【正文】 fits to Ramp。t reinvent and we don39。 Louise O39。s investing a lot of money to make sure customers can39。 designs include those features, they39。s pretty hard to set a standard without Dell39。s an unbelievable difference. Dell bubbled up through a kind of Darwinian evolution, finding holes in the way the industry was working. We didn39。d just found a better way to run a business. But we needed to articulate the strategic principles of our business model for customers, employees, and investors.So we defined a plete set of management principles, with metrics, to the nth degree. Things that had been necessities at Dell became virtues. Although we didn39。s heads, through presentation after presentation, what39。t have inventory.Rollins: Another lesson we implanted was how to contain operating expenses while increasing margins and growth. That sounds pretty basic, but most panies can39。t make money. We used to hear all sorts of excuses for why a business didn39。re a Dell manager and your product or sales region falls off track and starts losing money, what happens to you? Rollins: You bee a pariah.Dell: It hasn39。s what happens. The opposite is also true. If you say, No, we39。t there more to creating a highperformance culture than setting high expectations? Rollins: It requires discipline and consistency. We know, down to our toenails, that our model works. When Dell fails to execute, it39。ve learned the discipline, they have what it takes, they understand the model. So when they miss, it39。s not as though at any given time, Dell doesn39。L. You39。ve asked them to do is irrational. But the fact of the matter is our general managers have succeeded time and time again. When we hold somewhat irrational expectations and convince them they can do it, they e up with fantastic breakthroughs. We challenge our people to substitute ingenuity for investment.Dell: In the late 1990s, we were growing really fast and bringing lots of new talent on board. We used to just throw people in the deep end and see if they39。t going to be able to swim at Dell. I think we39。s less risk than in hiring random executives from outside. You39。ve tried to create a culture where openness and honesty are encouraged.I think there was a time when people were afraid, but even then, the fear of not telling the bad news was greater than the fear of telling.Dell: The worst thing you can do as a leader at Dell is to be in denial to try to convince people that a problem39。s what we39。ll have a big problem.Rollins: Our culture has evolved from a fear of the consequences of not telling, to where you just know you have to tell. It39。re organized in a matrix of sales regions and product groups. Then we break each of those groups down to a pretty fine level of subproducts and sales subsegments. Dell has more Pamp。re on the phone with the customer. This financial data is in real time, so our people know if there39。t wait until 30 days after the end of the quarter to figure it out.Rollins: And they don39。s not perfectly articulated. The first rule is: Make your decision fast even if you don39。s from will have lots of data. That39。ve learned over time that each of us is right about 80% of the time, but if you put us together, our hit rate is much, much higher. We each think about a slightly different set of things, but there39。re displaying. We think about failure all the time. I think about failure all the time. We39。s not at all a typical hierarchy, and this transition was not at all a typical CEOtochairman transition. The traditional distribution of labor doesn39。L.Dell: In any given week, you could take my entire schedule and give it to Kevin, and he could do what I do. Quite well. And I could take his entire schedule and do those things pretty well, too. To some extent there39。t actually run it, or he dies trying. Michael and I can see twice as many customers as a CEO alone would be able to see. We can meet with twice as many employees. The two of us can be all over the map.Dell: Ultimately, we make much better decisions because each of us es up with ideas that aren39。ve got to do tablet puters, because Microsoft says we should, or because everyone else is doing them, we ask, How39。t do everything at one time and expect to succeed across the board.Rollins: Few things clear all the hurdles. At one time, printers didn39。re very risk averse. Occasionally our managers develop emotional connections to businesses that they really want to drive. But we make them prove the opportunity to us, and if we39。s why our petitors accuse us of not being innovative because we39。ve achieved massive organic growth, despite our caution about entering new businesses. We39。re looking for the easiest problems that have the most opportunity.You39。s a terrible number. We had a very visible group of employees who39。s, but in a perverse way, this kept expectations higher here. Our punishment for doing well during challenging times was that our people thought they could leave any time they wanted.Rollins: Our culture was being the culture of the stock price. Everybody at Dell, down to the shopfloor person, followed the stock price. You can39。m leaving. We had to reignite the spirit of the pany, and we couldn39。s done. First, we implemented Tell Dell to measure how good a job we were doing of managing people. The survey is voluntary, and 92% of our employees participate. Based on what we learned from Tell Dell, Kevin created the Winning Culture initiative, which has bee a top operating priority at Dell.Rollins: We asked, What39。d have to hire if we wanted to double our revenuehow much new talent we39。t give enough positive feedback. That was because I39。ve never needed a lot of outside validation. And we created a management team that didn39。re obviously not strong enough to be here.Dell: I also learned from the 360degree reviews that I needed to do a better job of connecting with people relating to people as human beings who wanted connection and recognition, not mere abstract objects doing work. I