“it boils down to something very simple..called “Shared Values”. If two things coming together do not enhance each other and highlight each others strengths then those two things should not come together”
(On how to drive product sales)
“If you put in a very authentic fashion a packaged good or product in the right proximity to popular culture, you’re going to have product sales thrive as a result”
(On Knowing Your Audience)
“Play for the right audience. A lot of people for the wrong audience. You cant put your act on the wrong stage and the wrong stage is trying to impress people, but not necessarily impressing yourself. A lot of times you find out that reality very far in life. In your 50’s, 60’s you find out all the things you did that wasn’t really for you, but it was for somebody else. I would play for the right audience and that audience is yourself…I walked in fortune 500 companies without a formal college education, but yet trying to convince them that they were doing was wrong and there was a lot of resistance. People didn’t want to hear that they were wrong coming from me, a young African American the didn’t have the ‘credentials’ that they expected from a person to have that point of view”
(Dealing With Nonbelievers)
“You have to set a belief system in your organization. Once you do that, if you have people who have not bought into the philosophy, you need to identify them and move them out quickly. It’s to their benefit and your benefit. If you ask most executives, they know within the first 30 or 60 days if a person is going to work out, but it takes them seven months to a year to get them out of the organization. That’s a waste of time…Bad behavior is contagious. And once that starts hitting a company, no matter how big you are, no matter how small you are, that will start the demise of a great organization.”
(Personalize Communication)
” We have to communicate, and we have to get off e-mail and pick up the phone, call our clients and walk down the hall and speak to our peers, because tone makes a gigantic difference in the way somebody receives information. It defines urgency. It defines intent. You need tone and mannerisms to build relationships. But if you mute all those things, you start to get people who are not necessarily aligned because they don’t get to know each other. They know each other by name, but they don’t know each other. And simple conversations around tasks and teamwork and how are we going to move forward get lost in translation if you’re not speaking to the person, and you’re just texting them or e-mailing”.
(Respect Ideas)
And ideas can come from anywhere. There are no titles around an idea. As the C.E.O., I’m the chief editor of the company, but I want the idea to come from anybody. There’s no bureaucracy around an idea. In fact, bureaucracy around an idea is the death of an organization. I tell people all the time: If you have a great idea, and you’re passionate about it, and it makes sense, and you can’t get your boss to hear your idea, then you should leave. That’s not an organization that you’re going to thrive in. You know why so many companies let great talent out the door? Because there was no platform for great talent to be heard, so they get frustrated and leave.
RichStudents 