Have the Right People in Place

Art Freedman and I were very fortunate to have the foreword to our book, Making Money Is Not Illegal, Immoral or Fattening, written by Murray Armstrong, the president of Ace Hardware International. In what he wrote for the book, Murray brought some lessons he'd learned from others:
"I like the writings of Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric, because of his practical, no-nonsense approach to business. He shows us how sticking to the fundamentals is important. He reminds us that one of the top fundamentals is the people. Art Freedman says, 'The older I get, the less I need to know and the more I need to know who does know.' Jack Welch wrote, 'My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people.' Then Mr. Welch added, 'Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too.'
"Have the right people in place and see that those people have the right resources to do their jobs. In his best-selling book, Good to Great, organizational researcher Jim Collins wrote about 'getting the right people on the bus.' In retailing, we must have the right people and manage to their strengths.
"This means having enough people. Retailers always want to keep down headcounts because staffing is such a large part of expenses. But you cannot shrink yourself to greatness. In tough times, you need to take a couple of steps backwards, but be sure that over time you always keep still moving forward."
Murray then finishes his foreword with words to reinforce the book's finish and, as it happens, what I might say about this RIMtailing blog: "Allow me to send you on by saying, 'Go to it now and start reading about how to make more money.'"