A formula for prosperity: ten principles of CEO leadership that have paid off big - big as in 146 consecutive quarters of growth!

• Author: Weston, Josh

Ten principles of CEO leadership that have paid off big -- big as in 146 consecutive quarters of growth!

ADP has had 146 consecutive quarters of growth in both revenue and earnings per share. This is an extremely unusual record. To put it into perspective, there are 9,500 publicly owned companies in this country. Of the 9,500, we are by far number one with our consecutive quarterly growth. It is very, very hard to sustain a long growth record. You have to be very lucky -- and have some skill, too.

I think of myself as having been a line manager for about 40 years. ADP has been my prime activity for much of that time. Before ADP, I was the number-two at J. Crew, the big catalog company. There are 10 principles that I have learned that have been most relevant and helpful to me as CEO of a team that achieved 146 consecutive growth quarters.

Principle number one: Your people an your highest priority

In every annual report to shareholders, there is typically a last paragraph that says, "We salute our employees without whose loyal help we never could have done all these good things." There is no way you can succeed in today's highly competitive global economy if you think of your people primarily when you write that paragraph once a year and do not five and breathe it all year long. If you do live and breathe the importance of people all year long, it doesn't matter much what you put in the annual report.

Although ADP deals with 400,000 PCs, thousands of mini computers, and 100 mainframes, it is people that make technology work. It's the people who deal with our clients. So, my highest priority is thinking about people, no matter what else I do.

What does that mean? My business style includes all of the following:

-- As new hires come through our training facility in New Jersey, I probably met with 1,000 of them per year, as many as 50 at a time.

-- I have breakfast monthly with a cross section of a dozen senior and junior people to talk about ADP and their concerns.

-- I visited all 60 of our operating locations at least once a year, for the past two decades.

-- I don't only talk to the general managers on these visits; I get down three and four levels to talk to everyone. I sometimes take them out to dinner with their spouses.

There are many ways in which you can make it clear that people matter. One way is to intermittently violate the textbooks on time management The textbooks say that you should rank your issues and to-do lists by priority and never do junior stuff before you finish all the senior stuff. I violate conventional time management rules and still have succeeded in business, so I couldn't be all wrong.

I reserve about 10% of everyday to do little things that relate to people, such as calling someone in a hospital or hand-writing short notes to colleagues about something that relates to them. There is a big payoff in doing things like this.

In this vein, I answer my own phone whenever possible. My direct-dial phone number is on my calling card and on my letterhead. Any ADP associate or client can call me. My secretary is my backup if I don't pick it up after three rings. My style avoids call-back slips and telephone ping pong. Most people who call me have a legitimate reason to do so. When appropriate, I do turn off an irrelevant call in five polite seconds. The fact that I turn...