Chuck Wilson’s 100 Pieces of Advice

Chuck Wilson is the Executive Director of the National Systems Contractors Association, the leading not-for-profit association representing the commercial electronic systems industry, and has decades of experience as an integrator. For his hundredth blog post on the NSCA blog, Chuck decided to share some wisdom from his long and illustrious career in the industry. While his advice is primarily reserved for integrators, there are tidbits scattered throughout that can help end-users as well. Here are some of the best that we read:

You can never be prepared enough for a natural disaster that interrupts business.
You can never anticipate the full impact of a losing a business partner and the business continuity challenges it presents.
We have to pay close attention to (and be proactive about) mandates, regulations, and taxes that impact small businesses.
Company culture is everything.
Knowing the true cost of doing business is elusive, but vital.
Talent management is the best thing a CEO can do for his or her company. It’s hard to make the transition from being the talent to being the talent scout.
Network integration, plug-and-play, IT influence, and the cloud aren’t going away.
Millennial employees will drive you crazy if you don’t understand what is important to them.
Attracting and retaining the right people for your business, building the right workforce, and knowing when to hire and when to outsource should be top priorities.
Effective leadership is hard and time-consuming.
The most effective management teams have multiple generations represented.
Every business owner has a blind spot created by his or her own denial of what they just don’t want to deal with.
Every big reward will require some level of risk.
Every company needs a method for getting new ideas from the frontline people to the boardroom.
We have to listen to everyone – not just the loudest people – in our companies.
For every new policy you put in place, you should eliminate two obsolete ones.
Every so often, we have to remember why we started our companies; go back and read our mission statement, values, ethics, and goals.
Measure your company success by tracking employee retention and profits, not by amount of revenue and number of employees.
It is possible to be very successful and still be a nice person.