10 Business Principles

In an effort to re-focus on some of the principles I think I live by (or should), I decided to write some of them down. The easiest way is to use short quote'ish statements to summarise such principles. This is what I did and would like to share in this post: valuable principles interpreted mainly in a business context to guide one towards success no matter which industry, but really mainly the tech industry ;) 

“Never Settle” - Those who stop innovating and changing how they do things, and sometimes even what they do, will inevitably be crushed by competitors and new players. There was never a business on the planet that could just keep doing what it always did in the same way, without at some point being disrupted so badly that they were close to going out o business, or even did. Enable constant change and revision into your organisation, and yourself. Never rest, never cease fire - the world does not either. Or, to say it in the words of Thomas J. Watson: "Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops". 

“Convenience kills Concern” - My favourite around product management and market strategy. Not sure if this is an actual quote or if I just made it up. Anyways. When you are offering a new product, a new service, don’t mind the concerns of the market or the media too much. Just make your product so convenient and easy to use, that no concern really matters enough to outweigh the value add and user friendliness. Best examples: Cloud Computing, Mobile Internet, Social Media, Online Banking. There was, is and will always be fear, uncertainty and doubt about these topics, from many groups on the world. And never has FUD been overcome better than with sheer convenience and value add of using the products or services. In the end, human beings are looking for convenience, not complexity. Period. 

“Hope is not a Strategy” - Many people talk about strategy, many strategists are worth good money per hour … but many strategies are in the end mainly built on sheer hope. Hope is good to have, by all means, but leave it out of your strategy entirely. Strategy must be built on sheer facts, not on guesses and hopes. If you build a strategy on vague forecasts not based on actual data, if you hire people hoping to have picked the right ones and if you give a customer estimates of work effort based on sheer hope that those may be accurate: stop doing it. Nobody ever succeeded sustaining a business on high hopes. This only works if you start a business, but not if you run it. Established business need leaders that outlines strategies based on numbers and data, not on vague guesses - however, that is what most business and leaders do nowadays. 

“There are no Enemies, just Trainers” - No matter how hard the internal or external interaction with other human beings might become: never view them as your enemies. This will make take the wrong choices and limit your success. If you view others as the enemy, negativity has won. Chances to change the odds in your favour are lessened. Therefore, view them as trainers that teach you something about yourself, or others. This will allow you to strengthen yourself and win the next encounter. Try to learn from their mistakes as well as from your own ones. Try to read what lies behind their passive or active behaviour. That is how to act. Great leaders must be stronger than their own anger or frustration. Learned this one from a former manager of mine. 

“Leave a Dent” - The nature of work is such, that we quickly forget about co-workers once they left the company. And there are only few ways to avoid that. One way surely is: be worth remembering. That is what “to leave a dent” means to me: be so exceptional, that they will remember you. Stand out, so they can’t forget you. Be so gentle and welcoming, that they will forever admire you. I would say this quote comes from a friend of mine originally, not sure where he got it from. But I can tell you this: stop hiding, stop being afraid and stop being passive at work - nobody will remember you, if you never speak up and stick out (with quality, value, good work and being a nice person). With the words of Steve Jobs: "Be a Yardstick of Quality".

“X (Urgency) * Y: (Importance) = Relevance” - No matter your position in a business, there are tasks you need to run and deadlines to hold. To often, your to do list is overcrowded and you lose yourself in irrelevant side streams, which are often the tasks easier or nicer than the hard and urgent ones. You need to learn how to prioritise. Distinguish in two dimensions: urgency, and importance. If something is urgent, but not important, you should do it soon but it is not worth much effort really. The same applies to something important, but not urgent: should be done well, but maybe not at first. The key is to look at things before (!) they become urgent. Hence: plan ahead, weekly and daily. For yourself, and for your team. This one comes from a former manager again.

“Willing is not enough, we must do” - quoting Bruce Lee in this case, it is a simple and very relevant piece of wisdom which all of us must have come across. People, no matter their station and salary, will tend to talk but not act on any matters. They will complain about missing trenches, but never pick up the shovel themselves. As a successful leader, you must not only execute what you think needs to be done. You should also manage to inspire others to do the same. 

“Under promise, over deliver” - Something I had to learn myself the hard way in younger years. Back then I was motivated and committed, but not thoughtful and self aware. If you manage to avoid over promising and under delivering, you take a huge step towards customers or peers being happy with your work. No matter how tempting it is to over promise here and there, it almost always leads to trouble. I first heard of this one at work, but since then it accompanies me throughout most of what I do in life. 

“Technology is nothing” - A start of a quote of Steve Jobs which I really like in itself. It goes on like this: “What is important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them." This is a typical Jobs' quote. Even the greatest technology is still a means to an end, nothing else. If you create technology to solve a problem, the solution of that problem should be what drives you, not the technology. Rethink your way of hiring the right people, and how you motivate, manage and equip them. Trust in your team, so they can trust you back. Demand Ownership of everyone. Which brings us to ...

“It’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate” - A really great quote I picked up from reading the book Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willing and Leif Babin. No matter what you think of this book, the quote above and its context stuck with me since the first read. Just like “practice what you preach” (a very simplistic one indeed), this piece of wisdom picks up on leaders that have strategies, org-charts and rules in mind but fail at implementing them. This is often due to the fact that weak leaders tolerate disobedience and rogue behaviour, instead of open and direct confrontation. If such behaviour is left unattended, more employees will soon follow down the easy road. Your efficiency will collapse, your culture erodes and next thing is you losing your job. 

Feel free to share your thoughts on the above and discuss those in the comments section. This list is by no means complete, so any great additions are very welcome.

P.S.: Some may think that I have kept it at 10 quote because of the 10 commandments. But even if that may be the case, I mostly did it so because I was too lazy to write more. There might be a second iteration of this ;) 

Cheers,

Thomas