Six Rules for Success

Six rules for success

1. Do your work. Don't be lazy!
2. Stop waiting. It's time.
3. Rely on yourself. The universe doesn't give you.
4. Be practical. Success is not a theory.
5. Be productive early. Don't waste around all day
6. Don't waste energy on things you don't control.

Charles Coffin

Charles Coffin Built the stage on which they all played. General Electric's first president didn't see himself as a genius; he came from the shoe business. FORTUNE Monday, July 7, 2003 

            Most people have never heard of Charles Coffin—and that's the ultimate testimony to his greatness. His predecessor had something to do with this. No CEO finds it easy to take over from a founding entrepreneur; now imagine that founder holds patents on the electric light, the phonograph, the motion picture, the alkaline battery, and the dissemination of electricity. But Coffin knew his job was not to be the next Thomas Edison—though Coffin, too, would prove a master inventor. His invention was the General Electric Co. 

            Coffin oversaw two social innovations of huge significance: America's first research laboratory and the idea of systematic management development. While Edison was essentially a genius with a thousand helpers, Coffin created a system of genius that did not depend on him. Like the founders of the U.S., he created the ideology and mechanisms that made his institution one of the world's most enduring and widely emulated. 

            Edison's wouldn't be the only name to overshadow his. Coffin's era (1892-1912) became known as the "Steinmetz era," in homage to the brilliant GE electrical engineer Charles P. Steinmetz. What little name recognition Coffin did enjoy would then be obliterated by the likes of Swope, Cordiner, Jones, and Welch—GE CEOs who became giants in their own day. 

            Jack Welch's stature, in particular, reached a point where GE was called the House That Jack Built. In fact, Welch was as much a product of GE as vice-versa. Certainly Welch vastly improved the system, and history will likely judge him a great executive. He was a master at developing general managers and steadily increasing profit per unit of executive talent. But Welch did not invent this concept; he inherited it. 

            The same cannot be said of Charles Coffin. More than any other leader, Coffin made GE into a great company, creating the machine that created a succession of giants. For that reason, he stands a notch above the CEOs whose names eclipsed his. He built the stage on which they all played.

George Merck

George Merck Put profit second The Merck & Co. boss didn't worry about Wall Street—and grew profits 50-fold. FORTUNE Monday, July 7, 2003 By Jim Collins 

             Late one afternoon in 1978, Dr. William Campbell did what all great researchers do: He wondered at the data. While testing a new compound to battle parasites in animals, he was struck with the idea that it might be effective against another parasite—one that causes blindness and itching in humans so horrific that some victims have committed suicide. Campbell might have simply scribbled a note in the files and gone to lunch. After all, the potential "customers"—tribal people in remote tropical locations—would have no money to buy it. Undaunted, Campbell penned a memo to his employer, Merck & Co., urging pursuit of the idea. Today 30 million people a year receive Mectizan, the drug inspired by his observation, largely free of charge. 

            The most exceptional part of the story is that it wasn't an exception. "Medicine is for people, not for the profits," George Merck II declared on the cover of Time in August 1952—a rule his company observed in dispensing streptomycin to Japanese children following World War II. Yet fuzzy-headed moralistic fervor wasn't George Merck. Austere and patrician, he simply believed that the purpose of a corporation is to do something useful, and to do it very well. "And if we have remembered that, the profits have never failed to appear," he explained. "The better we remembered, the larger they have been." It's the mirror image of CEOs whose unhealthy fixations with Wall Street have served neither people nor profits: Merck served shareholders so well precisely because he served others first.

David Packard

David Packard rejected the CEO club

His eulogy pamphlet identified the Hewlett-Packard co-founder as 'Rancher, etc.' FORTUNE Monday, July 7, 2003 By Jim Collin.

            In 1949, 37-year-old David Packard attended a meeting of business leaders. Fidgeting while they discussed how to squeeze more profit from their companies, he was finally unable to contain himself. "A company has a greater responsibility than making money for its stockholders," he asserted. Eyes turned toward his six-foot-five-inch frame. "We have a responsibility to our employees to recognize their dignity as human beings," Packard said, extolling his belief that those who help create wealth have a moral right to share in that wealth.

            To his elders, Packard's ideas seemed borderline socialist if not outright dangerous. "I was surprised and shocked that not a single person at that meeting agreed with me," Packard reflected later. "It was quite evident they firmly believed I was not one of them, and obviously not qualified to run an important enterprise."

That was just fine with David Packard. He never wanted to be part of the CEO club; he belonged to the Hewlett-Packard club. In an era when bosses dwelt in mahogany-paneled sanctums, Packard took an open-door workspace among his engineers. He practiced what would become famous as "management by walking around." Most radical of all for the time, he shared equity and profits with all employees.

            What set Packard apart, in other words, is that he wasn't a person set apart. His idea of a good time, according to a co-worker, was to get together with friends and string barbed wire. Despite being one of Silicon Valley's first self-made billionaires, he continued to live in the small, understated house he and his wife had built in 1957. And though he donated (with Hewlett) to Stanford University an amount comparable to the present value of Jane and Leland Stanford's original endowment, he never allowed his name to appear on any of its buildings while he was alive. By defining himself as an HP man first and a CEO second, Packard did more than demonstrate humility. He built a uniquely dedicated culture that became a fierce competitive weapon, delivering 40 consecutive years of profitable growth. 

            While Packard's values have since waned within HP, he did more to create the DNA of Silicon Valley than perhaps any other CEO. Like the heritage left by the architects of democracy in ancient Athens, the spirit of his and Hewlett's system lives on, far beyond the walls of the institution they built.