An organization, no matter how well designed, is only as good as the people who live and work in it.
If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself - your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers.
Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.
The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out.
Every mind is a room packed with archaic furniture.
It is essential to employ, trust, and reward those whose perspective, ability, and judgment are radically different from yours. It is also rare, for it requires uncommon humility, tolerance, and wisdom.
With the advent of genetic engineering the time required for the evolution of new species may literally collapse.
Money motivates neither the best people, nor the best in people. It can move the body and influence the mind, but it cannot touch the heart or move the spirit; that is reserved for belief, principle, and morality.
Success follows those adept at preserving the substance of the past by clothing it in the forms of the future.
Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.
Lead yourself, lead your superiors, lead your peers, and free your people to do the same. All else is trivia.
If you don't understand that you work for your mislabeled 'subordinates', then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny.
Substance is enduring, form is ephemeral.
Make a careful list of all things done to you that you abhorred. Don't do them to others, ever.
Think about technological float: it took centuries for the wheel to gain universal acceptance. Now any microchip device can be in use around the world in weeks.
Preserve substance; modify form; know the difference.
What will become compellingly important is absolute clarity of shared purpose and set of principles of conduct sort of institutional genetic code that every member of the organization understands in a common way, and with deep conviction.
Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.
It won't do away with hierarchy totally, but the principal leader will be the person who most exemplifies the kind of organization and behavior required who is best able to create the conditions such organizations require.
The closest thing to a law of nature in business is that form has an affinity for expense, while substance has an affinity for income.
