1,000,000
Tom Peters’
RE-IMAGINE
EXCELLENCE.
INNOVATE.
OR PERISH.
16 NOVEMBER 2014
(slides at tompeters.com; also see excellencenow.com)
11 November 2014: “TEN
MILLION JOBS* AT RISK FROM
ADVANCING TECHNOLOGY: UP
TO 35 PERCENT OF BRITAIN'S
JOBS WILL BE ELIMINATED
BY NEW COMPUTING AND
ROBOTICS TECHNOLOGY
OVER THE NEXT 20 YEARS,
SAY [DELOITTE/OXFORD UNIVERSITY] EXPERTS.”
—Headline,Telegraph (UK)
* = 25,000,000/Japan, 60,000,000 USA
NOT
“The root of our problem is
that we’re in a “Great Recession”
or a “Great Stagnation,” but rather
that we are in the early
Great
Restructuring
throes of a
.
Our technologies are racing ahead,
but our skills and organizations
are lagging behind.”
Source: Race AGAINST the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
China/Foxconn:
1,000,000
robots/next 3 years
Source: Race AGAINST the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
“Since 1996, manufacturing
employment in China itself
has actually fallen by an
estimated 25 percent. That’s
over 30,000,000 fewer Chinese
workers in that sector, even
while output soared by
70 percent. It’s not that American workers
are being replaced by Chinese workers. It’s that both
American and Chinese workers are being made more
efficient by automation.”
—Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age:
Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a time of Brilliant Technologies
“Ten Million Jobs at Risk from Advancing
Technology: Up to 35 percent of Britain's jobs will
be eliminated by new computing and robotics
technology over the next 20 years, say experts
[Deloitte/Oxford University].” —Headline,Telegraph (UK), 11 November 2014
“I believe that 90 percent of white-
collar/‘knowledge-work’ jobs—which are 80
percent of all jobs—in the U.S. will be either
destroyed or altered beyond recognition in the
next 10 to 15 years.” —Tom Peters, Cover,Time, 22 May 2000
“The machine plays no
favorites between manual and
white collar labor.” —Norbert Wiener, 1958
“Human level capability has not
turned out to be a special
stopping point from an
engineering perspective.”
—Illah Reza Nourbakhsh, Robot Futures/2013
“SOFTWARE IS EATING
THE WORLD.”
—Marc Andreessen/2014
“The computers are in control.
We just live in their world.”
—Danny Hillis, Thinking Machines/2011
-1/+1
S&P 500
-1/+1*
*Every …
!
2 weeks
Source: Richard Foster (via Rita McGrath/HBR/12.26.13)
“Mr. Foster and his McKinsey colleagues collected
detailed performance data stretching back
years for
1,000
found that
U.S. companies.
40
They
NONE
of
the long-term survivors managed to
outperform the market. Worse, the
longer companies had been in the
database, the worse they did.”
—Financial Times
“YOU
DON’T GET
BETTER BY
BEING BIGGER.
YOU GET
WORSE.”
Dick Kovacevich/Wells Fargo:
MITTELSTAND*
*“agile creatures darting between
the legs of the multinational
monsters”
(Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 10.10)
Aizen Kobo
Indigo
Workshop*
*George Whalin: “Be the best. It’s the only market that’s not crowded.”
The Magicians of Motueka & the Mittelstand Trifecta
W.A. Coppins Ltd.*
(Coppins Sea Anchors/
PSA/para sea anchors)
*Textiles, 1898; thrive on
“wicked problems”
—e.g., U.S. Navy STLVAST (Small To Large Vehicle At Sea Transfer);
W. Wiggins Ltd./Wellington
(specialty nylon, “Dyneema,” from DSM/Netherlands)
custom fabric from
My Conclusions
1. Restructuring, not
stagnation
(USA = Japan = China = …)
2. Revitalized big
companies NOT the
(primary) answer
Thriving On
Chaos:
Case Study #1
“Burt Rutan [Scaled Composites] wasn’t a fighter pilot; he was
an engineer who had been asked to figure out why the
[U.S. Air Force] F-4 Phantom was flying pilots into the ground in
Vietnam. While his fellow engineers attacked such tasks with
calculators, Rutan insisted on considering the problem in the
air. A near-fatal flight not only led to a critical F-4 modification,
it also confirmed for Rutan a notion he had held ever since he
The way to
make a better aircraft wasn’t to sit
around perfecting a design, it was
to get something up in the air and
see what happens, then try to fix
whatever goes wrong.”
had built model airplanes as a child.
—Eric Abrahamson & David Freedman, Chapter 8, “Messy Leadership,”
from A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder
“What are Rutan’s management rules? He
insists he doesn’t have any. ‘I don’t like rules,’
he says. ‘Things are so easy to change if you
don’t write them down.’ Rutan feels good
management works in much the same way
Instead of
trying to figure out the best
way to do something and
sticking to it, just try out an
approach and keep fixing it.”
good aircraft design does:
—Eric Abrahamson & David Freedman, Chapter 8, “Messy Leadership,”
from A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder
“One Rutan principle is not to worry so
much about the formal background of
the engineers he hires or to look for the
sorts of specialties normally sought
after by aerospace companies. Instead,
he looks for people who share his
passion for aircraft design and who
can work on anything from a
fuselage to a door handle or are
willing to learn how. He then gives
those people free rein.”
—Eric Abrahamson & David
Freedman, Chapter 8, “Messy Leadership,” A Perfect Mess: The Hidden
Benefits of Disorder
“A Rutan principle is that it’s useful
to have everyone questioning
everything the company does
all the time, and especially have
people questioning their own work.
Rutan makes sure that when
employees point out their mistakes,
they’re applauded rather than
reprimanded.” —Eric Abrahamson & David Freedman, Chapter 8,
“Messy Leadership,” A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder
Bert Rutan’s No Rules “Rules”
*Get going, now; fix it after you’ve
gotten started.
*Forget “best,” forget rules—just run like
mad and adjust fast.
*People with passion and breadth—given
freedom from Day #1 to try any-damnthing. (Specialism secondary.)
*Everyone questions everything
(and everyone) all the time.
*Applaud mistakes—AND the person who
made them.
Thriving On
Chaos:
Case Study #2
“‘Success,’ Honda said, ‘can
only be achieved through
repeated failure and
introspection. Success
represents one percent of
your work, which results
only from the ninety-nine
percent that is called
failure.’”
—Jeffrey Rothfeder, Driving Honda:
Inside the World’s Most Innovative Car Company
“Asked for the most important attribute that an ideal
Honda applicant should have, [Honda] noted that he
preferred
‘people who had been
in trouble.’”
“Honda believed genius arose from idiosyncrasy,
‘Non-conformity is
essential,’ he told his
workers.’”
Source: Jeffrey Rothfeder, Driving Honda:
Inside the World’s Most Innovative Car Company
“He encouraged the board to authorize spinning off the R&D
division into an entirely separate and independent subsidiary
he gave the new unit total
autonomy to develop its own research
agenda and strategic direction.”
of Honda Motor, and
he
eliminated rank among the engineers,
assuming that a mostly flat organization
would encourage engineers to try out
new ideas without fear of being
rebuffed. ‘Within Honda R&D, we have an expression that
To further ensure that R&D had few constraints,
all engineers are equal in the presence of technology.’”
Source: Jeffrey Rothfeder, Driving Honda:
Inside the World’s Most Innovative Car Company
The Honda Way
*Individual responsibility over corporate
mandates
*A flat organization
*Autonomous and ad hoc design,
development and manufacturing teams
that are nonetheless continuously
accountable to one another
*Perpetual change as working medium
*Unyielding cynicism about what is
believed to be truth
—Jeffrey Rothfeder, Driving Honda: Inside the World’s Most Innovative Car Company
Bert Rutan’s No Rules “Rules”
1. Get going, now; fix it after you’ve
gotten started.
2. Forget “best,” forget rules—just run like
mad and adjust fast.
3. People with passion and breadth—given
freedom from Day #1 to try any-damnthing. (Specialism secondary.)
4. Everyone questions everything all the
time. No sacred cows (principles).
No sacred cows (people).
5. Applaud mistakes—AND the person who
made them.
#1
/1982
#1++
/2014
Excellence82: The Bedrock “Eight Basics”
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
A Bias for Action
Close to the Customer
Autonomy and Entrepreneurship
Productivity Through People
Hands On, Value-Driven
Stick to the Knitting
Simple Form, Lean Staff
Simultaneous Loose-Tight
Properties
1/48/1966-2014
WTTMTW
WHOEVER
TRIES
THE
MOST
THINGS
WINS
“WE HAVE A
STRATEGIC PLAN.
IT’S CALLED ‘DOING
THINGS.’”
—Herb Kelleher
“DON’T ‘PLAN.’
DO STUFF.”
—David Kelley/IDEO
“We made mistakes, of course. Most of them were
omissions we didn’t think of when we initially wrote the
We fixed them by doing it
over and over, again and again. We do
software.
the same today. While our competitors are still sucking
their thumbs trying to make the design perfect, we’re
already on prototype version
# 5.
By the time our
rivals are ready with wires and screws, we are on version
#10. It gets back to planning
versus acting: We act from day one;
others plan how to plan—for
months.” —Bloomberg by Bloomberg
Culture of Rapid Prototyping
“Effective prototyping may
THE MOST
VALUABLE CORE
COMPETENCE an
be
innovative organization can
hope to have.” —Michael Schrage
“meantime-toprototype”
Minimize & measure:
Source: Sony/Akio Morita/reported by Michael Schrage in Serious Play
“You can’t be a serious
innovator unless and until
you are ready, willing and
able to seriously play.
‘Serious play’ is
not an oxymoron; it is
the essence of innovation.”
—Michael Schrage, Serious Play
“Learn not to
be careful.”
—Photographer Diane Arbus to her students
(Careful = Stay on the sidelines)
“EXPERIMENT
FEARLESSLY”
—BusinessWeek, “Type A Organization Strategies: How to Hit a Moving Target”—Tactic
#1
“RELENTLESS TRIAL
AND ERROR”
Source: Wall Street Journal, “cornerstone” of effective approach to “rebalancing” company
portfolios in the face of changing and uncertain global economic conditions
FAIL.
FORWARD.
FAST.
“FAIL. FORWARD. FAST.”
—High Tech CEO, Pennsylvania
“FAIL FASTER.
SUCCEED SOONER.”
—David Kelley/IDEO
“MOVE FAST.
BREAK THINGS.”
—Facebook
“Fall seven
times, stand
up eight.”
—Japanese proverb
“REWARD
excellent failures.
PUNISH mediocre
successes.”
—Phil Daniels, Sydney exec
“In business, you REWARD people
WHEN IT
DOESN’T WORK
OUT YOU
PROMOTE THEM -
for taking RISKS.
BECAUSE THEY WERE WILLING
TO TRY NEW THINGS. If people tell
me they skied all day and never fell
down, I tell them to try a different
mountain.” —Michael Bloomberg
“The secret of fast
progress is
INEFFICIENCY,
fast and furious and
numerous failures.”
—Kevin Kelly
“Natural selection is death.
... WITHOUT HUGE
AMOUNTS OF DEATH,
ORGANISMS DO NOT
CHANGE OVER TIME. ...
Death is the mother of
structure. ... It took four
billion years of death ... to
invent the human mind ...”
— The Cobra Event
“The Silicon Valley of
today is built less atop
the spires of earlier
triumphs than upon
the rubble of earlier
debacles.”
—Paul Saffo
Regis McKenna*: “A lot of companies
in [Silicon] Valley fail.”
Robert Noyce**:
enough fail.”
“Maybe not
RM: “What do you mean by that?”
“Whenever you fail, it
means you’re trying new
things.”
RN:
*McKenna was the original Silicon Valley “marketing guru”
**Robert Noyce/Intel co-founder/co-inventor integrated circuit
Source: Fast Company
“THE ESSENCE
OF CAPITALISM IS
ENCOURAGING
FAILURE, NOT
REWARDING
SUCCESS.”
—Nassim Nicholas Taleb/Antifragile
“Ideas Economy:
CAN YOUR
BUSINESS FAIL
FAST ENOUGH TO
SUCCEED?”
Source: ad for Economist
Conference/0328.13/Berkeley CA (caps are Economist)
Richard Farson & Ralph Keyes:
Whoever Makes
the Most Mistakes
Wins: The Paradox
of Innovation
“It is not enough to
‘tolerate’ failure—
you must
‘CELEBRATE’
failure.”
—Richard Farson (Whoever Makes the Most
Mistakes Wins)
WTTMTAMTMMW
WHOEVER
TRIES
THE
MOST
THINGS
AND
MAKES
THE
MOST
MISTAKES
WINS
Tempo/
Temperament
“If things seem under
control, you’re just not
going fast enough.”
—Mario Andretti, race driver
“I’m not comfortable unless
I’m uncomfortable.”
—Jay Chiat
“If it works, it’s obsolete.”
—Marshall McLuhan
“We eat
change for
breakfast.”
—Harry Quadracci, founder, QuadGraphics
WTTMTAMTMMTFW
WHOEVER
TRIES
THE
MOST
THINGS
AND
MAKES
THE
MOST
MISTAKES
THE
FASTEST
WINS
“In Silicon Valley, start-ups are
built for speed. There might be
a group of six or eight people—
say, two from the United
States, two from India, one
from China, one from Russia—
and they can decide in six
hours to set up a programming
game development center in
India.” —Tomoko Namba, former McKinsey partner and founder
and CEO, DeNA, “What Japan Can Learn From Silicon Valley”
Antifragile*:
Things That
GAIN
From Disorder
—Nassim Nicholas Taleb
*Not to be confused with … RESILIENCE
ARE
WE
THE COMPANY
WE KEEP
“IT IS HARDLY POSSIBLE TO
OVERRATE THE VALUE OF PLACING
HUMAN BEINGS IN CONTACT WITH
PERSONS DIS-SIMILAR TO THEMSELVES,
AND WITH MODES OF THOUGHT AND
ACTION UNLIKE THOSE WITH WHICH
THEY ARE FAMILIAR. SUCH
COMMUNICATION HAS ALWAYS BEEN,
AND IS PECULIARLY IN THE PRESENT
AGE, ONE OF THE PRIMARY SOURCES
OF PROGRESS.” —John Stuart Mill
Diversity:
“You will become like
the five people you
associate with the
most—this can be
either a blessing or a
curse.”
—Billy Cox
The “We are what we eat”
axiom: At its core, every (!!!)
relationship-partnership decision
(employee, vendor, customer, etc) is a
strategic decision about:
“Innovate,
‘Yes’ or ‘No’”
“[CEO A.G.] Lafley has shifted P&G’s focus on
inventing all its own products to developing …
OTHERS’
INVENTIONS ‘AT
LEAST HALF
THE TIME.’
One successful
example, Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, based on a product
found in an Osaka market.” —Fortune
“DON’T
‘BENCHMARK,’
FUTURE MARK!”
“DON’T
‘BENCHMARK,’
‘OTHER’ MARK!”
Impetus:
“The future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed”
—William Gibson
WE ARE THE
COMPANY
WE KEEP!
MANAGE IT!
“The Bottleneck is at the …
“Where are you likely to find people with
the least diversity of experience, the
largest investment in the past,
and the greatest reverence for
industry dogma …
Top of the
Bottle.”
— Gary Hamel/Harvard Business Review
30 percent
“At Nissan,
of the
corporate officers are foreigners, chiefly
British, French, and American. We are happy to
show that diversity can work in Japan. Just
because
a company has more foreigners at the top
doesn’t mean it has lost its identity as a
Japanese company …
“At the most basic level, diversity in Japan
means having more women in the workforce.
The country needs more active people and the
most obvious resource is women. I don’t think
Japan has a choice here.”
—Carlos Ghosn, CEO, Renault-Nissan Alliance, “How to Drive Change”
THE WHOLE
WIDE WORLD AS
INNOVATION
PARTNER
“The Billion-man Research
Team: Companies offering
work to online
communities are reaping
the benefits of …
‘crowdsourcing.’”
—Headline, Financial Times
Rob McEwen/CEO/
Goldcorp Inc./
Red Lake
GOLD
Wikinomics: How Mass
Collaboration Changes Everything,
Source:
Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams
THE CREATIVITY
IMPERATIVE
(ORGANIZATIONS/
NATIONS)
“Human creativity is the
ultimate economic resource.”
—Richard Florida
“Every child is born an artist.
The trick is to remain an artist.”
—Picasso
"Creativity can no longer be
treated as an elective.”
—John Maeda
Your principal
moral obligation as a leader is to
develop the skillset, “soft” and
“hard,” of every one of the people
in your charge (temporary as well
as semi-permanent) to the
maximum extent of your abilities.
The good news: This is also the
#1 mid- to long-term …
profit maximization strategy!
CORPORATE MANDATE #1 2014:
#3: Provide a prideworthy job.*
#2: Help people be
successful at their
current job.
#1: Help people grow/
prepare for an
uncertain future.**
*“Provide a secure job.”—NOT POSSIBLE IN 2014.
**Society—and profitability—demands this. (Or should!)
“The role of the Director is to
create a space where the actors
become
more than they’ve ever
been before,
more than they’ve
dreamed of being.”
and actresses can
—Robert Altman, Oscar acceptance speech
THE CREATIVITY
IMPERATIVE
(INDIVIDUALS)
Muhammad Yunus:
“ALL HUMAN
BEINGS ARE
ENTREPRENEURS. When
we were in the caves we were all
self-employed, finding our food, feeding
ourselves. That’s where human history
began . . . As civilization came we
suppressed it. We became labor
because they stamped us, ‘You
are labor.’ We forgot that we
are entrepreneurs.”
Source: The News Hour/PBS/1122.2006
“Carpenters bend
wood; fletchers
bend arrows; wise
men fashion
themselves.”
— Buddha
A professional …
**Committed to her/his discipline.
**Committed to constant growth
**Committed to uniform project
excellence
**Committed to one’s community
of peers
**Committed to integrity in his/her
work and relationships
Source: Subroto Bagchi, The Professional: Defining the New Standard of Excellence at Work
“The average age of a
startup founder is 40. And
high-growth startups are
nearly twice as likely to
be launched by people
over 55 as by people
20-34.”
—Vivek Wadhwa, Kauffman foundation (Time/0325.13)
THIS WILL BE
THE WOMAN’S
CENTURY
“I speak to you with a feminine voice.
It’s the voice of democracy, of equality.
that
this will be
the woman’s
century.
I am certain, ladies and gentlemen,
In the Portuguese language,
words such as life, soul, and hope are of the feminine
gender, as are other words like courage and sincerity.”
—President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, 1st woman to
keynote the United Nations General Assembly (2011)
“Research suggests that
to succeed, start by
promoting women.”
—Nicholas Kristof, “Twitter, Women, and Power,” NYTimes
“In my experience,
women make much
better executives than
men.”
—Kip Tindell, CEO, Container Store
“McKinsey & Company found that the
international companies with more women on
their corporate
boards far outperformed the average
company
in return on equity and other measures.
Operating profit was
56%
higher.”
—Nicholas Kristof, “Twitter, Women, and Power,” NYTimes, 1024.13
“Power Women 100”/Forbes 10.25.10
26 female CEOs of Public Companies:
Vs. Men/Market:
+28% *
(*Post-appointment)
Vs. Industry:
+15%
“Forget CHINA,
INDIA and the
INTERNET: Economic
Growth Is Driven by
WOMEN.”
Source: Headline, Economist
“The growth and
success of women-
owned businesses
is one of the most
profound changes taking
place in the business
world today.”
—Margaret Heffernan, How She Does It
Innovate
or Die:
Measure It!
Innovation Index: How many
of your Top 5 Strategic
Initiatives/Key Projects
score 8 or higher (out of 10)
on a “Weird”/“Profound”/
“Wow”/“Game-changer”
Scale? (At least 3???)
Innovate
or Perish:
Extreme Times
Demand
Extreme Solutions.
“You can’t behave in
a calm, rational
manner. You’ve got
to be out there on
the lunatic fringe.”
— Jack Welch
“We are crazy. We should do
something when people say it
If people say
something is ‘good’,
it means someone
else is already
doing it.”
is ‘crazy.’
—Hajime Mitarai, CEO, Canon
“INSANELY GREAT”
STEVE JOBS
“RADICALLY THRILLING”
BMW
“ASTONISH ME”
SERGEI DIAGHLEV, TO A LEAD DANCER
“BUILD SOMETHING GREAT”
HIROSHI YAMAUCHI, NINTENDO, TO A SENIOR GAME DESIGNER
“MAKE IT IMMORTAL”
DAVID OGILVY, TO A COPYWRITER.
EXCELLENCE 1982:
People First.
Product First (1T).
Limit “MBA-ism.”
EXCELLENCE 2014:
Innovate or Perish.
“If it’s not broken, break it.”
People First (new definition).