Quotes from David Cote

Three Principles of Short- and Long-Term Performance 1.?Scrub accounting and business practices down to what is real. 2.?Invest in the future, but not excessively. 3.?Grow while keeping fixed costs constant.

Accounting is your primary information system for making decisions, so if that information is bad, your decisions will be bad too.

designate two or three days each month as "X" days, during which they wouldn't schedule any meetings. I'd spend some of those days alone thinking about our businesses.

We had also created 2,500 401(k) millionaires because employees had invested in Honeywell, with 95 percent of them below the executive level and the lowest compensated earning an annual salary of only $43,000.

I'd also designate twelve additional days as "growth days," holding intensive sessions with leadership teams to help them think through various growth or operations initiatives.

We had to scrub our books and practices so that they reflected the reality of our underlying businesses. We also had to shake our executives out of their blinding fixation on quarterly results. Only then could we make planning decisions that supported long-term growth.

On my regularly scheduled days, I made sure to free up as much time and mind-space as I could for thinking. If you haven't gotten serious about tightening up your calendar, now is the time to start. Do you really need all those meetings? Are there ways to minimize the length of essential meetings and still make progress?

One of my favorite techniques is to require that teams provide me with a summary page at the beginning of the meeting or beforehand so that I could get the gist of the issue up front as well as the team's recommendations rather than waiting for the story to unfold.

One of my top priorities as CEO was to eradicate the BS and reinvent planning. Every year, starting in 2003, I required teams presenting to me to write a three-to-four-page executive summary that highlighted the basic plan. That document would allow us to cut through the pages of obfuscating charts and bullet points.

As I like to say, it's important to be right at the end of a meeting, not at the beginning.

Too often people tend to think about what they'll say next when someone else is speaking. I developed a practice of listening all the way through and waiting three seconds to respond—it's amazing how that small change allows you to really hear what someone is saying . . . or not saying.

shareholders will only fund the significant investments companies must make in R&D, process improvement, and culture if they see adequate short-term returns on their investments. It's incumbent on leaders to pursue growth and deliver quarterly results.

Demand that your people pursue two seemingly conflicting things at the same time. Make it your mission to understand the nuances of your businesses so that you can shape and guide your teams' intellectual inquiry. Allocate your time thoughtfully; don't become a victim of your calendar. Carve out time to read, research, and think. Turn your meetings into vigorous, instructive debates.

Three Questions to Ask of Each Business in Your Portfolio 1.?Is it in a good industry? 2.?Does it occupy a great position in that industry? 3.?Does it deliver a strong ROI?

A fourth way to take control of the downturn is to maximize the cash available to you. Cash is always a good friend to have, especially during the tough times.

As the decision-maker in your organization, you must become intimately engaged with leadership development, hiring, and firing.

one of the leader's most valuable but least valued contributions is avoiding trouble, not addressing it once it's occurred).

In my first three years as CEO, we wound up changing out about half of my staff members, replacing them with leaders who bought in strongly to One Honeywell.

You never asked!" So many companies struggle with R&D because technology and marketing folks don't communicate. This was certainly the case at Honeywell. To address the problem, we mandated that technologists and marketers collaborate closely on R&D projects from the very beginning. We also created a company-wide, annual event, our Tech Symposium, that convened hundreds of technologists and marketing executives from around the world to collaborate and network.

metrics often foster compliance with words rather than with intent.

My Dad used to say that if every man just took care of his own family, the world would be a much better place.

In driving for cultural change, it's a mistake to become overly constrained by your desired culture as you've defined it. Are there any other, related behaviors, values, or principles that support high performance than the ones you've formally adopted? If so, don't hesitate to push these as well.

they don't need to love you. Do your best to address their concerns, be consistent in your messaging, and have faith they'll come around eventually. If you move seriously to resolve these issues, and if you do it in a smart, disciplined fashion, they'll eventually notice.

In many companies, operations and strategy exist on different planes. Planning presentations take place in July, while operational budgets are formulated six months later, at year's end.