1. Failure to Make Decisions: Most managers make good decisions when they actually make a decision. Far too many managers fail to make decisions or delay making decisions for fear of making the wrong decision. In the meantime, their competitors make decisions that give them a competitive advantage. Fortune favors the bold.

2. Short-Sightedness: It's important to take care of today's issues, but every action must be considered in terms of its strategic implications. The future belongs to those who create it.

3. Lack of People Skills: Employees are every business's most valuable resource. Any competitor can build exactly what you sell, and sell it cheaper than you do. Your people must be your competitive edge. Employees can be your most precious asset or your worst nightmare..and you get to decide which.

4. Wrong Perspective: What you want and what your company wants should never be the issue! What do your customers want, and what do your customers want you to be? That must be the issue. The purpose of a business is to create customers.

5. Wasting Time Chasing Problems: The ineffective manager is always putting out fires. The effective manager is planning for next month, next quarter and next year. Time is your most critical ally, or your worst enemy.

6. Fail to Put Their Money Where Their Mouth Is: Managers who say one thing and do another are not simply unproductive, they are counterproductive. Effective managers put themselves on the line every day. A liberal is anyone who has not invested his own money.

7. Look at Sales Instead of Growth: A business can increase its sales, but not really grow! A growing company is attracting new customers, launching new products and blazing a trail that leaves its competitors breathless and its customers in awe. A business is like a shark. It can only survive if it keeps moving forward.

8. Fail to See Opportunities: Listening to an angry customer is the best way to find out at very little cost exactly what's wrong with your business, yet far too many managers don't want to hear it! Success is not just doing things right. It also requires you to continually get better at what you do.

9. Do Not Invest in Their People: Investing in plant and equipment is fine and proper, but investing in your employees pays greater results and does so faster. Improving employee morale, enhancing employee skills and creating a customer-focused culture is a competitive advantage that's tough to beat! Beat the competition and they just get tougher. Annihilate and humiliate them, and they go away.

10. Lack of Leadership: Managers supervise the work of others. Leaders take their people to new heights of achievement. Lead, follow or get out of the way.

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