Adopt a winning attitude. Like any football or basketball coach, you always " always " believe you're going to win. Disappointments, failures and setbacks are a normal part of the life cycle of a unit or company. A leader has to constantly say, "We have a problem; let's go and get it" " and convey that attitude with passion and intensity.
Take calculated risks
I was with Mikhail Gorbachev as the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain and the Cold War were going away and the American people were demanding a peace dividend. Gorbachev looked across the table at me and said, "General, you'll have to find a new enemy." The risk is, what do you do? So Defence Secretary Dick Cheney and I decided, let's cut ourselves 25 per cent.
Even with President Bush's approval, we didn't know how Congress would react. It was the toughest bureaucratic battle I ever had to go through: We cut the Defence Department 25 per cent " 500,000 soldiers were let go " and we cut significantly the military industrial complex, telling manufacturers, "You guys may want to return equity to shareholders and get out of the business or merge," and a lot of them did. The lesson: When you have to go through restructuring, design it so your friends have something to rally behind and your enemies have to fight on your battlefield....
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03:23 PM, Jun 18, 2012
