More than 25 years ago, I received this advice in my first year in brand management at P&G:

1.       Think strategy, strategy, strategy. Ensure your product and sales messages communicate an important and distinctive end-user benefit. That’s the key to business success.
2.       Pick your objectives carefully and then concentrate on their achievement. There are only a few things that can really make a difference in the business. Find out what they are and make them happen effectively and quickly.
3.       Run your brand like it’s your business – which it truly is. Deal with other functions as resources to help you achieve your brand’s objectives.
4.       Keep your operation simple. It’s easy to do too much and think too little.
5.       Constantly search for new ideas with solid business-building potential.
6.       Concentrate on effectively training your people. There’s nothing more satisfying or important to the business than the full realisation of the potential of others.
7.       Demand quality – from yourself and others (including external agencies). Dig deeply. Know what you’re talking about before you talk about it.
8.       Deal with external agencies with deep respect. They play an important part in the success of our business.
9.       Breed a spirit of enthusiasm in the attainability of the brand’s objectives – but remain critically objective as to whether your current activities are as good as they should be.
10.    Always strive to see things as they are – not as you’d like them to be.

A lot of good stuff here, some of it particularly enlightened at the time (eg effectively training others, deep respect for suppliers etc).

But if we were offering similar advice to current graduate new joiners, would we change any of this for the current business world?

For more wisdom from P&G, see https://tonyreiss.com/2012/01/16/procter-gambles-7-selling-steps-a-traditional-approach-to-selling/