Domino's Founder Thomas Monaghan His Hard Work Helped Build World's Biggest Pizza Delivery Company.(LEADERS & SUCCESS)

Byline: Doug Tsuruoka

Don't try to get anything by Thomas Monaghan. If you tell him you're going to do something, he'll be watching closely to see if you deliver.

Take his method of dealing with top managers. Before retiring from Domino's Pizza Co. in 1993, Monaghan made managers jot down monthly reports about their jobs, outlining what they'd achieved and what their goals were for the next month.

The crusty ex-Marine would then sit with them for more than an hour going over what they wrote. He repeated the process a month later to see if they'd hit their targets.

"I even do this with the guys that mow my grass. This is the glue that's held Domino's together," Monaghan said in a recent interview.

Monaghan also prefers quarterly, rather than yearly, salary reviews. He says it keeps people on their toes for the whole year, rather than the three months leading up to their raises.

Another Monaghan trick: he fines managers $1 each time they use the words "I" or "my" in referring to their departments or jobs at meetings. "I like the words "our' or "we.' It stops turf-building," he said.