Steve Denning on "Radical Management" – The Death—and Reinvention—of Management: Part 1:

"The firm makes money, but this is the result of delighting the customer, not the goal.

[…] Nayar saw that the people doing the work were the ones who created value for the customers. Taken together they created the value zone within the organization. Without them, the firm was nothing but a shell, layers and layers of management and aggregators who had nothing to offer to the customers.

[…] The sneer of cold command can slice through the warm, convivial world of social norms like a knife and kill it on the spot."

(Via Forbes.com.)