KEY POINTS TO PONDER
An important ingredient, necessary to improve attitudes and performance in a company, is the knowledge of what the top management believes, how they measure and evaluate others and their sense of values. These might be described as a list of business principles or what they consider to be the “Key Element for success”. Following is a list of my personal “Keys”:
- Service first profit later—profits follow value.
- Value is the only sustainable competitive advantage.
- Always tell the bad news first—not last.
- Give bad news in person, good news in writing.
- Don’t allow surprises—always give fair warnings.
- Concentrate on the customer/student.
- Don’t compromise quality for price.
- Plan the strategy before fixing the structure.
- Don’t confuse brightness with judgment.
- Do keep your eggs in at least five baskets—only take one “big risk” at a time.
- Be careful of “quick-fix” managers.
- Don’t put a new person (to us) in a new job (to them).
- Hire (manage) smart rather than manage hard.
- Don’t promote a functional manager to head a major division.
- A professional manager is one who gets the job done.
- The boss should be the head salesman.
- Understand what really makes a company (branch, division) “tick.”
- Always play “what-if,” analyze alternative strategies and have a contingency.
- “About right” today is better than “exactly wrong” tomorrow.
- Study the environment—things we cannot control; become one with our industry.
- Do bet on a person—not a product, invention, or idea.
- A successful person makes up their mind very quickly and changes it very slowly. An unsuccessful person makes up their mind slowly and changes it very quickly.
- Help people reach their full potential—catch them doing something right.
- Action and assessment separates planners from doers.
- Timely accurate reporting is crucial to survival—Accountability = Success.
- Do first things first and last things never.
- The customer is not everything; he or she is the only thing.
- Take care of your employees and they will take care of your customers.
- Education will follow health care into free market resource allocation.
- Highest of ethical and regulatory responsibility—ZERO TOLERENCE.
- Trust individuals, not ideas, patents, or copyrights.
- We can make a difference. We can make a change.
- There is no I in team but there is in SMILE.
- Reward in public and punish in private.
- Give all the credit and take all the blame.
- Hire smart and nice people who care and constantly train. You cannot train “nice.” Most everything else you can.
- Over pay at the highest level of competence before promoting to lowest level of incompetence.
- If you will not train your replacement, you DO NOT have job security.
- We are only as strong as our weakest teacher.
Those who do not set SMART goals are destined to work for those who do.