lessons learned from a 35 year business career
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Lessons Learned From a 35 Year Business Career ... 35 Years and Still LearningTRANSCRIPT
Ten Business Lessons Learned Along the Way
35 Years and Still Learning
Dr. Mike Schoultz
Lesson 1
Always put your people first
The Disney Culture
“You can design and create, and build the
most wonderful place in the world. But it takes
people to make the dream a reality”
- Walt Disney
“You have to treat your employees like customers.”
—Herb Kelleher, complete answer, upon being asked his “secrets to success”
Source: Joe Nocera, NYT, “Parting Words of an Airline Pioneer”
Lesson 2
Be a talent hound and put
priority on finding the best
people
“Development can help great people be even better
but if I had a dollar to spend, I’d spend 70 cents getting the
right person in the door.”
—Paul Russell, Director, Leadership &
Development, Google
Message: Some people are better than other people.
Some people are a helluva lot better than other
people.
Lesson 3
Build on your strengths … work
around your
weaknesses
“ Honor individual differences. Take
people as they are. Don’t attempt to
change or manipulate them to
be like or to be someone else”
- Warren Bennis
“…effective executives do not start out by looking at weaknesses. You cannot build performance on weaknesses. You can build only on strengths. Make weaknesses irrelevant.”
- Peter Drucker
The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.
-Michelangelo
Lesson 4
Keep it simple in everything you do
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”
- Steve Jobs
Making the simple complicated is commonplace;
making the complicated simple,
awesomely simple... That’s creativity!
Lesson 5
Be a change agent … anticipate and embrace change
When the winds of change are blowing,
you can either build a shelter or a windmill.
Re-invent constantly … lifetime learning
"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may
learn how to do it."
- Pablo Picasso
The Importance of Continuous Learning
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs …
by the age of 38!
“It is not the STRONGEST OF THE SPECIES that survives,
NOR THE MOST INTELLIGENT,
but the one MOST RESPONSIVE TO CHANGE”
- CHARLES DARWIN
Lesson 6
Make listening your core competence
It was much later that I realized Dad’s secret. He gained
respect by giving it. He talked and listened to the fourth-
grade kids in Spring Valley who shined shoes the same way
he talked and listened to a bishop or a college president.
He was seriously interested in who you were and what you had to say.”
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Respect
Lesson 7
Relationships are what count
Why does a customer choose you instead of your
competitor?
1. Trust
2. Confidence
3. Strength of relationship
“The key is to be part of peoples lives.
People will always prefer to do business with friends”
- Marty Kohr
Lesson 8
Be different to stand out and be heard
Lesson 9
Live your passion
“People want to be part of something larger than
themselves. They want to be part of
something they’re really proud of, that
they’ll fight for, sacrifice for , trust.”
—Howard Schultz, Starbucks
Lesson 10
Don’t fear failure
“ You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take"
- Wayne Gretsky
To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes
may be the biggest mistake of all.
-Peter McWilliams
We learn from our failures. Period.
Failure to acknowledge failure is a fatal disease.
Treating failure like a disease is a fatal disease.
- Tom Peters
Explore …
“ Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out
how far one can go .”
- t. s. elliot
In the new era of business and social,
playing it safe is the riskiest choice of all.
FINAL THOUGHTS
“ Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you
didn’t do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bow line. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds
in your sail.
Explore. Dream. Discover.”- Mark Twain
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Steve Jobs
About Dr. Schoultz
Dr. Schoultz has thirty five years of business development, marketing, technology, and business operations experience.
He served as VP / President of Distribution Technologies, a company he helped to found and grow to a 700 M + / year market leader.
Dr. Schoultz Ph. D. is from the University of Virginia.
Thank You