Roy Reiman’s Top 10 Management Rules
by Don Libey
The Iowa farm boy magazine czar, Roy Reiman, created a legendary publishing company, Reiman Publications, based on magazines without advertising. His company sold for $640 million, and then sold again—twice—for a most recent price of $760 million. Reiman used these Top 10 Management Rules over his forty-year career to achieve his success.
- Keep meetings to a minimum.
- Don’t run a company by committee.
- Don’t make organizational charts.
- Promote from within.
- Never hire anyone you don’t like.
- Surround yourself with people you trust.
- Seek people who know what you don’t know.
- Don’t be a big shot.
- First be different, then be better.
- Keep business fun.
Reiman also offers these ‘management tips:’
“When you interview someone for a job, note how fast they walk. I’ve learned slow walkers are slow workers. Just observe sometime how briskly people walk when they’re really interested in what they’re doing. They can’t wait to finish it.”
“Turnover is the most expensive problem for a company in any industry. Once you find good employees, do whatever it takes to keep them.”
“Indecision is worse than wrong decisions. You’re far better off keeping things moving, even if it means learning from mistakes. That sure beats what many companies do. They hold multiple meetings, have lengthy discussions, work up potential budgets, rehash the concept, rethink the approach, look at the downside, then hold more meetings. Valuable time goes by—sometimes months—as they discuss what they think without knowing what the public thinks.”
This is an interesting person. Sometimes the simple freshness of the Iowa farm boy experience produces an unusual clarity of management common sense.
Copyright © 2006 by Donald R. Libey. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced by any means without permission of the author. Contact Libey Incorporated; www.libey.com or call 877-903-9448.
