How I Created The Four Non-Negotiables That Defined My Leadership Style

Over the years, I’ve developed a management and leadership philosophy that has served me well as I progressed further in my career. As I moved further up my career ladder, I saw problems that I was able to fix by calling on these solutions. They became so important to my style that I started calling them the Four Non-Negotiables.

They are:

1. Safety
2. Housekeeping
3. Productivity
4. Check your ego at the front door and bring your brains inside

I’ll discuss each of those items in my next four blog posts.

Developing the Four Non-Negotiables

At one point in my career, I moved to Canada from South Africa, and I joined a lighting company to work as a salesman. I had already worked in South Africa, several other African states, the Middle East, Europe, South America, and Australia. And what started out as another step in my career ended up being the job that led to creating the Four Non-Negotiables.

This company was part of a Fortune 500 company, so I had the opportunity to progress pretty quickly through the organization. I moved from salesman to sales manager to general manager for one of the operations within this conglomerate.

As the GM, I built the operation up to the point that it caught the attention of the executives, and they gave me the chance to relocate to the U.S. There, I became the Executive VP of Sales and General Manager for a number of their different operating divisions. moving from role to role.

My career up to that point in time had really been spent in fixing things. Whether it was sales divisions that were failing or a business unit that was in trouble, or a company that wasn’t profitable, my job was to fix it. So I went through a 16- or 17-year period in which I was downsizing and right-sizing companies, shutting companies down, and consolidating companies.

What I learned was that this was happening in nearly every company because they lacked a good business culture. Secondly, their costs were too high and they weren’t profitable. As a result, in all the downsizing, right-sizing, re-engineering, consolidating, and shutting down, the casualties of that always ended up being people.

So I decided that if I ever had the opportunity of being able to build something in which I had an ownership stake, I would make running a company a hell of a lot simpler but more sustainable.

I found that in most of these organizations, nothing was really measured, so you could never find the root cause of anything. Secondly, they generally had poor safety records, which was pretty costly.

Of course, the root cause of those problems were usually management, who weren’t that engaged to begin with. That meant the level of engagement of the associates was very low. People were turning up just for a paycheck as opposed to wanting to influence the outcome of the enterprise.

Additionally, in every one of these companies, there was a huge amount of waste, whether that was scrap and waste, unproductive time, and poor safety, so that’s really what negatively impacted the financials of all of these operations.

I boiled these observations, these experiences, these ideas and solutions down to four philosophies that could positively impact any outcome of any company, no matter what field or industry they’re in. And I decided these were the things that should be totally non-negotiable in that company.

Again, they’re:

1. Safety
2. Housekeeping
3. Productivity
4. Check your ego at the front door and bring your brains inside

These four philosophies will help you build a good culture, keep your costs in line, and look after your people. As a result, you’ll be able to provide consistent results for your customers, which will keep them happy, and help you bring in more customers and grow your sales. If you can follow these four practices, and ensure that everyone in the company does as well, you can help your company be successful.

I’ll cover these Four Non-Negotiables over the next four blog articles so you can hopefully understand each of them a little better. (Especially that last one!)

I’ve been a manufacturing executive, as well as a sales and marketing professional, for a few decades. Now I help companies turn around their own business using the Four Non Negotiables as a template. If you would like more information, please visit my website and connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

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