Guiding Principles v1.1 27 January 2016

Dear Reader, This is a collection of thoughts that have been useful to me and my teams over the years whose origin is: 1. Me and/or 2. Things management/colleagues have

said to me and/or 3. Popular quotes for which I have given

no attribution The viewpoints expressed in this material are my own.

Steve Rubinow, Ph.D.

Doctrine of Completed Staff Work: If you were the boss, would you be willing to approve the work you have prepared, and stake your professional reputation on its being right? If the answer is negative, take it back and keep at it because it is not

yet completed staff work

Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan; assigning blame is wasted energy; use negative events as learning for the future;

try hard not to repeat the same mistakes – make new ones

If another expert would have made the same decision you made at the time, even if it turns out badly, it’s unfortunate but excusable; if a better decision would have been made at that

time by another expert, that’s harder to excuse

Assess, take and manage appropriate risks; consider regret minimization: what would you regret more – failing or not trying?; it’s more

important to fail at something that matters than to succeed at something that doesn’t

The best risk management tool on a race car is not brakes, but steering; the same is true for business

Bad decisions make good stories; don’t forget all the good decisions that make good stories too

Honor your commitments; commitments are what transform promises into reality

Don't mistake activity with achievement; do not confuse motion and progress – a rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress

The ultimate inspiration is the deadline

How does a project get to be a year late?

Authority to lead comes from above, power to lead comes from below

Planting a tree

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago; the second best time is NOW

It will give you a competitive advantage It will increase your revenues It will lower your costs It will reduce your time to market It will improve your quality It will increase your productivity It will increase customer satisfaction It's an industry standard It's a best practice…

Professor Marvel, what are the benefits of your proposal?

All that glitters is not gold (or worthy of funding without more than platitudes)

When someone tells you about a dramatic change, what is the threshold for “drama”? Data, not adjectives

I’m pleased to report there has been a dramatic improvement in…

Keep all 3 technology costs in mind: start-up, on-going, AND exit!

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are; our assumptions are our windows on the world - scrub them off every once in a

while, or the light won't come in

Forecasting is difficult, especially if it’s about the future; the best way to predict the future is to invent it

Unless you need to exceed the speed of light (or violate any laws of physics) OR…

You need to have more than 24 hours in a day…

Impossible only means that you haven't found the solution yet

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth; no plan survives contact; always have a Plan B

Be aggressive, just this side of reckless

Complexity is the enemy of speed, reliability, cost, security, so…

…keep things simple: a designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add but when there is nothing left to take away; everything

should be made as simple as possible but not simpler; this applies to meetings too!

Better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong; if you make a decision with less than 40% of the needed information, you’re shooting from the hip – if you wait

until you have more than 70% of the information, you’ve waited too long

Sunlight is the best disinfectant; problem solving starts with transparency of the facts

You can’t shine a sneaker*

*or, for the less genteel: You can’t polish a turd

Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig

Management is efficiency in climbing the wall; Leadership determines whether it’s the right wall

Creativity is just connecting things…a lot of people haven't had very diverse experiences, so they don’t have enough dots to connect

Prepare for each presentation like a courtroom trial; chance favors the prepared mind

Tell a story, don’t read a script; people who know what they're talking about don't need PowerPoint

Some goals are OK if achieved at less than 100%, others not; make sure you know which yours are

In the end, if we don’t get this done – those that replace us will