- Focus on what matters.
- Three things matter most: establish trust, determine mutual vision, and ensure delivery. That’s it! When you help in the selling process almost everything else is a distraction.
- Answer questions if you must but do it to establish trust, determine mutual vision, and ensure delivery.
- Being an expert in the eyes of one person does not guarantee you are an expert in the eyes of another.
- Being an expert in the eyes of many people does not guarantee you are an expert in the eyes of all.
- Use expertise to benefit others before you use it to benefit yourself.
- People seek experts for one reason: to eliminate risk. So, eliminate risk.
- Identify risks, rank them, and vanquish them in order.
- If you can’t eliminate all risks (which you can’t) isolate and mitigate.
- If you can help someone, don’t wait, help quickly.
- If you can’t help someone, don’t obstruct. Clear a path for those who can.
- Stay in your lane. Don’t pretend you’re expert in subjects you are not.
- Keep it simple. If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t know it well enough.
- Challenge the status quo.
- Know the radius of your character and stay within it.
- Lift where you stand.
- Don’t expect others to get out of the way–they won’t.
- Tell the truth.
- Don’t be arrogant when you tell the truth.
- Keep secrets.
- Never violate a trust.
- Protect everyone from folly.
- Declare your recommendations with confidence.
- If you aren’t confident about your recommendations, then don’t declare them.
- Smooth the edges.
- Fix what’s broken.
- Soothe what hurts.
- Honor what is holy.
- When someone is wrong, assume ignorance before malice.
- Test and test again.
- Take care of your equipment.
- Don’t waste anyone’s time.
- Don’t assume you know the answer before you know the question.
- Don’t assume people know what they want. They rarely do.
- Don’t assume people know what you are talking about. They rarely do.
- Listen, ask, listen, talk, listen, listen, listen. In that order.
- Respect every person in the meeting, especially the least among them.
- Find the edge of human knowledge and explore further.
- Find the limits of your personal skill and stretch further.
- Make your audience feel smart.
- Answer questions with hope and optimism.
- Interpret stupid questions as valid, serious, and important.
- Never condescend.
- Know your numbers.
- If someone gives you a number, assume it’s wrong.
- Count twice.
- Do the math three times.
- Leave nothing to chance, or to the imagination.
- Avoid expressing doubt.
- Never show anger.
- Put your passion on display, your enthusiasm matters.
- Remain current in your domain.
- Read twice before sending.
- Assume your message will be forwarded.
- Assume your tone will be amplified.
- When others are doubtful, display confidence; when others are confident, be doubtful.
- Don’t praise your competitors, but don’t disparage them either.
- Avoid acronyms and technical jargon.
- Find a way to say “yes” as an alternative to saying “no.”
- Don’t criticize your colleagues.
- Don’t diminish the value of your colleagues.
- Don’t surprise anyone. You can warn, caution, inform, remind, signal, prompt, suggest, and urge, but do not surprise.
- Avoid the Hindenburg. If something is going to fail, ensure it fails fast, fails cheap, and inflicts no injury.
- Know the laws that govern your domain.
- Know the standards that inform the laws.
- Ignore distractions.
- Be discerning. Distinguish things that matter from things that don’t.
- Be enthusiastic. If you are not excited about your subject who will be?
- Maintain patience when working with the unskilled.
- Trust others and be trustworthy.
- Don’t assume your audience trusts you–they don’t.
- Don’t assume your audience will believe you–they won’t.
- Don’t assume your audience is convinced–they’re not.
- Give people a reason to listen. Don’t just talk.
- Ignore the nay-sayers, the mockers, and the haters.
- Keep it short. Don’t say “boo-hoo” when “boo” will do.
- Rejoice in the successes of others.
- Seek the consensus of other experts.
- Love what you do and do what you love.
- Practice your craft deliberately every day.
- Performing in your craft rarely counts as practice.
- Know the people who set the standards of your industry, learn from them, then set the standards for your industry.
- Remember how hard it was to learn a new skill.
- Grant people the space and time to learn a new skill. Let them crawl before they walk, and walk before they run.
- Practice with people who are better than you, until they are no longer better than you.
- Remember the end of the project is the hardest. The first 90% of the project will take 90% of the time. The other 10% of the project will take the other 90% of the time.
- Avoid sarcasm when you write, speak, and think. Pretty much always.
- Be nice. If people find you offensive, they will eventually stop finding you at all.
- Demo what your audience needs to see, not what you want to show.
- Assume the worst conditions for your demo.
- Never let them see you set up the demo or presentation. Configure everything in advance.
- Practice what you preach and preach what you practice.
- Unless you know Google will quote you as the authority, don’t say, “Google it.”
- Don’t extend vain promises.
- Focus on one person at a time. If you remain focused on one person, the world will change. If you focus on the world, no one will change.
- Act with autonomy. Do what must be done, especially when no one else will.
- Context is everything. Be certain your recommendation fits the nuance of the situation.
- Accept accountability.
- Avoid using absolutes. Words such as never, always, absolutely, completely, all, none, and impossible are rarely true.
- Avoid ambiguity. If your words can be interpreted in more than one way, assume they will be interpreted in the way that does the most harm.
- Always end where we began: establish trust, determine mutual vision, and ensure delivery.
