Donald Rumsfeld has a wide variety of senior level jobs in his life time including elected government official, CEO of a couple of US Corporations, and Secretary of Defense. For most of his life he has been keeping rules or lists of leadership lessons in business, politics, war and life. Over the years because of his positions, many people have read the lists and it made into a book called Rumsfeld’s Rules by Donald Rumsfeld published by Broadside Books, NY, 2013. Many of the sayings you will likely have heard or read before, but the examples are from Mr. Rumsfeld and another one of the very good chapters is Lessons from the World’s Most Successful Leadership Organizations.

Everyone for many organizations people go and do their work, which Is great, but the focus is on the leadership of the organization. If the leadership is doing its job, the people below with make it work. Recently a tech company changed its leadership, which it needed to do, the focus on the business press was the one person, not the thousands he had let go to try to refocus the business. We focus on one person because it is the nature of the beast. The lessons to be learned include – in the armed forces thousands of people flow through the organization, the way the armed forces continue is the role of the chiefs in the Navy or the sergeants in the military. These people do not have senior rank, have long service, know the informal and formal rules of the road. If the organization respects them, the organization benefits.

In the military in terms of feedback, they have 360-degree-feedback – which means bosses continually giving feedback on the performance both positive and things to learn the next time. By doing it on a regular basis, good leadership skills are developed and engaged in future similar situations.

Nothing is static. For every offense there is a defense. For every defense there is an offense. Everyone is engage in competition, what is the competition doing? What do they do right? wrong? and how can the organization learn from them?

When your enemy is making mistakes, do not stop him in the middle. Studying your competition can mean the difference between success and failure by providing advance clues of their potential innovations that could disrupt your efforts. Studying your competition can also suggest new techniques that could benefit your company. Mr. Rumsfeld was on the Board of Sears, they saw and studied Wal-Mart, however the Board decided not to act as they did not see the threat or need to change.

Linking to dividend producing stocks, by there existence of providing a dividend, these stocks are the profitable ones. There is and should be competition among the space, the long term dividend paying companies either have a very entrenched monopoly or are aware of the competition and within the organization continually trying to innovate. note the entrenched monopoly is fading fast for all organizations who do not watch, learn and act from the competition. A dividend producing company can take baby steps, make mistakes and still continue on making a profit? is it?

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions