David Cote > Quotes

“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.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“As the decision-maker in your organization, you must become intimately engaged with leadership development, hiring, and firing.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“In 2006, we created a special restricted stock units (RSUs) award program for about sixty of our key lower-level executives. We would select these sixty people each year to receive awards representing between 50 and 120 percent of their respective salaries. Once a leader received this award, he or she couldn’t receive it again for three years, allowing us to touch almost two hundred high-potential, lower-level leaders during that period. Each August I called every recipient to discuss the reward, what they had done to merit it, and what the award represented. That took a fair amount of time, but it was worth it. When these up-and-coming leaders received a call from me, they sometimes thought it was a practical joke. In an organization of over 100,000 people, why was the CEO calling them? Personalizing the award left a positive impression, contributing to the significantly higher retention rates we saw among these executives as compared with the rest of their cohort.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“one of the leader’s most valuable but least valued contributions is avoiding trouble, not addressing it once it’s occurred).”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“coaching and teaching their reports, eliminating the usual executive coaching and MBA programs that companies offer. That occasioned a fair share of grumbling, but it helped that leaders throughout the organization saw me personally reviewing my own staff’s performance, teaching in our training programs, and interviewing candidates for leadership jobs. By becoming more involved, you’ll send the message that leadership truly matters to your success, and that you personally value it.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“As I like to say, it’s important to be right at the end of a meeting, not at the beginning.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“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.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“Leaders often panic when recessions strike. They go into survival mode, managing quarter-to-quarter and shoring up their numbers by cutting back on the long-term growth projects we’ve described in previous pages. Such actions might please investors in the moment, but they undo hard-won progress the organization has made. This is a big mistake, and one thankfully we avoided. By looking for creative solutions to the financial challenges we faced during the Great Recession, we maintained our investments while still delivering results that outdid our competitors’ performance.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“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.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“We decided to boil our list down to just a few key criteria around which we could easily evaluate candidates. We settled on six: •​An intense desire to win: We didn’t want a new CEO who was adept at explaining why something didn’t happen, but rather someone who could figure out how to win even if unanticipated problems cropped up. •​Intelligence: We wanted someone smart and analytical who could avoid problems before they arose. •​The ability to think independently: Fad surfers need not apply. •​Courage: My successor had to be capable of making bold decisions, while also checking afterward to verify that these decisions were correct. •​Curiosity: We needed a CEO who could stay fresh over time by exposing him or herself to novel ideas—someone who was self-aware and dedicated to learning. •​An ability to motivate and build a strong culture: Our next CEO had to be able to mobilize the company behind the strategy, hiring great people and motivating them.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“metrics often foster compliance with words rather than with intent.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“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.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“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.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“Simplicity and concision are tough. The French philosopher Blaise Pascal famously noted that he’d written a long letter, having lacked the time required to write a shorter one.2 As I believe, if you can’t convey a thought clearly and in a few words, then your comprehension of it is probably lacking.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“Regarding a prospective company’s position in its industry, think hard about whether you might roll up multiple players in a fragmented industry to create a juggernaut. When we entered the gas detection business, there were no big players, but over an eight-year period we were able to acquire several companies, roll them up into a single Honeywell business, and become number one in the industry.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“Traditionally, companies restructure their businesses periodically to cut costs, primarily through mass layoffs and closures. Perpetual restructuring is a more gradual, moderate, and humbler approach. Instead of slashing costs dramatically all at once, keep your fixed costs steady while growing sales year over year. Operate more efficiently, doing just a bit more each year with roughly the same resources you used the previous year. To achieve those efficiency gains, deploy a variety of smaller restructuring programs that support ongoing process-improvement initiatives. Push to get a bit better—more efficient, more effective, more innovative—each year. Over time, as your business grows, deliver part of the added profits to investors, but set aside a portion to fund additional investments in R&D, geographic expansion, process improvement, sales coverage, and strategic portfolio management (acquisitions, mergers, and divestitures).”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“more leaders equals more bureaucracy. Leaders don’t just lead—they create work for other people, in the form of meetings, sign-offs, projects, procedures, priorities, and so on, especially if they’re good leaders. Others in the organization then spend more of their time responding to these leaders and less time leading or managing their own team members. Each leader has their own staff—adding yet more cost and complexity to the organization.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“We also changed our recruiting practices to improve our digital talent pool. Formerly, we had sought out digital talent from the best, name-brand colleges and universities. Now we focused on attracting members of a small subset of elite programmers who were capable of producing ten times the output of the typical programmer. To attract these premier programmers, or “multipliers” as we called them, we began evaluating potential hires on specific skills related to programming, collaboration, and teamwork, observing their actual behavior rather than just relying on their academic record. We took a similar approach to hiring data scientists as well. Our efforts in this area helped us significantly up our game as we developed software as a business and incorporated it into more of our existing products.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“Not only did I spend time in advance of meetings generating some key questions for teams,”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“As you pursue long-term growth, don’t limit yourself to the specific initiatives discussed here. Stay alert for new growth areas.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“When institutionalizing the culture, don’t just graft it blithely onto existing processes or practices. Go deeper and question whether those processes or practices themselves need improvement.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“Bob Rubin’s book In an Uncertain World. Rubin had argued that many outcomes are possible in a given situation, and you have to anticipate and prepare for eventualities that seem unlikely but that could prove extremely damaging should they materialize”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“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.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“We created a corporate handbook that each business unit had to follow when performing due diligence on a potential acquisition.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“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?”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“When both introducing and sustaining change, leadership matters. The organization needs to see that you, personally, are taking this seriously. As we rolled out HOS, I talked about its importance for our business at every opportunity. I held regular meetings to make sure we were actually implementing it and that we were getting the results—something I didn’t do for Six Sigma, and a reason it underdelivered.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“My interviews also imparted a sense to the interviewees of how significant the new job was to the company. When the CEO and global HR leader each take an hour to talk to you about a job you’re interviewing for, that says something”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“To attract and retain the very best, we also paid the best people what they would command at other companies for a bigger job. Why wait until someone else tried to steal them away before paying them what the market said they were worth?”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“To Build a Robust Pipeline . . . •​Don’t wait for bankers to knock on your door with potential deals. Instead, scour the market proactively. •​Seek out businesses that have great positions in good, high-growth industries. •​Look for bolt-on acquisitions as well as companies in good industries adjacent to yours. •​Not all perceived adjacencies are the same. If the adjacency is too far removed from your existing business, you will lose your shirt. •​Make identifying targets a day-to-day priority. •​Be patient. Nurture long-term relationships with potential acquisitions.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term

“Listening closely to their answers, I’d follow up with still more queries, and make it clear when I wasn’t satisfied. Was I aggressive, demanding, maybe even a little (or more than a little) annoying? Absolutely. But, as the old saying goes, progress occurs because of the irrational demands of general management. I firmly believe that. Leaders must be demanding of their people, otherwise they’ll achieve only marginal results. People and organizations are capable of far more than they think possible.”
― David Cote, Winning Now, Winning Later: How Companies Can Succeed in the Short Term While Investing for the Long Term