Guy Kawasaki's 10 Remarkable Leadership Principles That Actually Work

Drawing from 5 years interviewing remarkable people and 40 years in Silicon Valley, Guy Kawasaki reveals the leadership principles that separate exceptional leaders from ordinary managers.

Key Takeaways

• Hire employees who can do their job better than you can do it yourself
• Go beyond observing problems—actually experience what your customers experience daily
• Work backwards from customer needs instead of forward from what you want to do
• Use your own products regularly to understand real user pain points
• Treat AI as a core business function, not just a marketing add-on
• Align compensation structures with your stated long-term goals and values
• Focus on demonstrable skills rather than prestigious educational backgrounds or previous employers
• Deliberately stress-test your organization before real emergencies hit
• Say "I don't know" to build credibility for when you do know something

Embrace Growth and Expect Excellence from Your Team

• Remarkable leaders hire people who can perform their roles better than the leader themselves could. Steve Jobs exemplified this approach—even in the mid-1980s, half of his direct reports were women, long before diversity initiatives became common practice.
• When you look around at your staff, it should be a source of pride that everyone can do their position better than you. If you're hiring people who are less capable because you want to feel superior, you're undermining your organization's potential.
• Secure leaders embrace and expect growth from their employees rather than feeling threatened by their capabilities. This mindset separates remarkable leaders from those who prioritize their ego over results.
• The test of great leadership isn't whether you're the smartest person in the room—it's whether you've built a team where you're not the smartest person in the room.

Go Beyond Observation to True Understanding

• Toyota's "go and see" principle encourages leaders to personally observe problems on the factory floor rather than relying solely on reports and briefings. However, "going and being" proves even more effective than simply observing.
• A pharmaceutical company wanted to get closer to customers with asthma. Instead of conducting traditional market research, executives were made to breathe through straws to experience what their customers endured daily.
• This hands-on approach transforms abstract customer pain points into visceral understanding that drives better decision-making. When leaders personally experience customer challenges, they develop solutions with genuine empathy and insight.
• Direct experience eliminates the filter between leadership and reality, creating more authentic connections to the problems your organization exists to solve.

Work Backwards from Customer Needs, Not Forward from Preferences

• Kodak invented digital photography in the mid-1970s but failed commercially because they worked forward from their chemical company identity rather than backward from customer memory preservation needs.
• Companies that work forward ask: "How can we continue doing what we've always done?" Companies that work backward ask: "What do customers actually need, and how can we best deliver that?"
• If Kodak had recognized they were in the memory preservation business rather than the chemical business, they would have embraced digital photography as superior technology for their core mission.
• This backward-thinking approach requires leaders to challenge their assumptions about what business they're really in and what value they truly provide to customers.

Use Your Own Products and Experience Customer Pain

• Leaders must regularly use their own products to understand real user experiences. Apple's Bluetooth mouse requires flipping it over and plugging in a cable on the bottom to charge—an obviously poor design choice.
• Changing system settings on Apple devices has become unnecessarily complex, and managing notifications requires navigating multiple confusing options. These problems suggest leadership isn't experiencing their products as regular users do.
• When leaders don't "eat what they cook," they lose touch with customer frustrations and miss opportunities for meaningful improvements. Personal product use reveals gaps between intended functionality and actual user experience.
• Regular product usage should be mandatory for leadership teams, not delegated to junior staff or external consultants who might not provide honest feedback.

Treat AI as Core Infrastructure, Not Marketing Fluff

• Incorporating AI into products as a marketing announcement is equivalent to proudly announcing you've added a website or toll-free number—it reveals you're fundamentally behind the curve.
• AI represents a transformational force comparable to the Industrial Revolution, requiring fundamental organizational restructuring rather than surface-level integration. Companies must put AI first in their strategic thinking.
• Organizations that treat AI as an add-on feature rather than core infrastructure will find themselves obsolete as competitors build AI-native solutions from the ground up.
• The scope of AI's impact extends beyond business efficiency to potentially saving society itself, requiring leaders to approach it with appropriate seriousness and strategic commitment.

Align Incentives with Stated Values and Goals

• Leaders who preach long-term thinking while paying annual bonuses send conflicting signals that undermine their stated priorities. Compensation structures reveal true organizational values more clearly than mission statements.
• Taxi drivers paid hourly will take longer, more circuitous routes, while those paid per trip will optimize for efficiency. Your payment structure determines behavior regardless of what you say you want.
• Examine every organizational signal—compensation, promotion criteria, meeting priorities, resource allocation—to ensure they align with your stated objectives rather than contradicting them.
• Mixed signals create confusion and cynicism among employees who must choose between following stated values or responding to actual incentives embedded in organizational systems.

Focus on Demonstrable Skills Over Prestigious Credentials

• Educational background and previous employers serve as poor proxies for actual capability and entrepreneurial potential. Focus on what people can demonstrably accomplish rather than where they've been.
• Former employees of prestigious companies like Apple, Amazon, or Google may actually make poor entrepreneurs precisely because they're accustomed to abundant resources and established processes rather than scrappy problem-solving.
• Elite educational credentials, particularly from institutions like Yale, should trigger extra scrutiny of actual skills rather than automatic respect. Prestigious backgrounds can mask limited practical capabilities.
• Skills-based hiring requires more effort than credential screening but yields better results by identifying people who can actually execute rather than those who simply look impressive on paper.

Deliberately Stress-Test Your Organization Before Emergencies

• IT departments claim comprehensive backup systems and redundancies, but leaders should physically unplug servers to see what actually happens when systems fail under pressure.
• Organizations need stress-testing scenarios that simulate real crises: major service outages, leadership scandals, or security breaches. These exercises reveal gaps in emergency preparedness before they become critical failures.
• Emergency contact information should already be programmed into leadership phones rather than stored with virtual assistants or in systems that might be unavailable during actual crises.
• Stanley McChrystal's book "Risk" emphasizes purposeful organizational stress-testing as essential leadership practice. Controlled stress reveals weaknesses that can be addressed before they cause real damage.

Build Credibility Through Intellectual Honesty

• Admitting "I don't know" ranks among the least-used phrases in business leadership, alongside "I am sorry." This intellectual dishonesty undermines long-term credibility and decision-making quality.
• When leaders acknowledge the limits of their knowledge, they gain credibility for situations where they do possess expertise. Intellectual honesty creates trust that enhances leadership effectiveness.
• Teams make better decisions when leaders model uncertainty acknowledgment rather than projecting false confidence. Admitting knowledge gaps encourages others to speak up about problems and limitations.
• The willingness to say "I don't know" demonstrates secure leadership that prioritizes accurate information over personal image management.

Make Your Decisions Right Rather Than Making Right Decisions

• Perfect decision-making through extensive analysis and AI tools focuses energy on the wrong challenge. The real skill lies in executing decisions effectively regardless of their initial quality.
• A surfer sitting in the wrong position can still catch an unexpected wave by adapting quickly and making the best of circumstances beyond their control. Leadership requires similar adaptability to changing conditions.
• Most successful outcomes result from excellent execution of imperfect decisions rather than perfect analysis followed by mediocre implementation. Focus energy on making whatever you choose work brilliantly.
• Market conditions, competitor actions, and customer preferences change constantly, making initial decision accuracy less important than ongoing adaptation and commitment to excellence in execution.

Drawing from decades of Silicon Valley experience and interviews with remarkable leaders, these principles focus on practical execution over theoretical perfection. The most successful leaders embrace intellectual honesty, customer-centric thinking, and adaptive execution rather than pursuing the illusion of perfect decision-making.