Many of these rules, reflections and quotations came from my role as Chairman of the "transition team" for President Gerald R. Ford and my service as White House Chief of Staff. Others came from experiences as a U.S. Naval Aviator, a Member of Congress, Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Secretary of Defense, Presidential Middle East Envoy, business executive, Chairman of the US Ballistic Missile Threat Commission, and other experiences. These reflections and quotations have been gathered over the past 40 years.

There are many good rules here, but here is my personal selection:

1. Learn to say "I don’t know." If used when appropriate, it will be often.

2. It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.

3. Don’t divide the world into "them" and "us."

4. Keep your sense of humor.

5. If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.

6. Don’t be a bottleneck.

7. Look for what's missing.

8. For every human problem there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong.

9. Simply because a problem is shown to exist doesn’t necessarily follow that there is a solution.

10. If you develop rules, never have more than ten.

Rumsfeld's Rules