A person’s business success has far less to do with one great decision than it does with sound day-to-day habits. “Most people think that there is some silver bullet to being great,” says Pam Bilbrey, co-author with Brian Jones of the new book, Ordinary Greatness. “Greatness is really about doing the ordinary, everyday things consistently well.” Here are a dozen habits to practice in your business (and personal) life:

“Dirty Jobs” TV show host Mike Rowe never would have figured on launching a web site to promote vocational schools. But he’s done it precisely because he didn’t follow his passion. Instead, he stumbled into a good job and brought his passion along.

IBM managers “all the way up the chain” are on Facebook—and if you’re not, “You feel like you’re doing something wrong,” one employee said. But most businesses don’t have a social media culture like IBM’s. Instead, more than half of all U.S. companies prohibit the use of such sites at the office. Such policies may create more problems than they solve.

Insight is so central to invention that legend has Archimedes, who suddenly realized how to calculate density and volume, jumping from his bath and running naked through the streets yelling “Eureka!” In our day, “aha” moments may not be so dramatic but still produced Velcro, the World Wide Web and organ transplants. What creates these brilliant flashes of insight?

Leadership advisor Marshall Goldsmith was having dinner with a top officer in the U.S. Army. Also at the table were seven new generals. The senior officer laughed as he looked at their bright new stars and contemplated his own retirement—a transition Goldsmith was helping him make. What advice did he give them?

Matt Smith’s secret weapon is talent. The Washington, D.C.-area advertising superstar says he buys experience slowly by focusing and investing only in top senior people. A few unorthodox ways he runs his business:

Dov Frohman says leadership can’t be taught—but it can be learned. He should know. The founder and former CEO of Intel Israel never takes the easy path. Through an almost desperate force of will mirroring that of his mentor, Intel CEO Andy Grove, Frohman built up a small desert outpost into a massive semiconductor plant, Israel’s largest private employer.

Talk about timing. Ellen Kullman, long on the short list of possible chiefs at DuPont, became president on Oct. 1, 2008, and CEO on Jan. 1. As the economy tanked and the chemical company’s sales fell, Kullman almost immediately had to decide what should and shouldn’t change. Organizing the company to respond to these trends, Kullman decided on four principles:

Time magazine asked prominent leaders to describe their own favorite leaders. Here are three of their picks: Tiger Woods, Nouriel Roubini and Jeff Bezos.

The pace of change seems to grow more urgent every year. Some see it as an attribute of leadership in the 21st century—right up there with judgment and courage. Consider then, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who spread the speed creed 70 years before it was cool.

This summer, a spontaneous outburst of dancing captured on video at the Sasquatch Music Festival showed the power of leaders to sway crowds. Business bloggers Seth Godin and Todd Taskey shared their thoughts on what it teaches about business innovation.

According to Robert H. Thompson, author of The Offsite: A Leadership Challenge Fable, people who commit to the following five practices are dramatically more effective than those who cling to outdated, mythical leadership styles:

Nobody argues the fact that Robert McNamara was a genius. The Ford Motor Co. whiz kid who led the Pentagon into the Vietnam War, and the World Bank into unprecedented expansion, solved problems with sheer brains. But McNamara’s flaw may have been that, in a larger sense, he just didn’t “get it.”

For the past several months, The New York Times has been running interviews on leadership with the CEOs of well-known organizations. The best one in the series so far is the interview with Dave Novak, CEO of Yum Brands. I’d like to share six thoughts from him on how to be a great leader, along with my take on how to follow through on those thoughts.

A Rhode Island software company has created a system for new ideas that’s as transparent as they could make it. They call it an idea market. CEO Jim Lavoie and President Joe Marino of Rite-Solutions have leveled the playing field so all employees have a shot at putting their ideas on the table.

General Electric’s CEO emeritus Jack Welch says leadership in tough times is the same as it ever was: “to do and dream at the same time.” Problem is, because of economic gridlock, most of today’s leaders are only doing. Why?

Should a leader jump into the media spotlight, even at the risk of damaging his image? Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, says yes. A leader must communicate with the outside world as part of being a good corporate citizen. British CEO Stephen Martin agrees: Leaders must offer their business perspective to the public, or someone else will.

You wouldn’t think good ideas could be bad, but letting too many at once into the pipeline can slow it all down. Most organizations try to run more than two projects at a time. Turn five projects into one and you’re looking at about a 50% reduction in time to market (18 months versus 30 months) and earlier cash flow. Bottom line: Tackle one thing at a time.

Ram Charan, leadership guru and author of Execution, offers what he calls the essential qualities leaders have to possess in hard times. For starters, honesty, which isn't easy, especially when the wind is constantly shifting. “How can you tell people what you believe,” he asks, “when you can’t be confident that it is right?”

When Wendy Kopp, founder and CEO of Teach for America, considers someone for a leadership role, she goes beyond standard questioning to discover whether it’s a good fit. Think of it as an extended interview.

Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey gets credit for several firsts. He’s best known for signing the first black major league baseball player, Jackie Robinson; drafting the first Hispanic, Roberto Clemente; inventing the minor league farm system; and introducing the batting helmet. Rickey, however, did none of those things alone ...

You don’t need to be born with the ability to come up with ideas. Madison Avenue's David Ogilvy is proof. “I had a reasonably original mind, but not too much so,” he said in an interview when he was 75. “Which helped, not being too original. I thought as clients think. I also thought as women think.”

The Mayo Clinic is known for its unique approach to leadership development. These four tenets are critical to maintaining its culture:

Nestlé CEO Paul Bulcke is a quiet guy, the engineer father of two engineer sons who describes his family as “boring.” He loves working behind the scenes. Most of his career has been spent simplifying processes, building teams and slowly scaling the ranks in Latin American obscurity. For Nestlé, this was perfect.