Manage the top line: your strategy, your people, and your products, and the bottom line will follow.

Find people who are competent and really bright, but more importantly, people who care exactly about the same things you care about.

You cannot mandate productivity, you must provide the tools to let people become their best.

Ask for feedback from people with diverse backgrounds. Each one will tell you one useful thing. If you're at the top of the chain, sometimes people won't give you honest feedback because they're afraid. In this case, disguise yourself, or get feedback from other sources.

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.

It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.