All People Put Their Pants on One Leg at a Time .....  Regardless of someone's title, financial success, fame, or level of importance, no one is perfect.  Respect those senior to you but do not worship them blindly.  Have confidence and do not be afraid to be yourself with your people, supervisors, and senior executives.  As a leader, it is also important to have humility and to recognize that you can not do everything yourself.  Everyone is human.  No one is perfect.

Hire the Smartest People you can, but Harder Workers will Often get you Further .....  Organizations seek both of these attributes in their employees.  I do as well.  However, on a relative scale, I value someone who is fairly smart but willing to "roll-up-their-sleeves and do whatever it takes to get the job done" over someone who is just intellectually superior.  My education and training to run a submarine was as complex as the knowledge required to put Man on the Moon.  However, my bigger strength has always been in my ability to outwork everyone else.  Yes - being smart helped me tremendously, but my Positive Attitude allowed me to more easily perform duties "outside the box" from my job description, develop extreme multi-tasking skills, and to overcome adversity.  Hard work with a great attitude is the major key to accomplishing the unexpected. 

He Who Will Not Risk, Will Not Win ....   Again, another quote that I embraced from my initial days at Annapolis and in the Navy.  While strong policies, procedures, and traditions can be critically important to an organization, the willingness for leaders to embrace risk and to try to push the envelope is often the route to the highest levels of success.  This does not give people free license to only come up with new ideas that are akin to skiing off a cliff, but rather to give them permission to think outside of the box, try new things, and not be afraid of failure.  This can be a critical foundation to a company's culture that allows it to succeed in increasingly competitive markets.  As a brand marketer, I always try to seek a point of difference for a company to exploit within the marketplace, and that may push a company to consider doing things outside of their status quo.

Change is Good, But Sometimes Only to a Point ....  This is essentially a corollary to the previous philosophy.  However, I highlight it separately because I think it is often overused.  Most people seem to understand that "change is good" and often necessary with today's need to more quickly adapt to rapidly changing business environments.  I agree with that.  However, I feel that some executives misapply this mantra in two ways: 1) they effect change simply for the sake of change because popular business doctrine says to, and/or 2) they use the statement as an excuse to justify their indecision or impatience.  It is great to come up with new ideas and to push the envelope, but it must be approached strategically in order to deploy resources most efficiently - not only to try to maximize the chances for success, but also to avoid demoralizing the organization.  Yes, a true "need for change" can and should dictate taking action - Good.  But, a rudderless approach dooms most ideas from the start and leaves you with pennies at the end of the day instead of gold coins - Not So Good! 

The "80/20 Rule" Often Rules .... When pursuing new ideas, projects, or products, I think it is important to have both accuracy and speed.  While someone with strong detail orientation will usually aim to execute a project for 100% accuracy above all else, the more "visionary" person may try to get the project done in 50% of the time forsaking accuracy.  I think the answer often lies in the middle.  If you spend too much time analyzing for the 100% perfect solution, then you may miss the opportunity.  I prefer to pull the trigger sooner with an 80% solution, and then make adjustments to try to get closer to the 100% solution once I have started.  This approach allowed my launch of new Sunkist Orange Juice consumer products to be accomplished in a third of the time and with less capital compared to my well-funded major competitors, while also exceeding industry norms for consumer acceptance ratings, even surpassing scores of world-renowned consumer packaged goods firms outside of the OJ industry.  The approach may not work or be appropriate in all situations, but much of the time I believe it does work, particularly in scenarios involving more subjectivity or ambiguity.  I also believe that, often, about 20% of your products, services, or business efforts account for about 80% of your business - thus presenting opportunities to evaluate and eliminate ineffective activities that lower overall efficiency and detract from the core of your real business success.

Keep Things Simple ....  As someone who was trained in the Navy Submarine Force, the notion of keeping things simple sometimes admittedly seems to confiict with my engineering-minded attention to detail; however, I first learned this philosophy at the beginning of my career aboard my fast-attack nuclear submarine.  One of the reasons my ship became the "top-rated" sub in the Atlantic Fleet was because of a Commanding Officer who incessantly focused on doing the basics really well - especially within such a complex environment.  For nuclear reactor and ship's combat exercises, we drilled, drilled, and drilled even more - at a rate twice that of the average submarine.  But, by focusing on and being good at the basics, we were able to execute more complex drills and take on tougher tactical missions more easily with superior results, often making the difference between being rated "Excellent" versus "Above Average" in our performance.  Business often operates the exact same way.  Keep it simple and focus on the doing the basics well, for not only is your overall execution usually better, but it is also easier to keep everyone in the organization focused and on the same page.

True Character is Often Defined through Experiencing Adversity .....  How well someone gets back up and resumes the battle after being knocked down often defines their true character, skills, and leadership capabilities.  How someone performs when things are tough is more meaningful to me than when things are going great.  Such situations include when a project goes bad, the team's morale is poor, tough decisions have to be made, or simply when circumstances are difficult.  For those situations, the common thread is how you initially react to it, maintain a Positive Attitude through it, and ultimately overcome it to continue moving forward.  It goes hand-in-hand with having Resilience and, often, a Sense of Humor! 

Respect and Empower Others .....  I once worked with former Emmy Award winning TV producers/writers, a Project Manager with a degree from M.I.T., and a PhD nuclear physicist client from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) - all together on a $100,000 training video to be used in every nuclear facility in the U.S.  Called in to save the project after the key parties could not work with each other, my ability to coordinate the radically different personalities in this powerful team of cross-functional experts allowed the project to be completed very successfully.  Team members of different functional expertise often understand their areas better than you do, and it is important to respect their perspectives and points-of-view, even if you don't always agree with them.  Empowering individuals and the team not only brings more good minds together to help come up with ideas and solutions to problems, but it also helps to build consensus and support to the final course of action.  At the end of the day, a leader still calls the shots and makes the final decisions, and there are times when it is necessary to take control and "dictate," but it is usually more enlightening and better results are often obtained by involving the team to the maximum extent - especially in business environments.  It's about respect, listening well, avoiding stereotyping, treating people fairly, and thus empowering them to do great things as a team!

A High E.Q. is Crucial to Being a Great Leader ....  Emotional Intelligence Quotient, E.Q., in contrast to Intelligence Quotient, or I.Q.  I have had the distinct pleasure and honor of knowing or working with some of the smartest people imaginable across a wide range of industries and organizations.  However, regardless of how truly "I.Q.smart" someone is, their ability to understand the dynamics of people, organizations, and evaluating their own emotions as well as the emotions of others - not simply reacting based on their academic read of a situation - is what often defines whether or not they are a great leader.  Yes - this philosophy is tangentially related to many others I have discussed.  But, I define it separately to highlight one of the more critical concepts that have become important in business today.  I had the pleasure of meeting Stephen Covey and attending his personal teaching of his "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" seminar while in my MBA program.  While he is not directly known for the concept of E.Q. per se, his teachings employ it significantly.  In several instances during his presentation, although I had never read Covey before then, I predicted his answers after he asked rhetorical questions to the audience - who otherwise answered the emotionally complex questions based on typical and predictable reactions that most people espouse to, while my answers practically mimicked Covey's.  No - I am not equating myself to Stephen Covey, but early in my career I discovered that I was wired differently than most of my executive contemporaries when it came to understanding my emotions, those of others, and being able to incorporate that understanding to make better decisions as a leader.

Always Strive for Perfection ....  While impossible to achieve, it is important to always strive for it.  There is always room for improvement, no matter how well you think things are going.  From submarine combat situations to critical business projects, I have found that just when you think things are perfect is also when something may go wrong.  Thus, you have to always give 100% and continually set the bar for performance even higher.  If a project went badly, then look back on where you had issues and correct your mistakes.  If everything went right, then figure out how to improve upon that successful performance to make the next time better, even by simply setting a higher metric of achievement.  Many of the other philosophies I have shared support this one directly or indirectly.  It's all about using your skills and leadership to achieve successful results, and then trying to delight your customers even more through even better results the next time .....