once a month to put everything that was wrong at Radica on one sheet of paper—he’d told me he’d assume the best if I didn’t tell him otherwise. If a memo about a problem ever exceeded one page, he told me I didn’t understand the problem. Once a year, he asked for a one-page plan in case I went down in an airplane—that was the beginning of our

a job description freezes the job as the writer understood it at a particular instant in the past.At

What generally happens in those strong staff organizations is that you get very mediocre performance from otherwise able people down the line.

Taking phone calls in meetings: “Look at me, I’m busy!” If you get a phone call from Nixon, how much more impressive to not take it.

Repent, for the Day of Judgment is never far away.

No beautiful secretaries, no pre-packaged rations, no cars or fluttering pennants . . . no military bands. But victory, damn it, victory!33

If they can’t release their spare energies toward your goals, they’ll moonlight for somebody who doesn’t have job descriptions and policy manuals.

Money: A tight budget brings out the best creative instincts in man. Give him unlimited funds and he won’t come up with the best way to a result. Man is a complicating animal. He only simplifies under pressure. Put him under some financial pressure. He’ll scream in anguish.Then he’ll come up with a plan which, to his own private amazement, is not

Many give lip service, but few delegate authority in important matters. And that means all they delegate is dog-work. A real leader does as much dog-work for his people as he can: he can do it, or see a way to do without it, ten times as fast. And he delegates as many important matters as he can because that creates a climate in which people grow.