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Sam Walton's 10 Rules for
Success
Not much need for an introduction, explanation or commentary.
(ed.)
The basics ...
Rule #1
Commit to your business.
Believe in it more than anything else. If you love your work, you’ll be
out there every day trying to do the best you can, and pretty soon
everybody around will catch the passion from you - like a fever.
Rule #2
Share your profits with
all your associates, and treat them as partners. In turn, they will treat
you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest
expectations.
Rule #3
Motivate your partners.
Money and ownership aren’t enough. Set high goals, encourage competition
and then keep score. Make bets with outrageous payoffs.
Rule #4
Communicate everything
you possibly can to your partners. The more they know, the more they’ll
understand. The more they understand, the more they’ll care. Once they
care, there’s no stopping them. Information is power, and the gain you get
from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing
your competitors.
Rule #5
Appreciate everything
your associates do for the business. Nothing else can quite substitute for
a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely
free and worth a fortune.
Rule #6
Celebrate your success
and find humour in your failures. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Loosen
up and everyone around you will loosen up. Have fun and always show
enthusiasm. When all else fails put on a costume and sing a silly song.
Rule #7
Listen to everyone in
your company, and figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the
front line - the ones who actually talk to customers - are the only ones
who really know what’s going on out there. You’d better find out what they
know.
Rule #8
Exceed your customer’s
expectations. If you do they’ll come back over and over. Give them what
they want - and a little more. Let them know you appreciate them. Make
good on all your mistakes, and don't make excuses - apologize. Stand
behind everything you do. ‘Satisfaction guaranteed’ will make all the
difference.
Rule #9
Control your expenses
better than your competition. This is where you can always find the
competitive advantage. You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if
you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out
of business if you’re too inefficient.
Rule #10
Swim upstream. Go the
other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody is doing it one
way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going exactly in the
opposite direction.
Sam Walton's 10 Rules For Success - from Sam Walton: Made in
America, My Story, co-authored by J. Huey, Doubleday.
Many more articles in Competitive Strategy,
Creative Leadership
and Executive
Performance in
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