Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.
Growth that adds volume without improving productivity is fat. Growth that diminishes productivity is cancer.
Spontaneity is an infinite number of rehearsed possibilities.
Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.
More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than at any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.
The really important things are said over cocktails and are never done.
Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
Knowledge is power. In post-capitalism, power comes from transmitting information to make it productive, not hiding it.
Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future.
No decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become someone’s work assignment and responsibility.
The knowledge that we consider knowledge proves itself in action. What we now mean by knowledge is information in action, information focused on results.
Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.
Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.
It takes far less energy to move from first-rate performance to excellence than it does to move from incompetence to mediocrity.
Do first things first, and second things not at all.
People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.
We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity: If you’ve got ambition and smarts, you can rise to the top of your chosen profession, regardless of where you started out.
If there is any one secret of effectiveness, it is concentration. Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time.
People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete – the things that should have worked but did not, the things that once were productive and no longer are.
Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.