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If in doubt, move decisions up to the President.

Donald Rumsfeld

Let your family, staff, and friends know that you’re still the same person, despite all the publicity and notoriety that accompanies your position.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Family Friendship Person Position Publicity
It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Bsuiness Motivational Politics Risk
Don’t speak ill of your predecessors or successors. You didn’t walk in their shoes.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Ill Shoes Speak Success Walk
Let’s stick something in the ground and not pretend that it’s perfect.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Ground Perfection Pretend
What you measure improves.” A corollary rule in the military is that “You get what you inspect, not what you expect.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Expectation Improvement Inspect Measure Military Rule
Prune – prune businesses, products, activities, people. Do it annually.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Activity Business People Product
Politics is human beings; it’s addition rather than subtraction.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Government Human Being Politics
The price of being close to the President is delivering bad news. You fail him if you don’t tell him the truth. Others won’t do it.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Deliver Failure President Price Truth
Many people around the President have sizeable egos before entering government, some with good reason. Their new positions will do little to moderate their egos.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Ego Government Moderate People President
Preserve the President’s options. He may need them.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Need Option Preserve President
Test ideas in the marketplace. You learn from hearing a range of perspectives. Consultation helps engender the support decisions need to be successfully implemented.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Consult Decision Ideas Market Perspective Test
Reduce the layers of management. They put distance between the top of an organization and the customers.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Customer Distance Management Organization
Whatever your position, reach out to those who know more than you do, and have been around longer than you have. Find those people. Listen carefully. And learn.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Care Leadership Learm People Position
Everyone’s saying you can’t do anything until you can do everything.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Motivational Work Hard
It isn’t making mistakes that’s critical; it’s correcting them and getting on with the principal task.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Criticism Mistake Principle Task
There are known knowns, things we know that we know; and there are known unknowns, things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns, things we do not know we don’t know.
DONALD RUMSFELD

Imagination Knowledge

If in doubt, move decisions up to the President.

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If in doubt, move decisions up to the President.

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