C.A.B.S (Culture, Attitude, Behavior & Style)

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In my 14 years of management experience, 4 key principals were deeply ingrained into my very existence. These principles were taught to me as I was groomed and trained to lead successful businesses by my Father whom also is my cherished Mentor. These principals consist of 4 simple & basic concepts; however, achievement of these principles takes determination and strength to push through the ranks of your organization. You must constantly remind yourself and your people to follow these guidelines and periodically check your organization to make sure these principals are adhered to and met with unquestionable tolerance. Now onto these 4 Principals, which are Culture, Attitude, Behavior and Style.

So the first principal is Culture and it is the most important principal that needs to be established without fail. All companies whether they are great or lousy has some kind of corporate culture. It is this culture that defines you as a company and will either lead you to great success or great failure. This culture is deeply defined by the company’s leaders and how they run their organizations. Culture is consistent with their personalities, habits, the way they carry themselves and the way they treat their employees. The more clearly you define a set of guidelines for your culture the better understanding you will get from your employees and the positive effects on morale will definitely increase your operations’ productivity and efficiency. Your employee needs to be molded and guided on all aspects of their daily lives within your organization. You can think of it as being a cult or a finely tuned military machine. In either case, strong guidelines are set on their organizations’ culture and their people are effectively led to achieve their organizational goals.

What makes up a successful Corporate Culture? Successful corporate culture needs to align the people to the organizations long term strategic goals and needs to allow people to clearly understand that without fail. This Culture does not need to make everybody happy but it does have to be clear and precise. It also has to be applied to everybody equally. If you can achieve this basic underlying fact with your Corporate Culture, then you have achieved probably at least 98% success.  In my past experiences, we have always defined our Culture from these basic vales and made sure everybody was aware of these: Customer, Technology, People;  Integrity; No politics, bureaucracy, OPM (Other people’s Money) spending & empire-building;  Productivity & Efficiency;  Loyalty & Performance;  Decency, honesty, & fairness; Ethical, moral, & legal.

The second principal is all about attitude and the importance it has on the well being of the organization and its members. Attitude is very important in that it sets the stage for these principals to work successfully. Once you can guide your organizations attitude into one that is positive and productive, anything is possible. Remember positive attitude can be guided and developed, but negative attitude needs to be quickly nipped in the bud so that it does not grow and fester. Once the correct attitude is fostered, people’s behavior and styles will fall in line with the overall Culture you are trying to achieve. Here are some specific attitudes we have fostered in our past organizations like: Making sure we take pride in our Quality on everything; Have pride in yourself but don’t discriminate; Believe our Customers are the King & make sure we keep all of our commitments;  Take calculated risks;  Be persistent;  Be competitive;  Understand that change is normal and stability is only temporary; Work hard & smart, but also play hard;  Use your brain power & consistently break your own records; Can –Do, Will Win attitude; Be competitive and have a never-quit fighting spirit; Don’t say it’s difficult or impossible – just do it; Demonstrate leadership throughout the organization;  Be humble & willing to learn;  Don’t be cocky or arrogant; Make sure your humble, read more and willing to learn; Be Positive; Have a sense of ownership & treat the company as your own; Take care of Stakeholders.

The third principal is Behavior and its key to the overall success of your organization. Behavior is clearly observable and should be monitored at all times. Much of the behavior will go hand in hand with the attitudes you are trying to reflect in your organization, however, you should it make clear what is acceptable behavior and what is not. Correct behavior should be rewarded and incorrect behavior needs to be dealt with by severe discipline. These are some successful examples of correct behavior guidelines that should be stated and developed: Straightforwardness, don’t play games or try to protect face (ego);  The keeping of high standards;  Fight all battles & win; Be extremely focused;  Fast in action;  Don’t be too comfortable, be paranoid about survival; Strong Teamwork; To sum it all up we have  3 main category of behaviors; “Communication, Motivation, & Relationship-building .”; 3 primary acceptable organizational behaviors which are, “ agree & commit, disagree & commit, disagree & disassociate.”; 5 character flaws to eliminate, “Ego, Emotionalism, Recklessness, Timidity & Over-concern for Popularity.”

The fourth and last principal is Style and how it ties the other 3 principals to give you an effective overall Culture. Style is how you go about in achieving your goals through Culture, Attitude and Behavior. It defines who you are and the methodologies you partake in achieving the greatness you desire. Style sets you apart from your competition and will tie your organizations morale and identity to your Culture. Effective style will allow you to win in the marketplace, increase your revenues, raise your stock price, and gain the productivity and efficiency you need to win. Our style has helped us achieve these goals and allowed us to gain the needed successes in which I will share with you here: Make sure your people are Self-learning;  Effective Training;  ROD (Re-engineering, Outsourcing, De-layering) action;  Try to achieve a Flat organization;  Management by culture, system, & discipline;  Maintain entrepreneurship & start-up fighting spirit;  Speed of implementation;  Be disciplined & persistent; Be extremely focused & fast in action; Make sure your customers are happy;  Push for Technology breakthroughs;  Ensure Product competitiveness;  Recruit superstars & take care of key people;  Always create win-win situations;  Globalization, decentralization, & diversification;  Decision-making has to be simple, fast, & risk-taking;  Accountability, responsibility, & authority;  Balance between “Technical-Excellency” and “Business-know-how”;  Be thrifty, waste nothing; Support charity & return-to-society; and lastly keep your working environment neat & clean.

C.A.B.S is an effective guideline to build up your company’s culture and hopefully my brief summary can give you some insight or ideas on ways you can improve on your own current situations. I would also like to go into a little bit more detail on executing these guidelines for the specific areas of; Customer, Technology, People, Operations, Organization and Business. The following is a quick outline of these areas of execution.

CUSTOMER

• “Customer is the King”, we must always remember that our bread & butter comes from our customers and we need to be constantly reminded of Customer centric principals and service. The most important concept here is, “Don’t make casual commitments; once made, deliver without fail!”
• Compete on every deal like your life depended on it. Fight on all benchmarks and product evaluations. Win every deal.
• Form strong teams to specifically fight every competitor in the marketplace.
• Make sure you provide all the necessary tools, products, training, methodologies, and resources.
• Select & establish solid strategic partnerships whether it be in sales, technology and or resources.
• Always, always improve on Customer Support efficiency.

Technology

• Develop and implement a clear and precise technology & product road-map.
• Strive to consistently achieve & maintain market leadership of all your products & services
• Continuously recruit & develop superstars
• Provide sufficient R&D resources for key products & services
• Continuously strengthen your core technology
• Place specialty centers in strategic locations (near key customers)
• Move mature or maintenance products to cost-efficient locales.
• Achieve Software quality & knowledge retention via strict disciplines.

People

• Make sure your Leaders have these qualities (decency, honesty, integrity, fairness, simplicity)
• Maintain entrepreneurship and start-up fighting spirit no matter how big your organization gets.
• Promote and reward your people who are driven & can win
• Enforce C.A.B.S (Culture, Attitude, Behavior & Style) & Global Policy throughout the organization.
• Fill-up vacancies & have back-ups for all management
• Recruit & train younger (in spirit) & qualified leaders
• Emphasize & reward loyalty & stability in your organization
• Quickly eliminate non-performers & lazy-bones
• Consistently enforce an environment with No bureaucrats, politicians, and money wasters.
• Reach out and touch someone, don’t hide behind computers (except R&D).
• Be a real doer & team player – not empty talker or ass-kisser.

Operations

• Constantly improve on productivity & efficiency in all aspects of the business.
• Make sure No financial games are played & there are no waste of financial resources.
• Aggressively collect maintenance income & give no discounts on these incomes.
• Make sure you keep a stringent policy on price integrity through packaging & sales disciplines.
• Decentralize all geographical operations; however, you must maintain strict cost control in these locations with innovative checks and balances.
• Grant autonomy to subsidiaries & form joint ventures to strategically tackle different sectors.
• Carefully manage all cash flows & pay specific attention to the treasury function.
• Balance your assets portfolio carefully & conduct smart investments to better your financial diversity.
• Improve stock performance via litigation removal, strategic marketing, and running investor relations like a sales force with a quota. (Public Companies)

Organization

• Globalize & squeeze brain-juice from everywhere you can.
• Allow local people to run local things & govern their own local lands
• Achieve decentralization & have subsidiary autonomy
• ROD:  Re-engineering, Outsourcing, De-layering
• Have a flat organization with maximum 3 management layers below President.
• Crash Headquarters mentality & central-control work style
• Emphasize management accountability & delegate authority
• Allocate sufficient R&D resources worldwide
• Build-up an efficient & well-compensated sales force.
• Recruit & take care of superstars, motivate, train, & develop employees
• Utilize Operations as check-and-balance, but not micro-control.
• Have an open space & interactive environment, no private offices (except President).
• Emphasize both loyalty & performance, personal values are more important.
• Develop people, communication, networking, & leadership skills (not running a popularity contest).
• Get rid of bad people and poor performers regularly.
• All managers have no titles (except President) and are reassigned every 2 years (rotating between line, staff, and technical positions).
• Identify successors, have back-ups in all positions.
• Know the differences between accountability, responsibility, and authority.
• Create a non-paper environment, reduce management reports, use e-management.
• Keep meetings less than 45 minutes (except work sessions) & have follow-up actions.

Business

• Globalization to combine both centralization and decentralization.
• Take calculated risks, but move fast & precise.
• Maintain high standards & keep non-stop improvement.
• Must have sufficient R&D investment & maintain a start-up mode.
• Continue M&A activities for needed technologies & resources.
• Aggressively invest into new business areas.
• Share company wealth with all stakeholders.
• Make money, not just give money to people & spoil them
• Use money to reward existing employees & hire fresh blood.
• Make sure your Product Line Heads are responsible for business results.
• Balance “technical-excellence” and “business-maturity”.
• Make “Business-know-how” a must for all management.
• Knowledge retention through documentation & discipline.
• Implement management development & appraisal system.
• Maintain a strong sales channel & branding, fight all battles thoroughly, create win-win situations, & make all customers happy.
• Productivity through quality on everything & sound business models.
• No corruption, bribery, kickback, or stealing of company’s resources.
• Say No! to non-essential spending, conservative financial management.
• Efficiency through tight cost control & streamline process.
• Share profit; reduce company-sponsored fringe benefits.
• Pay close attention to external marketing, PR, legal, & litigation.