Let us guide you through this challenging process with our Management Manifesto:

1. Wash your brain of Consensus Building. It is for elementary school teachers. Every time someone tells you they want to engage in consensus building, walk out the door and tell them you have real work to do.

2. Reject everything that comes to you packaged as Conventional Wisdom. The fact is, Conventional Wisdom is an oxymoron. Once it is conventional, it is yesterday's fish.

3. Unless you are recruited by the NFL, forget about Team Building. The really successful business people -- think Steve Jobs, Phil Knight, and Bill Gates -- develop The Big Bang ideas and then pass them off to a team to do work.

4. Never accept No for an answer. 100% of the time when people tell you something can't be done, it is because they are too passive or too lazy to do it.  Go out and prove them wrong. Imagine what the Naysayer said when Walt Disney said he was going to build the most popular resort in the world on swampland in Florida.

5. Never fool yourself into thinking that hard work alone brings success. Maybe for donkeys but not for humans. To race past your peers, you will need a set of traits that MSCO’s proprietary methodology describes as:
   1. Combat Eyes
   2. Serial Skepticism
   3. Cartoon Imagination
   4. Monster Ambition

6. If you think about someone else's motives too much, you are in their heads to such a great extent, they have a right to charge you rent.

Once you liberate yourself from the shackles of what others may think of you, you will be free to soar as a manager and leader. You'll be able to utilize the full potential of your intellect, drive and creativity.

But you know something? People rarely do this, because they're afraid of what others may say or think.

7. You need a Killer App.

A Killer App is the stuff that warriors MSCO has worked with have honed to a science. It is their differentiator. It is Teddy Roosevelt's "big stick" and Ronald Reagan's skill as "the Great Communicator." It is why they win. It is how you can win. (No, you may not have all of the traits of the legendary leaders in your DNA, but you can begin to understand where you fall short and make a conscious effort to raise the bar.)

8. The bigger the company or business unit, the longer it can postpone the inevitable (because it can marshal a greater financial cushion to camouflage and delay the doomsday scenario it is careening toward). But this only disguises the fact that the company is spiraling downward, the victim of its own:
   1. COMPLACENCY
   2. DECEPTION
   3. FEAR OF A BAD DAY
   4. FAILURE TO ACT

This takes us back to our mission. To prevent this - and to achieve perpetual growth - you have to declare constructive war. "Why?" you ask again.

If you are really serious about growing your business, you have to don your battle jacket and attack these obstacles/roadblocks/gremlins because everyday you play Mr. Rogers, they are attacking you and they are winning!

9. Strong leaders (and, in turn, exceptional managers) establish a compass for their people to pursue in the course of their work and provide the motivation to exceed established goals.

Can you honestly say you do this? Are you proud of the way your people take the hill? Are you confident that they can get the job done - in a way that elevates your business unit to new levels of success? Or is it just the opposite? If so, you cannot take it out on them. You have just looked in the virtual mirror and come to the realization (perhaps grudgingly) that you are not as good a leader as you can be.

The time has come to change that. To declare war on yourself. The question is, if you are not a born leader, how can you develop the skills that are essential for extraordinary management?

10. Get out of the office and take a hike. Allow yourself to think how you can raise the bar on your personal performance. Be prepared to declare constructive war on everything you do that is fine, good and mediocre. Unless it's great, it sucks!