The Top 27: Twenty-seven Practical Ideas That
Will Transform Every Organization
1. Learn to thrive in unstable times—our lot (and our opportunity) for the
foreseeable future.
2. Only putting people first wins in the long
haul, good times and especially tough times. (No "cultural
differences" on that one! Colombia = Germany = the USA.)
3. MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around. Stay in touch!
4. Call a customer today!
5. Train! Train! Train! (Growing people outperform stagnant people in terms of
attitude and output—by a wide margin.)
6. "Putting people first" means making
everyone successful at work (and at home).
7. Make "we care" a/the company
motto—a moneymaker as well as a source of pride.
8. All around the world, women are an undervalued asset.
9. Diversity is a winning strategy, and not for reasons of social justice: The
more different perspectives around the table, the better the thinking.
10. Take a person in another function to lunch; friendships, lots of, are the
best antidote to bad cross-functional task accomplishments. (Lousy
cross-functional communication stops companies and armies alike.)
11. Transparency in all we do.
12. Create an "Innovation Machine" (even in tough times). (Hint:
Trying more stuff than the other guy is Tactic #1.)
13. We always underestimate the Innovation Advantage when 100% of people see
themselves as "innovators." (Hint: They are if only you'd bother to
ask "What can we do better?")
14. Get the darned Basics right—always Competitive Advantage #1. (Be
relentless!)
15. Great Execution beats great strategy—99% of
the time. (Make that 100% of the time.)
16. A "bias for action" is a
"bias for success." (Great hockey player Wayne Gretzky: "You
miss 100% of the shots you don't take.")
17. No mistakes, no progress! (A lot of fast mistakes, a lot of fast progress.)
(Australian businessman Phil Daniels: "Reward excellent failures. Punish
mediocre successes.")
18. Sometimes "little stuff" is more powerful than "big
stuff" when it comes to change.
19. Keep it simple! (Making "it" "simple" is hard work! And
pays off!)
20. Remember the "eternal truths" of leadership—constants over the
centuries. (They say Nelson Mandela's greatest asset was a great smile—you
couldn't say no to him, even his jailors couldn't.)
21. Walk the talk. ("You must be the change
you wish to see in the world."—Gandhi)
22. When it comes to leadership, character and
people skills beat technical skills. (Emotional Intelligence beats, or at least
ties, school intelligence.)
23. It's always "the little things" when it comes to "people
stuff." (Learn to say "thank you" with great regularity. Learn
to apologize when you're wrong. Learn the Big Four words: "What do you
think?" Learn to listen—it can be learned with lots and lots of practice.)
24. The "obvious" may be obvious, but
"getting the obvious done" is harder said than done.
25. Time micro-management is the only real
"control" variable we have. (You = Your calendar. Calendars never
lie.)
26. All managers have a professional obligation to their communities and their
country as well as to the company and profit and themselves. (Forgetting this
got the Americans into deep trouble.)
27. EXCELLENCE. ALWAYS. (What else?)