It occurred to me this morning that my blog posts are always directed at ways to enjoy success. In fairness to the other side, I thought that I would outline the quick and easy steps that lead to business failure. After all, I want to be an unbiased equal opportunity writer.

HOW TO FAIL AS A BUSINESS LEADER:

1. Ignore all of the signs that point to problems in your business.
2. Make sure that you make most of the important decisions in a vacuum.
3. Hire great people, give them lots of responsibility but avoid empowering them with the authority to make change.
4. When your management team is starting to make progress, re-arrange the organizational chart and shuffle people around. Divide and conquer worked for early Nomadic tribes, why not in your business?
5. Take those same great people and through a process of slow and painful steps, give them every possible reason to leave.
6. At all costs, avoid developing delineated job descriptions. Let people figure it out for themselves.
7. Jerk your vendors around through delayed payments and avoid communicating with them at all costs. Maybe they will just go away.
8. Believe in yourself and avoid watching your competition. You have the right formula so why even monitor what they do.
9. Trust no one, especially those who organizationally are closest to you.
10. Read everything you can about Machiavellian style management.
11. If your product or service worked in the past, do not change it even if the environment that you operate in has changed.
12. Don’t advertise whether it be through traditional print medium or social media. Advertising is really a waste of money.
13. Keep doing the same things but always expect better results.

For those who own, operate or work in restaurants, I am sure you have experienced working for or with individuals who follow these steps with reckless abandon. There is little doubt that the owner/leader will eventually reach their pre-determiend goal: failure.

If, however, you would prefer to succeed, then post these thirteen steps on your office door and do just the opposite.