Most of what people react to as crises, calamities, or disasters are really just situations.

You can’t change human nature. You can’t change your customers, your employees, or anyone else. All you can change is what you do. There are things you can influence and things you can’t. Why waste time and energy on the latter?

As the leader, you have to be the most focused person on the team. There are some things you can control and some you can’t. The secret to making any business work is to figure out where you have the most tangible influence and then focus everything on those things that will move your business forward. What you focus on grows.

Be Clear on Your Purpose

“While most companies focus on earnings per share, we’re going to be focused on earnings per chair.”

We couldn’t control what the sales force did. We couldn’t control what anyone did, except ourselves. What we could control was what kind of message we gave out from the home office and where we focused people’s attention. That was pretty much it. That’s what we had to work with. Everything else would be a waste of energy.

A meeting isn’t just a meeting. It’s an event.

Is the money important? Of course. But by itself, the money’s not enough. You can have all kinds of financial incentives in place, but if you have a toxic environment with terrible communication, no recognition, and no sense of adventure or fun, then all the financial incentives in the world aren’t going to get that thing off the ground.

If you want real results, you have to light a fire within people. Instead of trying to focus them on what you want them to do; you have to focus them on why they want to do it.