Seven Favorite Management Axioms

1.    Teach your Board to behave like a Board

Learn the policy governance model

Bob Andringa’s three hats are right.

Create change mainly thru the Chair/CEO relationship.

Cultivate your board: the 20% rule

Line up your direct reports with a covenant. (Example)

2.    Get the vision right

I got it wrong the first time.

Is it exciting? Does the dog hunt?

Is it yours in a special way? (Hybels and holy discontent)

Renew: plans, people, yourself. In current creation, only God doesn’t need renewal.

3.    Let everyone see your heart

Or else you’ll be a manager not a leader.

Best way to solve the unsolvable!

Works 360 degrees.

Use stories.

4.    Be a simplifier and focuser

Prerequisite: a one sentence inspiring mission.

All the great themes are simple – (complex plans are fine).

Dissembling is fatal.

Consistently weed out people who make simple things complex.

Over communicate – vision is like “signal strength”.

5.    Measure outcomes

“Process”—the non-profit plague.

Drucker: changed lives.

Key to funding competitiveness.

6.    Recognize when it has to be perfect

Everything public “speaks” (Vickers).

Everything “on the platform” is 10x in importance (Hybels).

When delegation is abdication.

7.    Never do anything you don’t want published in the New York Post.

Squeaky clean and transparent—or else the clock is ticking.

*Without them you’re eventually toast