If You Want to Make God Really Laugh, Show Him Your Business Plan

"Does this feel right? Is this actually civilized? It is astonishing how many times we do things in a way that challenges the ascent of humanity."

"If you implement the solution and the company reaps the gains but those who do the actual implementing get nothing but supposedly feel-good stuff, you are likely . . . to pee all over your own shoes."

"Enlightened mission, vision, and value statements do not make for enlightened capitalism. In fact they are frequently counterproductive, pompous, written for the wrong audiences, and unworkable."

"A number of symptoms indicate the presence of the disease of staying beyond your corporate shelf life."

"In business, when you land on the other side of your hurdle, you must look different."

"The less you delegate what is to be done in the short term (i.e., you impose business targets rather than agree on them), the less you can delegate how they are achieved."

"The control of business decision making by lawyers is a U.S.-led phenomenon. A country that has 5 percent of the world's population and 66 percent of the world's lawyers couldn't do anything but lead the charge."

"Branding today is not just about packets of soap powder; it applies to Big Six accounting, churches, credit cards, sports franchises, and just about every product and service we use."

"Innovation in your relationship with your customer gets to the core of what I believe to be the huge opportunity of new branding."

"The reasons why new appointments go wrong are easy to define in principle: The employee can behave suboptimally, the employer can do the same, and the process that should monitor and appraise the situation can fail."

"We need to recognize the three big changes information technology brought about if we are to define universal laws concerning what we have to do to win in this environment:"

"One of the reasons this whole subject is confusing is that there is no single trend in evidence; There is a hell of a lot of traffic going one way . . . but also a hell of a lot going the other way . . . all seemingly on the same highway."

"A challenge culture, more than anything else in business, must be led right from the top of the business."