Identifying and defining the ways we can control the future: vertical integration, horizontal integration, cooperation, incentives, and responsiveness.

Identifying and defining the hierarchy of mental content, which, in order of increasing value, are: data, information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. However, the educational system and most managers allocate time to the acquisition of these things that is inversely proportional to their importance.

I have no interest in forecasting the future, only in creating it by acting appropriately in the present.

The perceived need to learn something new is inversely proportional to the rank of a manager. Those at the top feel obliged to pretend to omniscience, and therefore refuse to learn anything new even if the cost of doing so is success.

When science divides reality up into disciplinary parts and deals with them separately, it reveals a lack of understanding of reality as a whole, as a system.

Corporations tend to collect activities that they do not have the competence or even the inclination to run well.

Second, the separation of our different points of view encourages looking for solutions to problems with the same point of view from which the problem was formulated. Quoting Einstein: “Without changing our pattern of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current patterns of thought.”

The principal function of most corporations is not to maximize shareholder value, but to maximize the standard of living and quality of work life of those who manage the corporation.

I have very much enjoyed denying the obvious and exploring the consequences of doing so. In most cases, I have found the obvious to be wrong. The obvious, I discovered, is not what needs no proof, but what people do not want to prove.