Pay and Pay Attention

If you hired a big-time consultant to tell you what to do, they’d likely tell you things you heard before for free.

Why didn’t you pay attention then? 

Now?

Skills – Deep First, Broad Second

Your company must be REALLY good at something first.  Then, and only then, can you try doing other things.

Better to be known for being great at something, than average at a lot of things.

What’s your deep skill?

Develop Leaders, Not Followers

Working to have more dependents puts pressure on you and restricts your personal and professional growth.

Develop more leaders in your company to take care of areas of operation – and yes – even to replace you.

Aspire to be a leader of leaders.

Meritocracy

If seniority is what you value, then reward people for how long they’ve been there.

But if results are what you value, whatever those results are in your business or department, then reward the people who deliver the most results the most often. 

People that deliver the most results will stay, and people that deliver the least…well…what could happen?  They get mad and leave?

The (Im)Morality of Debt

For us or our government, three conditions must be in place for our borrowing to be righteous:

1) The amount borrowed should be reasonable compared to our resources and prospects.

2) A program of repayment should be in place from the start.

3) The repayments should take priority over any other spending.

Is your borrowing righteous?  How about your government’s borrowing?

Results Rule

You do a lot of things to make your business go: recruit, train, decide, take action, put systems in place – getting stuff done every day.

All together it produces an outcome.

How’s it coming out?

The Basics are always important

No great organization can persevere without frequently revisiting and continually mastering fundamental principles.

Great phone service, on-time delivery, quality, following up, responsiveness to customers, producing stuff that works, collecting the money, paying bills on time, training people.

Whatever other initiative you may be off doing, don’t forget the basics – or death draws closer.

Know your costs

There’s one thing worse than no sale – an unprofitable one.

Are you making money on some sales only to lose it on others?

Find out.

Open for learning

Nothing you say today will teach you anything.

Listen.

The Ignorance Corollary

Everyone is ignorant about something.  That’s not what matters.

Everyone is an expert on something.

Find the expertise – and respect it.