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 one of the more interesting for this blog is about Think Strategically.

In many instances if you can get the strategy correct, you have accomplish more than 50% of the work for the tactics will fall into place naturally.

Step 1 is Set the Goals. Remember when you set goals, you have decided what you are not going to do, which is every bit as important as deciding what you will do. What do you say no to? The next thing to do is set your priorities and ask why?

Step 2 is Identify your Key Assumptions – note if a key assumption turns out to be wrong, it will require a major change in strategy. A question to ask is what do you expect the competition to do?

Step 3 is to Determine the Best Course of Action understanding there are always other alternatives – some better, some worse but there are alternatives. There are multiple ways to do this.

Step 4 is to Monitor Progress through Metrics – because what you measure improves. A great rule of thumb is you get what you inspect, not what you expect. One way to see how things are moving remember the adage the middle income  people vote with their feet or if they have a bad experience they will go to some where else. Upper income will voice their opinion more.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, every company has a strategy plan for public companies they are in the Annual Reports. As you have invested in the company, you can determine if their strategic plan is the correct one, given the things you know. What does the company say they are doing? and equally not doing? if they are not doing something do you like it? do you like the direction the company is going in?

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