Thesis: If you get to comfortable managing your business, it will fall apart.
Stuff to remember:
- “Business” the job
- Cross train your employees in as many relevant skills needed to perform the job start-to-finish
- Budgeting
- Quality control – quality measurement and improvement
- Autonomy – people should be able to work without restrictions to make a fantastic product
- Access to expertise
- A limitless travel budget (allow staff to get it done without red tape)
- Give employees the power to make the customer happy as soon as possible. It will make them happy, too.
- Let employees know everything the CEO does
- Trust them
- Allow for boss-talkback
- “Resume” the job
- Frequently ask yourself –
- What do I do?
- What have I actually done
- Who among my customers will testify to it?
- What evidence is there that my skills are state of the art?
- Who new do I know, far beyond the company’s walls, who will help me deal with an ever-chillier world?
- Will my year-end resume look different from last years’?
- Ask employees what they want to learn from it.
- Mind your contacts as much as possible.
- Getting better at business
- Mind your contacts as much as possible
- Network, don’t hire, your employees and resources
- Alliance creation and management is THE core competence
- Knowledge is the sole basis of economic prosperity
- How to keep your business edgy and prosperous:
- Hire curious people
- Hire some genuine off-the-wall sorts
- Weed out the dullards, nurture the nuts
- Go for youth
- Insist that everyone take vacations
- Support generous sabbaticals
- Foster new interaction patterns
- Let people express their personalities
- Allow project teams to form at a moment’s notice
- Encourage getting together and hanging out
- Aggressively snub traditional functional groupings
- Establish clubs, bring in outsiders, support offbeat educational programs
- Measure curiosity
- Consider asking employees to submit a one page essay on:
- The oddest thing they’ve done this year off the job
- Craziest idea tried at work
- My most original job screw-up
- Five stupidest rules they have around here
- Seek out odd work
- Look in the mirror – are you everything you want?
- Teach curiosity
- Make it fun
- Change pace
- Have cool workspaces
- Glow, tingle, wow (and use those words)
- Be weird!