Challenge the 'hire slow' mantra. Hiring is an intuitive guess, so act quickly. Once a person is in the organization, their performance is a known fact, not a guess. This clarity allows for faster decisions—both in removing underperformers and, crucially, in accelerating the promotion of superstars ahead of standard review cycles.

Exceptional people in flawed systems will produce subpar results. Before focusing on individual performance, leaders must ensure the underlying systems are reliable and resilient. As shown by the Southwest Airlines software meltdown, blaming employees for systemic failures masks the root cause and prevents meaningful improvement.

The transition to managing managers requires a fundamental identity shift from individual contributor to enabler. A leader's value is no longer in their personal output. They must ask, "Is it more important that I do the work, or that the work gets done?" This question forces a necessary focus on delegation, empowerment, and system-building.

As a company grows, its old operational systems and processes ('plumbing') become obsolete. True scaling is not about addition; it's about reinvention. This involves systematically removing outdated processes designed for a smaller scale and replacing them entirely.

Firing decisions should be a function of both incompetence and business constraint. Not all underperformers are equal priorities. Some are like a "trash can on fire in the driveway"—a problem, but not the company's main bottleneck. Focus firing efforts on roles that are the direct constraint to growth.

Before a major business pivot, first identify what can be let go or scaled back. This creates the necessary space and resources for the new direction, preventing overwhelm and ensuring the pivot is an extension of identity, not just another added task on your plate.

Mandating new processes, like reducing meetings, is ineffective if the collective beliefs driving old behaviors (e.g., lack of trust) are not addressed. To make change stick, leaders must first surface, discuss, and realign the team's shared assumptions to support the new structure.

Instead of starting from a textbook, WCM developed its effective culture by identifying the negative traits of its original founder's regime—control, opacity, and stinginess—and deliberately doing the opposite. This 'inversion' method provides a powerful, practical template for cultural transformation.

Spreading excellence should not be like applying a thin coat of peanut butter across the whole organization. Instead, create a deep "pocket" of excellence in one team or region, perfecting it there first. That expert group then leads the charge to replicate their success in the next pocket, creating a cascading and more robust rollout.