Who comes first? Don’t be silly, says King Hal; it’s employees. That is – and this dear Watson, is elementary – if you genuinely want to put customers first, you must put employees more first.
Authority never matches responsibility. That’s one of the great myths and delusions of all times. Winning managers and individual performers at all levels know that effectiveness means building your own network and creating your own authority.
The principal reason, invariably, most “successful” giant companies rather quickly become also-rans, or just amorphous blobs on the competitive landscape, is their failure to re-tool in anything like a fundamental way. In fact,
Develop a respect and reverence for the principle of variation: the idea that the message ain’t in the mean, the mode or the median – it’s in the differences that occur throughout a population.
