You've got to eat while you dream. You've got to deliver on short-range commitments, while you develop a long-range strategy and vision and implement it. The success of doing both. Walking and chewing gum if you will. Getting it done in the short-range, and delivering a long-range plan, and executing on that.
If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete.
The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important - and then get out of their way while they do it.
I was afraid of the internet... because I couldn't type.
Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.
The idea flow from the human spirit is absolutely unlimited. All you have to do is tap into that well. I don't like to use the word efficiency. It's creativity. It's a belief that every person counts.
The biggest cowards are managers who don't let people know where they stand.
What's important at the grocery store is just as important in engines or medical systems. If the customer isn't satisfied, if the stuff is getting stale, if the shelf isn't right, or if the offerings aren't right, it's the same thing. You manage it like a small organization. You don't get hung up on zeros.
My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too.
Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term.
Out-innovating them is the way to beat China. And to do everything that we do in this country to support innovative policy, that drives innovation and new products and more jobs and creates jobs. You can't - you can't put a wall up around here. We tried that in the '30s. It didn't work.
Culture drives great results.
Any jerk can have short-term earnings. You squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and the company sinks five years later.
Globalization has changed us into a company that searches the world, not just to sell or to source, but to find intellectual capital - the world's best talents and greatest ideas.
A strategy is something like, an innovative new product; globalization, taking your products around the world; be the low-cost producer. A strategy is something you can touch; you can motivate people with; be number one and number two in every business. You can energize people around the message.
One of the jobs of a manager is to instill confidence, pump confidence into your people. And when you've got somebody who's raring to go and you can smell it and feel it, give 'em that shot.
Strong managers who make tough decisions to cut jobs provide the only true job security in today's world. Weak managers are the problem. Weak managers destroy jobs.
Don't manage - lead change before you have to.
In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I've ever seen run for the presidency of the United States.
We've only been wealthy in this country for 70 years. Who said we ought to have all this? Is it ordained?
