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Character is not something managers can acquire; if they do not bring it to the job, they will never have it.

Integrity may be difficult to define, but what constitutes a lack of integrity of such seriousness as to disqualify a person for a managerial position is not.

Management should not appoint anyone who considers intelligence more important than integrity. This is immaturity – and usually incurable.

If you fail to accept [the] responsibility of making sure that the appointee understands his or her new job, do not blame the new person if he or she ultimately fails. Blame yourself, for you have failed to do your duty as a manager.

By now it is clear that no one can provide the information that knowledge workers need, except knowledge workers themselves. But few managers so far have made much of an effort to decide what they need, and even less, how to organize it.

Managers have to learn two things: eliminate data that does not pertain to the information they need and organize the data to analyze and interpret it.

…managers must focus on the resulting information and take action. For the purpose of information is not knowledge. It is being able to take the right action.

For the manager there is, in the end, only one way to get [information]: that is to go, personally, on the outside.

In the long run, information about the outside may be the most important information managers need to do their work. At the same time, it is the one that still has to be organized.

Managers must rely heavily on the information they need for their work, the information they owe to others, and on the methods they use to turn the chaos of data in the universe into organized and focused information for action.