What should companies do to survive

A In the world of business, where today's fashionable management theory soon becomes a stale cliché or a quaint archaism, it is essential to have a clear idea about the enduring rules of good management. The company that follows these is the company that is in the strongest position amid the uncertainties and violent upheavals of the world as we know it. B A company is the sum of what its people understand and know how to do well. Value lies increasingly in creative ideas and knowledge. But ideas have value only if people share and develop them in ways that increase revenue; knowledge is useful only if people can find what they need to know. Getting intelligent people to share what is in their heads is vital, and takes more than mere money or clever software. Ideas must flow in every direction through a company—not merely from the top down. And knowledge is worth storing only if senior staff set careful rules to filter and structure it. What goes into a database determines the value of what comes out. So setting central rules and standards is key to good knowledge management. C Good judgement is a key skill. Managers constantly blitzed with new information need to build in the data that matters and set aside the rest. Big-bang decisions are generally best avoided—or implemented in small incremental moves that leave room for flexibility and for altering course, if circumstances change. D Customers matter—but some matter more than others. Acquiring new customers often costs more than making extra sales to existing ones. So companies must build loyalty by providing…