Sam Walton's Rules

I’ve just finished writing my next book, Motivate Like a CEO, Communicate your Strategic Vision and Inspire People to Act. Today, one of our senior consultants forwarded this list of Sam Walton’s rules for building a business. I couldn’t help but notice how many of these rules were about motivating and inspiring. Whether you love Walmart, hate it, or feel indifferent, you have to hand it to Sam; he knew a thing or two about building a business. I couldn’t help but notice that so many of his rules are about communicating and motivating people. What’s interesting is that in interviewing other CEOs for the new book, I noticed that numbers 2 through 7 came up on their lists, too. Here they are: Sam’s Rules:

1. COMMIT to your business.
2. SHARE your profits with your associates and treat them as partners.
3. MOTIVATE your partners.
4. COMMUNICATE everything you possibly can to your partners.
5. APPRECIATE everything your associates do for the business.
6. CELEBRATE your success.
7. LISTEN to everyone in your company.
8. EXCEED your customers’ expectations.
9. CONTROL your expenses better than your competition.
10. SWIM upstream.