values are, and where you can make the greatest contribution. Because only when you operate from strengths can you achieve true excellence.
An established company which, in an age demanding innovation, is not able to innovation, is doomed to decline and extinction.
Ideas are like frog eggs: you’ve got to lay a thousand to hatch one.
The young knowledge worker whose job is too small to challenge and test his abilities either leaves or declines rapidly into premature middle age, soured, cynical, unproductive.
The rule should be to minimize the need for people to get together to accomplish anything.