My notes on “Hit The Ground Running: A Manual For New Leaders” by Jason Jennings
- The number one cause of business failure isn’t poor cash-flow or pricing it’s copying a competitors strategy
- Shareholders are best served by looking after consumers, retailers, employees, suppliers and community first. A different perspective from what you’d hear from Wall St
- “Profit is not the reason for the existence of a company, profit is a well deserved by-product of doing what’s right. Looking for profit? Do more good things”
- When you are the new CEO: unless people are presented powerful and undeniable evidence to believe that you are different (better) than your predecessors, they’ll either wink and whisper “here we go again” or adopt a deadly wait-and-see attitude
- Productivity: it’s not the hours you put in or your level of effort, it’s about achieving what you set out to do. “Activities are not the same as Results”
- “If you do a good job, people want you. Not for what you were trained to do but for your ability to get the job done.”
- “People don’t quit companies, they quit bosses. The best boss is a mentor, one you trust.”
- “Don’t confuse a decision made after listening to lots of people with a compromise decision. Usually when you get to a compromise you’ve lost something. Seek input, carefully consider everything you’ve heard and then make a call. Don’t try to please everyone.”
- The new CEO of a private hospital started by giving a flower, newspaper and his business card out every morning with a note to call him on his extension for a quick resolution to any problem during their stay
- “If you’re trying to climb one mountain and you find you can’t reach the summit, you don’t abandon mountain climbing, you change the goal and go for another summit. Who cares which mountain you climb? The view is great from every mountain top.”
- “The plan isn’t nearly as important as the planning” – Keith Rattie
- “One boss I had didn’t have thirty years of experience he had five years experience”
The Under-promise and Over-deliver Story
In 1895 two brothers invented a machine that fed a printing press mechanically that could increase productivity ten times. Nobody was willing to buy their machine. They brothers were bewildered. Why didn’t every printing company want to increase productivity ten times? Finally a small printing company agreed to buy one if it could double their productivity. The sale was made and the brothers started promising to double productivity. Sales took off like a rocket. They had happy customers coming to tell them that their new machine was actually ten times faster than the old way. These were the same words in their old sales pitch that no one believed. The lesson: always underpromise and overdeliver.