There’s no such thing as information overload — only filter failure.

Trust is the basis of agility, of flexibility. Yet it's an incredible challenge to establish trust and maybe even harder to maintain it. Underlying the challenge is the question of how to institutionalize trust between buyer and supplier. I've got colleagues who maintain that trust can only be established between individuals. But a few souls like Robert and myself say we've got to be able to institutionalize trust. We've got to make it work so that when the founders of the alliance depart, the alliance continues. We've been looking at this for over ten years, and we don't have the answer yet.

In the past, CRM has followed a basic balanced scorecard technique involving four categories: customer, financial, operations, and people. From an inside-out perspective, organizations first analyzed the needs and capabilities of operations and their people to determine what could be delivered to the customer. From that, they drew conclusions and predictions to determine the impact on the financial category. As this has changed, so have the priorities. Now the focus is first on the customers.

The biggest problem with a successful company is that you don’t learn from success. Learning from failure is so much easier.

Every business needs three types of people: Flashlights, who see what is coming and send warnings signals in a timely fashion; Innovators, who pick up those signals and innovate; finally, the Doers, who make it all happen.

Only if managers define market segments that correspond to the circumstances in which customers find themselves when making purchasing decisions can they accurately theorize which products will connect with their customers. We believe that customer segmentation (or categorization) should be based on the notion that customers "hire" products to do specific "jobs." Doing so will help managers segment their markets to mirror the way their customers experience life. This approach can also uncover opportunities for disruptive innovation.

When we work only to do, we most often find ourselves helplessly doing again without having placed the first doing in any context, without having celebrated any accomplishment… Most people who exhibit mastery in a work or a subject often have left it completely for a long period, only to return for another look. Constant busyness has no absence in it, no openness to the arrival of any new season, no birdsong at the start of its day. Constant learning is counterproductive and makes both us and the subject stale and uninteresting.

The way to improve society and reform the world is to enlighten [people], spread knowledge, and convince the multitude that they have, or may have, sense, knowledge and virtue. Declamations against the cunning of politicians and the ignorance, folly, inconstancy, or effrontery of the multitude will never do.

Knowing what we know is less powerful than knowing who knows what.

Theory should ... guide [the future commander] in his process of self-education, but it should not accompany him to the battlefield.

Discretion is the enemy of order, standardization and quality.

In the business world, the equivalent white lie to, "The check is in the mail," is: "Our suppliers are our partners." Both statements represent promises that should be kept, but aren't. They represent good intentions, but lack reality.

Every great leader begins with a great dream. Ambitious visions not only require a capacity for meaningful change, but also provide the energy and inspiration to engage others. These tasks -- articulating a dream and rallying others around it -- are the essence of leadership. The study of leaders in every field tells us that leadership is the residue of ambition… Great leaders have an ambition marked by a greater sense of purpose, an urge to create something beyond oneself. Whether to provide the best product or service in the industry or to eradicate childhood disease, their ambition extends beyond the accumulation of wealth or power.

In the end it is the quality and character, a leader's understanding of how to be, not how to do, that determines the performance, the results.

Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your objective. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Anyone can sit down and pound on a piano and create new sounds, but that doesn't mean you're going to listen to the results. Innovation is about the process of generating something new that has value.

Really great firms give people a fair amount of independence. They don’t control the people. They control the culture rather than the individuals...Culture influences people every day – it’s what guides them to act when management is not looking.

The three things you need to make money are the right strategy, the right people and the right behavior. Strategy matters most when there is turmoil but it is only about 10 per cent of the answer because implementing strategy is so challenging. People and behavior are 90 per cent of the equation.

Culture and leadership are hard to copy. There’s no such thing as sustainable competitive advantage but a unique culture can offer a powerful competitive advantage.

The short-term cost savings of outsourcing were very apparent, very attractive, and very seductive to companies [that] were desperately trying to improve their earnings per share quarter to quarter. But when you outsource something, you tend to make it more generic. You tend to lose control over it. You tend to pass a lot of the technology, particularly on the manufacturing or service delivery side, to your suppliers. That creates strategic vulnerabilities and also tends to commoditize your product. You’re sourcing from people who also supply your competitors.

Many white Americans have stopped thinking that workplace discrimination is a problem. It's not malicious. They think that the process works, that people are judged on their own merits. They're ignorant of their own privilege.

Everything we see hides something else we want to see.

One who conquers himself is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand on the battlefield.

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.

Good manners are the lubricating oil of organizations.

A healthy knowledge ecology needs two types of contributors, characterized metaphorically as the serious scientist (analytical, focused, consistent) and the hungry artist (playful, transcending boundaries, unpredictable). How we bring together different cognitive styles largely determines the success of our strategic capabilities. The key is to insist that both types be equally grounded in the mission of the organization. With shared understanding of purpose we can ask that people lash themselves to a problem.