START SMALL, THINK BIG

STARTING AND GROWING THE BUSINESS

  • If you can dream it, you can do it / Beating the odds at start-up
  • There’s a gap in the market, but is there a market in the gap? / Finding a profitable niche
  • Your can lean all you need to know about the competiton’s operation by looking in his grabage cans / Study the competition
  • The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows / Stand out in the market
  • Be first or be better / Gaining an edge
  • Put all your egges in one basket, and then watch that basket / Managing risk
  • Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get / Luck (and how to get lucky)
  • Broaden your vision, and maintain stability while advancing forward / Take the second step
  • Nothing great is created suddenly / How fast to grow
  • The role of the CEO is to enable people to excel / From entrepreneur to leader
  • Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken / Keep evolving business practice
  • A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin / Reinventing and adapting
  • Without continuous growth and progress, success has no meaning / The Greiner curve
  • If you believe in something, work nights and weekends – it won’t feel like work / The weightless start-up

LIGHTING THE FIRE

LEADERSHIP AND HUMAN RESOURCES

  • Managers do thins right, leaders do the right thing / Leading well
  • None of us is as smart as all of us / The value of teams
  • Innovation must be invasive and perpetual: everyone, everywhere, all of the time / Creativity and invention
  • Dissent adds spice, spirit, and an invigorating quality / Beaware the yes-men
  • No great manager or leader ever fell from heaven / Gods of management
  • A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way / Effective leadership
  • Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results / Organizing teams and talent
  • Leaders allow great people to do the work they were born to do / Make the most of your talent
  • The way forward may not be to go forward / Thinking outside the box
  • The more a person can do, the more you motivate them / Is money the motivator?
  • Be an enzyme – a catalyst for change / Changing the game
  • The worst disease that afflicts executives is egotism / Huribs and nemesis
  • Culture is the way in which a group of pople solves problems / Organizational culture
  • Emotional intteligence is the intersection of heart and head / Develop emotional intelligence
  • Management is a practice where art, science, and craft meet / Mintzberg’s management roles
  • A camel is a horse designed by committee / Avoid groupthinking
  • The art of thinking independetly, together / The value of diversity

MAKING MONEY WORK

MANAGING FINANCES

  • Do not let yourself be involved in a fraudulent business / Play by the rules
  • Executive officers must be free from avarice / Profit before perks
  • If wealth is placed where it bears interest, it comes back to you redoubled / Investment and dividends
  • Borrow short, lend long / Making money from money
  • The interests of the shareholders are our own / Accoutability and governance
  • Make the best quality of goods at the lowest cost, paying the highest wages possible / Your workers are your customers
  • Utilize opm – other people’s money / Who bares the risk
  • Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom / Ignoring the herd
  • Debt is the worst poverty / Leverage and excess risk
  • Cash is king / Profit versus cash flow
  • Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked / Off-balance-sheet risk
  • Return on equity is a financial goal that can become an own goal / Maximize return on equity
  • As the role of private equity has grown, so have the risks it poses / The private equity model
  • Assign costs according to the resources consumed / Activity-based costing

WORKING WITH A VISION

STRATEGY AND OPERATIONS

  • Turn every disaster into an opportunity / Learning from failure
  • If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses / Leading the market
  • The main thing to remember is, the main thing is the main thing / Protect the core business
  • You don’t need a huge company, just a computer and a part-time person / Small is beautiful
  • Don’t get caught in the middle / Proter’s generic strategies
  • The essence of strategy is chooing what not to do / Good and bad startegy
  • Synergy and other lies / Why takeovers disappoint
  • The Chinese word “crisis” is composed of two chracters: “danger” and “opportunity” / Crisis management
  • You can’t grow long-term if you can’t eat short-term / Balancing long- versus short-termism
  • Market Attractiveness, Business Attractiveness / The MABA matrix
  • Only the parnoid survice / Avoiding complacency
  • To excel, tap into people’s capacity to learn / The learning organization
  • The future of business is sellin less of more / The long tail
  • To be an optimist … have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose / Contingency planning
  • Plans are useless, but palnning is indispensable / Scenario planning
  • The strongest competitive forces determine the profitability of an industry / Porter’s five forces
  • If you don’t have a competitive advantage, dont’ complete / The value chain
  • If you don’t know where you are, a map won’t help / The capability maturity model
  • Chaos brinds uneasiness, but it also allows for creativity and growth / Coping with chaos
  • Always do what is right. It will gratify half of makind and astonish the other / Morality in business
  • There is no such thing as a minor lapse in integrity / Collusion
  • Make it easire to do the right thing and and much harder to do the wrong thing / Creating an ethical culture

SUCCESSFUL SELLING

MARKETING MANAGEMENT

  • Marketing is far too important to leave to the marketing department / The marketing model
  • Know the customer so well that the product fits them and sells itself / Understanding the market
  • Attention, Interest, Desire, Action / The AIDA model
  • Marketing myopia / Focus on the future market
  • The cash cow is the beating heart of the organization / Product portfolio
  • Expanding away from your core has risks; diversification doubles theme / Ansoff’s matrix
  • If you’re different, you will stand out / Creating a brand
  • There is only one boss: the customer / Make your customers love you
  • Whitewashing, but with a green brush / Greenwash
  • People want companies to believe in something beyond maximizing profits / The appeal of ethics
  • Everybody likes something extra for nothing / Promotions and incentives
  • In good times people want to advertise; in bad times they have to / Why advertise?
  • Make your thinking as funny as possible / Generating buzz
  • E-commerce is becoming mobile commerce / M-commerce
  • Trying to predict the future is like driving with no lights looking out of the back window / Forecasting
  • Product, Place, Price, Promotion / Marketing mix

DELIVERYING THE GOODS

PRODUCTION AND POSTPRODUCTION

  • See how much, not how little, you can give for a dollar / Maximize customer benefits
  • Costs do not exist to be calculated. Costs exist to be reduced / Lean production
  • If the pie’s not big enough, make a bigger pie / Fulfilling demand
  • Eliminate unnecessary steps / Simplify processes
  • Every gain through the elimination of waste is gold in the mine / Juran’s production ideal
  • Machines, facilities, and people should work together to add value / Kaizen
  • Learning and innovation go hand in hand / Applying and testing ideas
  • Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning / Feedback and innovation
  • Technology is the great growling engine of change / The right technology
  • Without big data, you are blind and deaf in the middle of a highway / Benefitting from “big data”
  • Put the product into the customer’s hands – it will speak for itself / Quality sells
  • The desire to own something a little better, a little sooner than necessary / Planned obsolescence
  • Time is money / Time-based management
  • A project without a critical path is like a ship without a rudder / Critical path analysis
  • Taking the best from the best / Benchmarking