Always welcome your customer's scorn. This rule says read the complaint letters. Categorize them. Decide how you are going to wipe them out.

I like to take CEOs into consumers' homes to see the "real world." CEOs have privileged lives with big incomes, lots of help, access to just about anything they wish. The average consumer lives on $53,000 a year and has daily tradeoffs and compromises that must be made. I took a CEO into a trailer park so he could observe first-hand - and understand - how consumers use his product.

I believe in classic ideas. They are timeless. They are forever. There are many fads in management.

Respond to your customer's dissatisfactions with precision and power.

The most effective CEOs have a primary source for tracking their markets. They meet with their teams frequently enough to keep innovation flowing, to reduce and focus costs, to be energized. They create a tight agenda and they set high goals.

For me, it's often about consumption behavior. I focus my energy on understanding the heavy user. They are "odd" but hold opportunity. I ask: how do they use the product, what motivates them, how can we clone them.

Companies that get in trouble have a failure to see two realities: market trends and competitor attacks.