You have got to get the strategy right; you have to get the operations right - lined up from R&D out to the field.

Executives need ample flexibility to respond to the market. That means both reducing costs and increasing innovation.

There's a powerful tendency to overcomplicate the whole notion of leadership.

My objective with strategy is to be very repetitive, to be somewhat boring, to allow people to coalesce behind a common direction.

It is very important that a leader in the hotel industry be both creative, I think, and compassionate.

Leadership means setting a moral tone.

The mission statement of the RSC is to foster a constitutionally bound limited government, it's to have a strong national defense, it's to protect private property rights and it's to support American values. That's what the mission statement is. There's nothing in the mission statement about trying to hold leadership accountable.

Imagine if investors in Wal-Mart really cared about bribery at that company's overseas operations or safety standards at its overseas manufacturing plants. If investors pulled their capital, corporate leaders would have to respond.