Long
Excellence
Tom Peters/16 August 2013
Institute of Internal Auditors/Orlando
(slides @ tompeters.com/excellencenow.com)
“At a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut
informs his pal, Joseph Heller,
that their host, a hedge fund
manager, had made more money
in a single day than Heller had
earned from his wildly popular
novel Catch-22 over its whole
history. Heller responds …
“At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut
informs his pal, Joseph Heller … that their host, a hedge fund
manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had
earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole
‘Yes, but I
have something
he will never
have …
history. Heller responds …
Source: John Bogle, Enough. The Measures of Money, Business, and
Life (Bogle is founder of the Vanguard Mutual Fund Group)
At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut
informs his pal, Joseph Heller … that their host, a hedge fund
manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had
earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history.
Heller responds … Yes, but I have something he will never have …
enough.
Source: John Bogle, Enough. The Measures of Money, Business, and
Life (Bogle is founder of the Vanguard Mutual Fund Group)
“Too Much Cost, Not Enough Value”
“Too Much Speculation, Not Enough
Investment”
“Too Much Complexity, Not Enough Simplicity”
“Too Much Counting, Not Enough Trust”
“Too Much Business Conduct, Not Enough
Professional Conduct”
“Too Much Salesmanship, Not Enough
Stewardship”
“Too Much Focus on Things, Not Enough Focus
on Commitment”
“Too Many Twenty-first Century Values, Not
Enough Eighteenth-Century Values”
“Too Much ‘Success,’ Not Enough Character”
Source: Chapter titles from Jack Bogle, Enough.
“Managers have lost dignity over the
past decade in the face of wide spread
institutional breakdown of trust and
self-policing in business. To regain
society’s trust, we believe that business
leaders must embrace a way of looking
at their role that goes beyond their
responsibility to the shareholders to
include a civic and personal
commitment to their duty as
institutional custodians. In other
words, it is time that management
became a profession.” —Rakesh Khurana & Nitin Nohria,
“It’s Time To Make Management a True Profession,” HBR/10.08
Really First
Things Before
First Things
“The doctor
interrupts
after …*
*Source: Jerome Groopman, How Doctors Think
18 …
18 …
seconds!
[An obsession with] Listening is ... the ultimate mark
of
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
is
is
is
is
is
is
is
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
is
is
is
is
...
...
...
...
the heart and soul of Engagement.
the heart and soul of Kindness.
the heart and soul of Thoughtfulness.
the basis for true Collaboration.
the basis for true Partnership.
a Team Sport.
a Developable Individual Skill.* (*Though women
are far better at it than men.)
the basis for Community.
the bedrock of Joint Ventures that work.
the bedrock of Joint Ventures that grow.
the core of effective Cross-functional
Communication* (*Which is in turn Attribute #1 of
organization effectiveness.)
[cont.]
Respect
.
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
Listening
is
is
is
is
is
is
is
is
is
is
is
is
is
is
is
is
is
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
EXECUTION
the engine of superior
.
the key to making the Sale.
the key to Keeping the Customer’s Business.
Service.
the engine of Network development.
the engine of Network maintenance.
the engine of Network expansion.
Social Networking’s “secret weapon.”
Learning.
the sine qua non of Renewal.
the sine qua non of Creativity.
the sine qua non of Innovation.
the core of taking diverse opinions aboard.
Strategy.
Source #1 of “Value-added.”
Differentiator #1.
Profitable.* (*The “R.O.I.” from listening is higher than
from any other single activity.)
Listening is … the bedrock which underpins a Commitment to
EXCELLENCE!
If
you agree with the above, shouldn’t listening be ... a
Core Value?
If you agree with the above, shouldn’t listening be ...
perhaps Core Value #1?* (*“We are Effective Listeners—
we treat Listening EXCELLENCE as the Centerpiece of our
Commitment to Respect and Engagement and Community
and Growth.”)
If you agree, shouldn’t listening be
If you agree, shouldn’t listening be
#1?
If you agree, shouldn’t listening be
item” at every Meeting?
If you agree, shouldn’t listening be
se? (Listening = Strategy.)
If you agree, shouldn’t listening be
for in Hiring (for every job)?
... a Core Competence?
... Core Competence
... an explicit “agenda
... our Strategy—per
... the #1 skill we look
Suggested addition to your statement of Core
“We are Effective
Listeners—we treat
Listening EXCELLENCE as
the Centerpiece of our
Commitment to Respect
and Engagement and
Community and Growth.”
Values:
Listen = “Profession”
= Study = practice =
evaluation =
Enterprise value
“Everyone has a
story to tell, if only
you have the
patience to wait for
it and not get in the
way of it.”
—Charles McCarry,
Christopher’s Ghosts
“It’s amazing how this
seemingly small thing—
simply paying fierce
attention to another, really
asking, really listening,
even during a brief
conversation—can evoke
such a wholehearted
response.”
Fierce Conversations:
—Susan Scott,
Achieving Success at Work and in Life, One Conversation at a Time
“Let Silence
Do the Heavy
Lifting”
—chapter title from Susan Scott,
Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life,
One Conversation at a Time
Really First
Things Before
First Things
If the regimental commander lost most of his
2nd lieutenants and 1st lieutenants and captains
If he
lost his sergeants it
would be a
catastrophe. The Army and the
and majors, it would be a tragedy.
Navy are fully aware that success on the
battlefield is dependent to an extraordinary
degree on its Sergeants and Chief Petty
Officers. Does industry have the same
awareness?
Really First
Things Before
First Things
XFX = #1*
*Cross-Functional eXcellence
% XF
lunches*
Measure! Monthly! Part of
*
evaluation! [The PAs Club.]
Everyone,
starting with the
receptionist, should have a
significant XFX rating
component in their
evaluation. (The “XFX
Performance” should be
among the Top 3 items in all
managers’ evaluations.)
Formal evaluations.
“Success doesn’t depend on the number of
people you know; it depends on the number
of people you know in
high places!”
or
“Success doesn’t depend on the number of
people you know; it depends on the number
of people you know in
low
places!”
Loser:
“He’s such a
suck-up!”
Winner:
“He’s such a
suck-down.”
George Crile (Charlie Wilson’s War) on Gust
“He had
become something of a
legend with these
people who manned the
underbelly of the
Agency [CIA].”
Avarkotos’ strategy:
“I got to know his [Icahn’s]
secretaries. They are always
the keepers of everything.”
—Dick Parsons, then CEO Time Warner,
on dealing with an Icahn threat to his company
“Parsons is not a visionary.
He is, instead, a master in
the art of relationship.”
—Bloomberg BusinessWeek (03.11)
S = ƒ(#&DR; -2L, -3L, -4L, I&E)
Success is a function of: Number and depth of relationships
2, 3, and 4 levels down inside and outside the organization
S = ƒ(SD>SU)
Sucking down is more important than sucking up—the idea is
to have the [your] entire organization working for you
S = ƒ(#non-FF, #non-FL)
Number of friends, number of lunches with people not in my
function
S = ƒ(#XFL/m)
Number of lunches with colleagues in other
functions per month
S = ƒ(#FF)
Number of friends in the finance organization
Case
William Mayo, 1910, on the Clinic’s
Two Core Values:
Patient-centered care
Team medicine
(“medicine as a cooperative science”)
Source: Leonard Berry & Kent Seltman, “Orchestrating the Clues of Quality,” Chapter 7 from
Management Lessons From Mayo Clinic
hundreds of
times better here
“I am
[than
because of
the support system. It’s like
you are working in an
organism; you are not a
single cell when you are out
there practicing.”
in my prior hospital assignment]
—quote from Dr. Nina Schwenk, in
Chapter 3, “Practicing Team Medicine,” from Leonard Berry & Kent Seltman,
from Management Lessons From Mayo Clinic
Really First
Things Before
First Things
“If I could have chosen not to tackle the IBM culture head-
on, I probably wouldn’t have. My bias coming in was toward
strategy, analysis and measurement. In comparison,
changing the attitude and behaviors of hundreds of
[Yet] I
came to see in my time at
IBM that culture isn’t just
thousands of people is very, very hard.
—
it is the game.”
one aspect of the game
—Lou Gerstner, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance
“… IT IS
THE
GAME.”
Systems Have Their Place SECOND Place
Case #1/United States Air Force Tactical Air Command/
GEN Bill Creech/“Drive bys”
Case #2/Milliken & Company/CEO Roger Milliken/the 45minute grilling
Case #3/Johns Hopkins/Dr. Peter Pronovost/The (real) roots
of checklist power
Case #4/Commerce Bank/CEO Vernon Hill/The RED button
commitment
Case #5/Veterans Administration/Abrogating the “culture
of hiding”
Case #6/Mayo Clinic/Dr. William Mayo/Teamwork makes me
“100 times better”
Case #7/IBM/CEO Lou Gerstner flummoxed by ingrained
beliefs
Case #8/Germany’s Mittelstand/excellence-in-the-genes
Case #9/Department of Defense/DASD Bob Stone/tracking
down the extant ”Model Installation” superstars
Case #10/Matthew Kelly/Housekeepers’ dreams
Case #11/Toyota/Growth or bust
Really First
Things Before
First Things
#1:
Every meeting
that does not stir the
imagination and curiosity of
attendees and increase
bonding and co-operation and
engagement and sense of
worth and motivate rapid
action and enhance
enthusiasm is a permanently
lost opportunity.
Meetings
Excellence
Tom Peters/16 August 2013
Institute of Internal Auditors/Orlando
(slides @ tompeters.com/excellencenow.com)
Hard is Soft.
Soft is Hard.
Hard
Soft
[numbers, plans]
[people/relationships]
is Soft.
is Hard.
“Why in the
World did you
go to Siberia?”
An emotional, vital,
innovative, joyful, creative,
entrepreneurial endeavor that elicits
maximum
Enterprise* (*at its best):
concerted human
potential in the
wholehearted pursuit of
EXCELLENCE in
service of others.**
**Employees, Customers, Suppliers, Communities, Owners, Temporary partners
Excellence1982: 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
“Breakthrough” 82*
People!
Customers!
Action!
Values!
*In Search of Excellence
“The notion that corporate law
requires directors, executives, and
employees to maximize shareholder
wealth simply isn’t true. There is no
solid legal support for the claim
that directors and executives in U.S.
public corporations have an
enforceable legal duty to maximize
shareholder wealth. The idea is
fable.” —Lynn Stout, professor of corporate and business law,
Cornell Law school, in The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting
Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations, and the Public
“Courts uniformly refuse to actually
impose sanctions on directors or
executives for failing to pursue one
purpose over another. In particular,
courts refuse to hold directors of
public corporations legally
accountable for failing to maximize
shareholder wealth.” —Lynn Stout,
professor of corporate and business law, Cornell Law school,
in The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First
Harms Investors, Corporations, and the Public
“[a corporation] can be
formed to conduct or
promote any lawful
business or purpose”
—from Delaware corporate code (no mandate
for shareholder primacy), per Lynn Stout,
professor of corporate and business law,
Cornell Law school, in The Shareholder Value Myth:
How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors,
Corporations, and the Public
“On the face of it,
shareholder value is the
dumbest idea in the world.
Shareholder value is a
result, not a strategy. …
Your main constituencies
are your employees, your
customers and your
products.” —Jack Welch, FT, 0313.09, page 1
1/4,096: excellencenow.com
“Business has to give people enriching,
or it's
simply not
worth doing.”
rewarding lives …
—Richard Branson
Oath of Office: Managers/Servant Leaders
Our goal is to serve our customers brilliantly and profitably over
the long haul.
Serving our customers brilliantly and profitably over the long
haul is a product of brilliantly serving, over the long haul, the
people who serve the customer.
Hence, our job as leaders—the alpha and the omega and
everything in between—is abetting the sustained growth and
success and engagement and enthusiasm and commitment to
Excellence of those, one at a time, who directly or indirectly
serve the ultimate customer.
We—leaders of every stripe—are in the “Human Growth and
Development and Success and Aspiration to Excellence
business.”
“We” [leaders] only grow when “they” [each and every one of our colleagues] are
growing.
“We” [leaders] only succeed when “they” [each and every one of our colleagues]
are succeeding.
“We” [leaders] only energetically march toward Excellence when
“they” [each and every one of our colleagues] are energetically marching
toward Excellence.
Period.
"If you want staff to
give great service,
give great service to
staff."
—Ari Weinzweig, Zingerman's
Promotion Decisions
“life and
death
decisions”
Source: Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management
“Development can help great
people be even better—but
if
I had a dollar to spend,
I’d spend 70 cents
getting the right person
in the door.”
—Paul Russell, Director, Leadership and
Development, Google
the
most important
aspect of business
and yet remains woefully
misunderstood.”
“In short, hiring is
Source: Wall Street Journal, 10.29.08,
review of Who: The A Method for Hiring,
Geoff Smart and Randy Street
In the Army, 3-star
generals worry about
training. In most
businesses, it's a “ho
hum” mid-level staff
function.
The Memories
That Matter.
The Memories That Matter
The people you developed who went on to
stellar accomplishments inside or outside
the company.
The (no more than) two or three people you developed who went on to
create stellar institutions of their own.
The long shots (people with “a certain something”) you bet on who
surprised themselves—and your peers.
The people of all stripes who 2/5/10/20 years
later say “You made a difference in my life,”
“Your belief in me changed everything.”
The sort of/character of people you hired in general. (And the bad
apples you chucked out despite some stellar traits.)
A handful of projects (a half dozen at most) you doggedly pursued that
still make you smile and which fundamentally changed the way
things are done inside or outside the company/industry.
The supercharged camaraderie of a handful of Great Teams aiming to
“change the world.”
Lesson47:
WTTMSW
WHOEVER
TRIES
THE
MOST
STUFF
WINS
“We made mistakes, of course. Most of them were
omissions we didn’t think of when we initially wrote the
software. We fixed them by doing it over and over, again
and again. We do 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
“FAIL.
FORWARD.
FAST.”
High Tech CEO, Pennsylvania
In Search of Excellence /1982:
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
LITTLE =
Big carts =
Source: Wal*Mart
Bag sizes = New markets:
Source: PepsiCo
Glaring Eyes:
-62%
Source: PLOS ONE (via The Atlantic CITIES /0429.13)
“You will become
like the five people
you associate with
the most—this can
be either a blessing
or a curse.”
—Billy Cox
WE
ARE WHAT WE
EAT/WE ARE
THE COMPANY
WE KEEP
The “Hang Out Axiom”:
The “We are what we eat”/
“We are who we hang out with”
Axiom: At its core, every (!!!)
relationship-partnership decision
(employee, vendor, customer, etc.,
etc.) is a strategic decision about:
“Innovate,
‘Yes’ or ‘No’ ”
“Who’s the most
interesting person
you’ve met in the
last 90 days? How
do I get in touch
with them?”
—Fred Smith
MBWA
Managing By Wandering Around/HP
Predictive
Analytics: The
Power to Predict
Who Will Click, Buy,
Lie, or Die
—Eric Siegel
Big Data: A
Revolution That
Will Transform
How We Live,
Work, and Think
—Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier
Automate This:
How Algorithms
Came to Rule Our
World
—Christopher Steiner
The Filter Bubble:
How the New,
Personalized Web Is
Changing What We
Read and How We
Think
—Eli Pariser
Robot
Futures
—Illah Reza Nourbakhsh,
Professor of Robotics, Carnegie Mellon
Race AGAINST The
Machine: How the Digital
Revolution Is Accelerating
Innovation, Driving
Productivity, and
Irreversibly Transforming
Employment and the
Economy
—Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
Legal industry/Pattern
Recognition/Discovery (ediscovery algorithms):
500 lawyers to …
ONE
Source: Race AGAINST the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
“The root of our problem is not
that we’re in a Great Recession
or a Great Stagnation, but rather
that we are in the early
Great
Restructuring. Our
throes of a
technologies are racing ahead,
but our skills and organizations
are lagging behind.”
Source: Race AGAINST the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
+400,000*/-2,000,000**
“new computing technologies
that destroy middle-class [whitecollar] jobs even as they create
jobs for highly skilled workers
who can exploit them”
*Manufacturing jobs
added USA 2007-2012
**White-collar jobs lost USA 2007-2012
Source: Financial Times, page 1, 0402.13
(“Clerical Staff Bears Brunt of US Jobs Crisis”)
”… breakage of the historic link
between value creation and job
creation”: “The median
worker is losing the race
against the machine.”/
Great Recession: “lack of
hiring rather than
increase in layoffs”
Source: Race AGAINST the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
“Algorithms have already written symphonies
as moving as those composed by
Beethoven, picked through legalese with
the deftness of a senior law partner,
diagnosed patients with more accuracy than a
doctor, written news articles with the
smooth hand of a seasoned reporter, and
driven vehicles on urban highways with far
better control than a human
driver.”
Automate This: How
Algorithms Came to Rule Our World
—Christopher Steiner,
“ … The audience then voted on the
identity of each composition.*
[Music theory professor and contest
organizer] Larson’s pride took a
ding when his piece was fingered as
that belonging to the computer.
When the crowd decided that
[algorithm] Emmy’s piece was the
true product of the late musician
[Bach], Larson winced.”
—Christopher Steiner,
Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World
*There were three: Bach/Larson/Emmy-the-algorithm.
“Human level
capability has not
turned out to be a
special stopping point
from an engineering
perspective. ….”
Source: Illah Reza Nourbakhsh, Professor of Robotics, Carnegie Mellon, Robot Futures
“[Michael Vassar/MetaMed founder] is creating a better
information system and new class of people to manage it.
‘Almost all healthcare people get is going
to be done—hopefully—by algorithms
within a decade or two. We used to rely on doctors
to be experts, and we’ve crowded them into being
something like factory workers, where their job is to see one
patient every 8 to 11 minutes and implement a by-the-book
I’m talking about creating a new
expert profession’—medical quants, almost
like hedgefund managers, who could do the
high-level analytical work of directing all
the information that flows into the world’s
hard drives. Doctors would now be aided by Vassar’s
solution.
new information experts who would be aided by advanced
artificial intelligence.”—New York /0624.13
“Doctors struggle to keep up with a vast and
growing body of research, much of which is
wrong. The result is that patients have a 50-50
chance of getting the right treatment, and the
healthcare system itself has become a leading
cause of premature death, by some reports
ranking just behind cancer and heart disease.
Doctors are ill-equipped to analyze failed
methodology, much less to apply what good data
there is to the needs of individual clients.
MetaMed will fill that gap. MetaMed co-founder
Michael Vasser says, ‘People don’t normally hire
domain experts in epistemology. It turns out that
those skills are useful.’ ”
Source: New York /0624.13/on
MetaMed
“A score produced by any predictive model
must be taken with a very special grain of
salt. Scores speak to trends and
probabilities across a large group; one
individual probability by its nature
oversimplifies the real-world thing it
describes. If I miss a single credit-card
payment, the probability I’ll miss another
this year may quadruple, based on that
factor alone. But if you also take into
account that my roof caved in that month,
your view will change.” —Eric Siegel, Predictive Analytics:
The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die
“Aviva, a large insurance firm, has studied the
idea of using credit reports and consumermarketing data as proxies for the analysis of
blood and urine samples for certain applicants.
The intent is to identify those who may be at
higher risk of illnesses like high blood pressure,
diabetes, or depression. The method uses
lifestyle data that includes hundreds of
variables such as hobbies, the websites people
visit, and the amount of television they watch,
as well as estimates of their income. Aviva’s
predictive model, developed by Deloitte
Consulting, was considered successful at
identifying health risks.”
Source: Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work,
and Think, by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier
“Flash forward to dystopia. You work in a chic
cubicle, sucking chicken-flavor sustenance from
a tube. You’re furiously maneuvering with a
joystick … Your boss stops by and gives you a
look. ‘We need to talk about your loyalty to this
The organization you work for
has deduced that you are considering
quitting. It predicts your plans and
intentions, possibly before you have
even conceived them.” —Eric Siegel, Predictive
company.’
Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die (based on
a real case, an HP “Flight risk” PA model developed by HR, with
astronomical savings potential)
“[These HP] pioneers may not realize just
how big a shift this practice is from a
cultural standpoint. The computer is doing
more than obeying the usual mechanical
orders to retain facts and figures. It’s
producing new information that’s so
powerful, it must be handled with a new
kind of care. We’re in a new world in which
systems not onlydivine new, important
information, but must carefully manage it
as well.” —Eric Siegel, Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict
Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die (based on a real case, an HP “Flight risk” PA
model developed by HR, with astronomical savings potential)
“1-800-FLOWERS
improved its ability to
detect fraud by
considering the social
connections between
prospective
perpetrators.”
—Eric Siegel, Predictive
Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die
14,000
20,000
14,000/eBay
20,000/Amazon
30/Craigslist
Dov Frohman:
Dov Frohman:
The “50% Rule”
“Daydream!”
“I am often asked by
would-be entrepreneurs
seeking escape from life
within huge corporate
structures, ‘How do I
build a small firm for
myself?’ The answer
seems obvious …
Source: Paul Ormerod, Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics
“I am often asked by would-be entrepreneurs seeking escape from
life within huge corporate structures, ‘How do I build a small firm for
BUY A
VERY LARGE
ONE AND JUST
WAIT.”
myself?’ The answer seems obvious:
—Paul Ormerod, Why Most Things Fail:
Evolution, Extinction and Economics
“Mr. Foster and his McKinsey colleagues
collected detailed performance data stretching
back
40 years for 1,000
They found that
U.S. companies.
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
MITTELSTAND* **
*“agile creatures darting between the legs of
the multinational monsters” (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 10.10)
**E.g. Goldmann Produktion
THE RED
CARPET
STORE
(Joel Resnick/Flemington NJ)
Basement Systems Inc.
Motueka, New Zealand
Coppins Sea
Anchors*
*PSA/Para-sea
anchors
Source: Kia Ora/Air New Zealand magazine
Retail Superstars:
Inside the 25 Best
Independent Stores
in America
—by George Whalin
Jungle Jim’s International Market, Fairfield, Ohio: “An
adventure in
‘shoppertainment,’
as Jungle Jim’s
1,600
cheeses and, yes, 1,400 varieties of hot
sauce —not to mention 12,000 wines priced
from $8 to $8,000 a bottle; all this is brought to
you by 4,000 vendors. Customers come from every
calls it, begins in the parking lot and goes on to
corner of the globe.”
Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland, Frankenmuth, Michigan,
98,000-square-foot “shop” features the
likes of 6,000 Christmas ornaments, 50,000
trims, and anything else you can name if it pertains to
pop 5,000:
Christmas.
Source: George Whalin, Retail Superstars
“Be the best.
It’s the only
market that’s
not crowded.”
From: Retail Superstars: Inside the 25 Best
Independent Stores in America, George Whalin
EXCELLENCE is not
an "aspiration.”
EXCELLENCE is …
THE NEXT FIVE
MINUTES.
Or not.