A beautiful read that is worth reading and re-reading. Joe was CEO of North America at Citi which was the best performing stock in the 1990s and now is a senior executive at KRR, having turned around Willis and First Data. In this 2019 talk he shares eight of his first principles of value creation
Plumeri’s 8 Principles
- Vision
- Where’s grandma’s house? Where as we going
- We all need a vision. Without one, people will make up their out
- Purpose
- Do you passionately care about the client and vision?
- Make a big deal out of everything
- Delegate authority but never responsibility
- Write notes to everyone and recognize people as often as possible
- Gerald Ford helping to get friend buried at Arlington made me cry
- Create a no doors culture
- Go “play in traffic” – go make things happen
- Create a performance-based culture
- Citi had a program where if you didn’t exercise the stock, then you got double the amount. That’s how Sandy Weill was able to keep everyone
- Gave stock wherever he worked and he always put shareholders first. Would never even visit a tourist attraction if he was traveling because it was the shareholders who had paid to get him there
- Ownership, team building, everybody on the same page
- Widen the value gap
- The value gap is what people or companies can do for themselves compared to what you can do for them. You always want to be expanding this gap
- Never be in a commodity business
- Are you competent or compelling?
- Price is an issue in the absence of value
- Your reach should exceed your grasp
- Always ask, “What else?”
- Surround yourself with people who want to do great things
- Viking effect of burning boats, getting everyone all-in