What's the Most Important Principle to Business?

If you ever get a chance to hear Ray L. Hunt speak, do it.

Ray is the Chairman and CEO of Hunt Oil, former head of the Dallas Fed, and a prominent philanthropist. Last week he made a rare personal speaking appearance before the Dallas Chamber of Commerce. I found his insights both simple and extraordinarily useful.

He opened with (I paraphrase) his 5 Principals of Business Excellence:

1. The single most important principle of business? Corporate culture and the organization's work ethic.
2. The ability to differentiate yourself as an organization.
3. Adaptability. The species that survives, adapts to changing circumstances.
4. Agility. (How long does it take you to adapt?)
5. Willingness to be contrarian. ("Sometimes a majority simply means that all the fools are on the same side.")

Mr. Hunt points out that the willingness to accept failure is culturally unique to America. This characteristic enhances vitally important, but carefully calculated, risk taking in business. In almost all foreign lands, a failure with a business project is career suicide. Family dynasties have fallen in Japan simply because one heir in the family industry makes a mistake or misjudgment.  

Calculated risk and trial and error give American businesses a unique advantage in global business.

Mr. Hunt avers that every business leader needs a personal and professional hero. His is Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines. Herb took a business plan sketched out on a cocktail napkin and two leased aircraft that initially only served three Texas cities, to what that company is today:  the industry's most profitable airline. Their unique corporate culture is quite apparent whey you fly their airline. Mr. Hunt observes that Southwest Airlines is the only company he knows whose initial culture didn't change over time as the company grew. Protecting company culture is so important that his vast array of companies all have "Culture Committees" to prevent the erosion of the organization's culture.

His last observation was that "Quality attracts quality." Clients and employee associates are drawn to it. For long-term success, Mr. Hunt admonished his audience to establish and hold dear high standards, and, as employers, to surround yourself with the "best and the brightest."