This document provides advice on self-improvement with a focus on business success. It emphasizes the importance of: 1) Ensuring all activities make business sense and add value for customers. 2) Focusing on end results, customer satisfaction, and continuous improvement rather than activities. 3) Hard work, discipline, and a relentless pursuit of excellence through focusing on the basics and fundamentals.

1. ADVICE ON SELF-IMPROVEMENT
A. EVERYTHING WE DO HAS TO MAKE BUSINESS SENSE:
1) It is our business to make profit (that is the only criterion for self-preservation in business).
2) Everlasting success (prosperity, profitability and growth) can only be achieved through a path in
accordance with the "long-term" and "win-win" mind-set.
3) The product is why the customer deals with us. Our focus must be on the "product" - its applications
(including performance), quality, delivery and cost (including yield).
4) The key to success in business is to do "the right things right at the first time within the shortest time
at the lowest possible cost".
5) It is no excuse for ignorance (I don't know or nobody tells me) about the business realities and
consequences of our actions. We must take Initiative to find out these matters.
6) How successful we can be primarily depends on how well we know our "business" roles.
7) In order to understand what role(s) we should play, we should start with:
a) First, the business perspectives and what the targeted end results are.
b) Secondly, what the strategies, tactics and execution requirements are to reach those end
results.
c) Finally, what the necessary and sufficient efforts are from each of us to achieve the end results -
from our individual functional perspectives in a well-coordinated manner.
8) It is self-defeating to have only one strategy for all military situations, one system for all businesses
or one standard for all market segments.
B. FOCUS ON END RESULTS, VALUES AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION:
1) Activities can add either value or cost - must differentiate carefully.
2) Cost-added activities are wastes that the customer is not willing to pay for.
3) Any factor in any operation that does not add value is waste. Waste is anything other than the
minimum amount of equipment, materials, parts, space, and worker's time, which are absolutely
essential to add value to the product.
4) Never confuse activities with results. All the efforts should be focused on achieving the end results -
to deliver competitive products (in terms of performance, price, delivery and quality) in a profitable
manner.
5) Whatever pleases the customer more directly is a higher priority.
6) The customer is not only the king, but also the final judge.
C. IT TAKES HARD WORK, DISCIPLINE AND FOCUS ON THE BASICS:
1) “The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win." - Bobby Knight
2) "There are no shortcuts to any place worth going." - Beverly Sills
3) “Thorough preparation makes its own luck." - Joe Poyer
4) “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from
failure." - Gen. Colin L Powell
5) "Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do." - John Wooden
6) "The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones." - Chinese proverb
D. TAKE DECISVE AND PROMPT ACTIONS:
1) We don't get points for predicting rain. We get points for building arks (in time to make our effort
count)!
2) "I never varied from the managerial rule that the worst possible thing we could do would be to lie
dead in the water with any problem. Solve it, solve it quickly, solve it right or wrong... Lying dead in
the water and doing nothing is a comfortable alternative because it is without immediate risk, but it is
an absolutely fatal way to manage a business" - Tom Watson, Jr.
3) "It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong." - Abraham Lincoln
4) “The time is always right to do what is right." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
5) We must think like a person of action, and act like a person of thought.
6) Winners make things happen; losers let things happen.
7) We have to be quick on our feet and adaptive or else a strategy is useless.
A. Kwok’s private communication (with staff) – Sept., 1992 Page 1

2. ADVICE ON SELF-IMPROVEMENT
E. ALWAYS HAVE THE SENSE OF URGENCY:
1) Responsiveness is the key to customer satisfaction, eventually our own success.
2) We are always competing for time: time-to-market, deadlines, just-in-time, lead-time, cycle-time, etc.
3) There are only limited opportunities for few - only one winner across the finish line.
Speed of execution is the foundation for leadership - time is everything!
4) There is always a time limit for every window of opportunity. We must seize the opportunity before
the window vanishes.
5) "The speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack." - Wayne Lukas
F. PURSUE CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT RELENTLESSLY:
1) It is a rapidly changing world in a rapidly changing era. Changes present opportunities to those able
to adapt and fortunes to those able to anticipate.
2) Continuous improvement is the only way to survive in the rapidly changing market.
3) Too much attachment to old believes, habits and past experiences is the key obstacle to
Improvement - and also the root cause of miseries. One should use one's mind in such a way that it
will be free from any (self-serving) attachment.
4) “Useless (and obsolete) laws weaken the necessary laws." - Montesquieu
5) Only when old habits and patterns are broken can new improvements take hold.
6) “If you want truly to understand something, try to change it" - Kurt Lewin
7) There are always rooms for improvements. We can improve by focusing on bettering our last best
efforts every time in our endeavors.
8) Being not truthful with one's own mistakes is the biggest mistake one can make - denying oneself the
opportunities to improve and to get ahead.
9) "You're never a loser until you quit trying.” - Mike Ditka
G. BELIEVE IN TEAMWORK AND TEAM-SPIRIT:
1) Teamwork is defined as the process of two or more people working harmoniously in a coordinated
and productive manner to achieve a common objective or a set of common objectives within a
designated time frame.
2) Teamwork needs a solid core team - composed of key team-members with supplementary skills,
experiences and functions - built on mutual trust and respect, consensus, equal partnership and co-
operation.
3) True team players are trustworthy and truthful towards the common good (or end results). They look
at the big picture and have in-depth understandings of their roles in the big picture.
4) "No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave."
- Calvin Coolidge
5) "Use soft words and hard arguments." - English Proverb
H. BELIEVE IN OURSELVES:
1) Losers find excuses for their failures; winners believe success is within themselves: self-awareness,
self-esteem, self-motivation, self-reliance and total self-accountability.
2) Every man's work, no matter what it is, is always a portrait of himself.
3) Real confidence comes from knowing and accepting ourselves - our strengths and our limitations -
and above all from committing ourselves to overcome our limitation in contrast to depending on
affirmation from others, from outside.
4) "Pessimism never won any battle." - Dwight Eisenhower
5) “The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person's determination." -Tommy
Lasorda
6) The toughest challenges are always from within instead of without.
7) Problems happen because we allow them to happen. Nothing can defeat us unless we lose our will
to excel, to persevere and to take charge of our own destiny.
8) "Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't" - Erica Jong
9) “Fear (an instinctive self-serving reaction) is the darkroom where negatives are developed.' - E. L
A. Kwok’s private communication (with staff) – Sept., 1992 Page 2