Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentless drive it to completion.

Jack Welch

Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations *messes*.

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Problems are abstractions extracted from messes by analysis; they are to messes as atoms are to tables and chairs. We experience messes, tables, and chairs; not problems and atoms.

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Because messes are systems of problems, the sum of the optimal solutions to each component problem taken separately is *not* an optimal solution to the mess. The behaviour of a mess depends more on how the solutions to its parts interact......than on how they act independently of each other. But the unit in OR [Operational Research] is a problem, not a mess. Managers do not solve problems; they manage messes.

Russel Ackoff