Not Quite the Four Noble Truths

Buddhism has its four noble truths.

US Special Operations has its "four enduring truths," which I thought apply (mutatis mutandis) to leaders/managers.*

1. Humans are more important than hardware.
2. Quality is more important than quantity.
3. Special operations forces (SOF) cannot be mass produced.
4. Competent SOF cannot be created after emergencies occur.

Just a few notes. First, I'll be stealing this and replacing SOF with leaders. Second, notice that quantity matters, just not as much as quality. Finally, real leaders cannot be mass produced--no matter what HBS or Stanford or Wharton say. Creating a leader is a batch-of-one process.

*(With the wars that we're in, I'm reading Robert Kaplan's Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq and Beyond (Kindle Edition), where I found these stated.)