When a company can no longer survive, all of its jobs disappear; a good manager’s job, then, is to ensure the company’s survival. As a good manager, you need to truly be on the side of the company and dedicated to its continuance; the more the company succeeds, the more you will grow along with it. Good managers care about what happens to their organization, but the best managers focus continually on the organization’s progress and best interests.

If you can believe something, it is quite possible that you can achieve it. All of your expectations begin in your mind, so you must think highly of yourself in order to do well. Believe religiously in your strengths, your abilities, and the strength of the market. Do not listen to negative influences or surround yourself with negative people, as you will find the happiness and success you seek in a positive place.

Knowing your product is crucial to your career and life. Just as you must have a clear sense of your own product, you must seek companies with a strong sense of their products. Random products, or lack of focus on the right product, can be disastrous for businesses and individuals alike. You must not only have a product, but a product that people want, so concentrate on your product and its effective delivery.

In this article Harrison discusses how your career can see growth if you choose to work with an employer who is marching forward. All employers go through different stages, and when you get in will have a real bearing on what happens to your career over time. The best time to get in is at the beginning of the growth cycle. The employer marching forward will provide you with the most important opportunities and the best overall career. The employers marching forward are easy to spot as they tend to be hiring more and more people. Such employers are excited about the future and the people working with them typically feel the same way. In your search for a job, and in choosing between employers, you need to find an organization that is marching forward or beginning a march.

Bad habits will cause you to fail at things at which you should succeed. Develop habits that empower you rather than hold you back. Habits make up the only real differences between those who succeed and those who fail at life. Habit separates those who achieve what they want in life from those who only talk about their goals.

In this article Harrison discusses how it is important not to get influenced by negative behavior of people around you. One thing you often find is that there seem to be a great number of people out in the world whose chosen business is to make your life and circumstances, whatever they may be, seem much worse than they are. Your success and ability to get on will in large part be determined by your ability to sift through all of this negative information coming at you. It is important to understand that all around you there are people and forces that want you to feel weak, vulnerable and inadequate. The best thing you can do to control and fight back against these forces is to sniff out and identify these people for what they are–and then avoid them. Do not allow others to control or influence you.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu is an...