The first step out of the gate has to be knowing where you want to end up. What do you really want from your company?

The first step to solving any problem is to accept one’s own accountability for creating it.

Being relevant to your customers only when you’re trying to sell something means choosing to be irrelevant to them for the rest of the time.

There will be plenty of other problems in the future. This is as good a time as any to get ahead of them.

The economy is in ruins! Bottom line? Good management will defeat a bad economy.

Your company is its own competition and can deliver itself debilitating blows the competition only dreams of.

Instead of waiting for a leader you can believe in, try this: Become a leader you can believe in.

The purpose of leadership is to change the world around you in the name of your values, so you can live those values more fully.

Profitability. Growth. Quality. Exceeding customer expectations. These are not examples of values. These are examples of corporate strategies being sold to you as values.

When you’re a manager, you work for your company. When you’re a leader, your company works for you.

Work/life balance is not about escaping work. It’s about living exactly the way you want to when you’re at work.

What first separates a leader from a normal human being? A leader knows who they are as a human being.

True leaders live their values everywhere, not just in the workplace.

The worst thing in your own development as a leader is not to do it wrong. It’s to do it for the wrong reasons.

When rewards come from an external source instead of an internal source, they’re unreliable, which means they’re dangerous if you grow to depend on them.

Human behavior is only unpredictable and dangerous if you don’t start from humanity in the first place.

Imagine a world where what you say synchs up, not sinks down.

Why live my personal values at work? This is an excellent question to ask. If your attorneys are planning an insanity defense.

Here’s what you need to know most about leadership: Lead your own life first. The only thing in this world that will dependably happen from the top down is the digging of your grave.

The myth of management is that your personal values are irrelevant or inappropriate at work.

It’s impossible for a company to get what it wants most if managers have to make a choice between their own values and company priorities.

Try not to take this the wrong way, but your brain is smarter than you are.

A manager’s emotional commitment is the ultimate trigger for their discretionary effort, worth more than financial, intellectual & physical commitment combined.

You can stuff yourself with emotional fulfillment until it’s dribbling down your chin & your ego will quickly chomp it down and demand more.

Your dreams and the dreams of your company may be different, but they are in no way incompatible.

Providing the ultimate solution to work/life balance: not escaping from work but living the way you want to at work.

Your company really has to work for you before you’ll really work for your company.

What companies want most from their managers is what they most stop their managers from giving. What managers want most from their jobs is what they most stop themselves from getting.

Most managers have plenty of emotional commitment to give to their jobs. If they can be convinced it’s safe and sensible to give it.

What managers want most from companies they stop themselves from getting.What companies want most from managers they stop them from giving.

This is your one and only precious life. Somebody’s going to decide how it’s going to be lived and that person had better be you.

A manager’s emotional commitment is worth more than their financial, intellectual and physical commitment combined.

Emotional commitment is a personal choice. Managers understand this even if their companies don’t.

Emotional commitment means unchecked, unvarnished devotion to the company and its success; any legendary organizational performance is the result of emotionally committed managers.

The company may have captured their minds, their bodies and their pockets, but that doesn’t mean it’s captured their hearts.

Values are deeply held personal beliefs that form your own priority code for living.

Success means: I want to know the work I do means something to somebody and helps make the world, if not a Better place, not a worse one.

Your values are your essence: an undistorted mirror showing you at your pure, attractive best.

Careful now: even a financially rewarding, intellectually stimulating work environment isn’t the same as living your own values.

Values are the individual biases that allow you to decide which actions are true for you alone.

Success for Managers means: I want to be in healthy relationships. I want a real connection with people I spend so much time with.

Let’s get right on top of the bottom line: You must live your personal values at work.

Any expert will tell you that if you want emotionally committed relationships then people must be allowed to be true to who they are.

When you’re not on your own agenda, you’re prey to the agenda of others.

Leadership creates performance in people because it impacts willingness; it’s a matter of modeling, inspiring, and reinforcing.

Management controls performance in people because it impacts skills; it’s a matter of monitoring, analyzing and directing.

To integrate one’s experiences around a coherent and enduring sense of self lies at the core of creating a user’s guide to life.

Leaders are people who know exactly who they are. They know exactly where they want to go. They’re hell-bent on getting there.

Leaders make a lot of mistakes but they admit those mistakes to themselves and change because of them.

Managers know what they want most: to be allowed to achieve success by leveraging who they are, not by compromising it.

The high quality of a company’s customer experience rarely has anything to do with the high price of their product.

Companies should be the best possible place to practice fulfillment, to live out values and to realize deep connectivity and purpose.

The heart of a company’s performance is hardwired to the hearts of its managers.

Do you think your people struggle with being true to themselves? Do their values match up with their work?

Hard-core results come from igniting the massive power of emotional commitment. Are your people committed?

When you don’t know what true for you, everyone else has unusual influence.