A number of people have asked me about my beliefs. I have recorded some of the key ones I think you will find interesting. Yet, it is not what I or anyone else says or writes down, but what we actually do in the press of the day-to-day that makes our belief system credible to others.

Everything can be done better. If we merely continue to do that which we have done in order to be successful to this point, sooner or later we will surely fail. We must constantly strive to discover what important changes we must tackle next.

All of us can grow if we want to. Being in a growth-oriented environment like ours helps that process. To maximize people's growth it's important to align three things: what a person is good at doing, what a person likes doing, and what a person wants to do. People often find themselves out of alignment when others value something different from what they like and what they are good at. We need people to feel good about what they are doing and where they are headed. When we successfully bring people's likes, abilities and goals into alignment, we create a harmony that promotes top performance and accelerates growth.

We have vastly greater opportunity than we have the management resources to exploit. While this creates an ideal growth environment, we are nonetheless constrained by what we have time to do. When we "max" ourselves out, we will get stuck and become less able to grow. To grow as we must, we need more top-flight, up-and-coming leaders. With this in mind, each of us has a clear mandate to develop others who can grow into our jobs, allowing us to advance into new areas.

Leadership is about independence and interdependence. Leadership is being secure in your own self. Your own security will allow you to design and become part of the networks of other competent players within the company and to create a mutual and constructive interdependence.

A mix of ideas from people of diverse backgrounds, cultures and abilities brings strength to any team. Closed or homogeneous ranks tend to become isolated and stale. We need to build and cultivate leadership teams made up of people with diverse skills, backgrounds and cultures. To do this, we may need to help our people become more skilled at working with people who are different from themselves.

Our company can be a community of leaders creating leaders. We can achieve this best through our behavior: how we talk to each other, how we solve problems, how we set priorities for our time and our actions. We must set an example by improving our own behavior at meetings, in listening, and in giving feedback.

There is no one right organization to make us successful. The organization that will work is the one we as a group have decided to make work after thoughtful investigation and discussion. We must all agree to adopt one specific model of operations, including its flaws. It is easy to make any organization fail. What is challenging is to make one work. We will join together to design a model and then sign up to make it work the way we want.

Organizations change slowly. It is often better to advance by interim steps than to implement large-scale change quickly. Organizational change is important, yet we all know it can be disruptive to the people involved. It helps if we manage that change gradually, and if we help people to become well informed and involved in that change.

No organization is forever. Each model is just one step on the way. When we architect and put in place an organizational structure, we will also speculate on what might be next because we understand that there surely will be further evolution down the road.

We need to operate with a long-term perspective. Getting through the current day, quarter and year is not enough. Although we need to perform well and meet expectations we have set, the value of our company (read: market value and stock price) is determined not just by our current performance, but by the expectations we set for the future. This means we must gain a clear idea of what we are going to be doing several years from now. Then we can better determine what we need to be doing now to ensure that we will be in position to deliver on this promise.

A few guiding principles are better able to help us decide how to execute in the day-by-day than many extensive, intricate procedures. If we can agree on what we are trying to do in light of what we hold important and what's in the best interests of the company, the way will be clear.

Our performance must excel in four specific areas that yield maximum long-term results: financials, culture (what we value and how we treat and take care of our people), processes (how things work), and customer satisfaction. We must set objectives in each of these four areas to define the company we want to become.

You dramatically improve the probability of getting what you want by asking for it.