This is a collection of thoughts that have been useful to me and my teams over the years.

1. Guiding Principles
v1.1
27 January2016

2. 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.

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

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

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

10. Honor your commitments; commitments are what transform promises into reality

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

12. The ultimate inspiration is the deadline

13. How does a project get to be a year late?

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

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

16. 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)

17. 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…

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

19. 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

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

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

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

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

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

25. Be aggressive, just this side of reckless

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

27. …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!

28. 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

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

30. You can’t shine a sneaker*
*or, for the less genteel: You can’t polish a turd

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

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

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

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

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

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

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