After 20+ years in
High Technology, I think I have learned a couple of things. here is my
list for what it is worth:
Communication and Management
- When you are tired of saying something, your audience is hearing
it for the first time
- Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
- Keep your message simple and singular (one point per message)
- Create the vision, co-develop the strategy and get the hell out
of the way of great people
- Create a diverse team and enjoy the creative benefits while accepting
the leadership challenges
- Demand full participation from everyone on your team while respecting
their style
- Let your Org Chart communicate roles, responsibilities, measures
and objectives
- The best slides are simple, limited clip art, and are self explanatory
Partners
- Keep outsourcing management simple and focused
- Negotiate price, never compromise on quality
- Your partner making a fair profit is a requirement for a win-win
relationship
- Communicate key measures often, simply and consistently
Customers
- Customers are why we are here
- When in doubt, spend time at a customer's site
often.
- Customer satisfaction is a point in time, loyalty is the long term
relationship with your company
Employees
- Be visible to all levels of your organization on a regular basis
- Active and honest feedback is a measure of how much you care about
your employee
- Hire people better than you
- Employees learn more about you by what you do versus what you say
- On a bad day, spend half an hour with your first level employees
to get re-energized
- A lunch a week with customers and another with employees will keep
you in touch with reality
Strategy and Results
- Centralize the process design to manage a consistent strategy
- Two points make a straight line. Act on trends swiftly
- Boiling frogs jump out, warming frogs die in the pot: watch the
little signs that things are not well
- Localize the implementation to satisfy the customer
- Manage the numbers and don't let them manage you
- Fast decision making without effective follow through is chaos
- Anticipate versus react
- The magic triangle: happy employees, loyal customers, solid business
results
- When evaluating a difficult situation, ask: "Is it impossible,
or is it just hard to do?"
- Think Big, be Big
Organizational Model
- Organizational models are about managing the boundaries between
different organizations
- There is always a large loss in productivity when you re-organize
so there must be a larger gain from new organization to justify the
re-organization
- Prior organizational models seem to always return, so don't criticize
them too much
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