Tom Peters Squares Off with
Jim Collins. Or:
The Case for …
Technicolor!
Tom Peters/03.16.2004
“intrepid, unprincipled,
reckless, predatory, with
boundless ambition,
civilized in externals but
a savage at heart.”
Herman Melville on JPJ:
“intrepid, unprincipled,
reckless, predatory, with
boundless ambition,
civilized in externals but a
savage at heart.” —from Evan
Thomas, John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father
of the American Navy
Huh?
“Humility: The Surprise Factor in
Leadership … bosses with Gungho Qualities and Charisma May Be
Out of Fashion” —Headline/FT/
re JCollins/10.03
Jim & Tom.
Joined at the
hip.
Not.
I. Good to Great
II. Built to Last
III. Quiet, Humble Leaders
I. Good to Great
II. Built to Last
III. Quiet, Humble Leaders
Good to Great: Fannie Mae …
Kroger … Walgreens … Philip
Morris … Pitney Bowes … Abbott
… Kimberly-Clark … Wells Fargo
Good to Great: Fannie Mae …
Kroger … Walgreens … Philip
Morris … Pitney Bowes … Abbott
… Kimberly-Clark … Wells Fargo
Good to Great: “Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac receive as much as
$164 billion in implicit federal
subsidies but have done little to
increase home ownership or
reduce the cost of home loans,
according to a draft study by the
Federal Reserve.” —New York Times/12.23.03
(Average rate reduction is 7 basis points, or .07%)
SET
THE AGENDA.
Great Companies …
(Period.)
AGENDA SETTERS: “Set the Table”/
Pioneers/ Questors/ Adventurers
US Steel … Ford … Macy’s … Sears …
Litton Industries … ITT … The Gap …
Limited … Wal*Mart … P&G … 3M …
Intel … IBM … Apple … Nokia … Cisco
… Dell … MCI … Sun … Oracle …
Microsoft … Enron … Schwab … GE …
Southwest … Laker …People Express
… Ogilvy … Chiat/Day … Virgin … eBay
… Amazon … Sony … BMW … CNN …
T & B: Atari, DEC, WANG?
J vs. T: HP/CarlyF?
I. Good to Great
II. Built to Last
III. Quiet, Humble Leaders
Built to Last v. Built to Flip
“The problem with Built to Last is that it’s a
romantic notion. Large companies are
incapable of ongoing innovation, of
ongoing flexibility.”
“Increasingly, successful businesses will
be ephemeral. They will be built to yield
something of value – and once that value
has been exhausted, they will vanish.”
Fast Company
Warren Bennis & Patricia Ward Biederman/
Great
Groups Don’t
Last Very Long!
Organizing Genius:
W.A. Mozart
1756 – 1791
HE CHANGED THE WORLD
AND
ENRICHED HUMANITY
“We are in a
brawl with no
rules.”
Paul Allaire
Forbes100 from 1917 to 1987: 39
members of the Class of ’17 were alive
in ’87; 18 in ’87 F100; 18 F100
“survivors” underperformed the market
by 20%; just 2 (2%), GE & Kodak,
outperformed the market 1917 to 1987.
S&P 500 from 1957 to 1997: 74 members of the Class of ’57 were
alive in ’97; 12 (2.4%) of 500 outperformed the market from 1957
to 1997.
Source: Dick Foster & Sarah Kaplan, Creative Destruction: Why
Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market
“The difficulties … arise from the inherent conflict
between the need to control existing operations and
the need to create the kind of environment that will
permit new ideas to flourish—and old ones to die a
timely death. … We believe that most
corporations will find it impossible to
match or outperform the market without
abandoning the assumption of continuity.
… The current apocalypse—the transition from a state
of continuity to state of discontinuity—has the same
suddenness [as the trauma that beset civilization in
1000 A.D.]”
Richard Foster & Sarah Kaplan, “Creative Destruction” (The McKinsey Quarterly)
Rate of Leaving F500
1970-1990:
Source: The Company, John Micklethwait & Adrian
Wooldridge (1974-200: One-half biggest 100 disappear)
“The corporation as we know it,
which is now 120 years old, is
not likely to survive the
next 25 years. Legally and
financially, yes, but not
structurally and economically.”
Peter Drucker, Business 2.0
“But what if [former head of strategic planning
at Royal Dutch Shell] Arie De Geus is wrong in
suggesting, in The Living Company, that firms
should aspire to live forever? Greatness is
fleeting and, for corporations, it will become
ever more fleeting. The ultimate aim of a
business organization, an artist, an athlete or a
stockbroker may be to explode in a dramatic
frenzy of value creation during a short
space of time, rather than to live forever.”
Kjell Nordström and Jonas Ridderstråle,
Funky Business
Jane Jacobs:
Exuberant
Variety vs. the Great Blight of Dullness.
F.A. Hayek: Spontaneous
Discovery Process.
Joseph Schumpeter: the Gales of
Creative Destruction.
I. Good to Great
II. Built to Last
III. Quiet, Humble Leaders
Huh?
“Quiet, workmanlike, stoic
leaders bring about the big
transformations.”--JC
Huh?
“Humility: The Surprise Factor in
Leadership … bosses with Gungho Qualities and Charisma May Be
Out of Fashion” —Headline/FT/
re JCollins/10.03 (TP: scribble: “Nelson, Wellington,
Montgomery, Disraeli, Churchill, Thatcher”)
Wellington
Nelson
Disraeli
Churchill
Montgomery
Thatcher
“Humble” Pastels?
T. Paine/P. Henry/A. Hamilton/T. Jefferson/B. Franklin
A. Lincoln/U.S. Grant/W.T. Sherman
TR/FDR/LBJ/RR/JFK
Patton/Monty/Halsey
M.L. King/C. de Gaulle/M. Gandhi/W. Churchill
Picasso/Mozart/Copernicus/Newton/Einstein/Djarassi/Watson
H. Clinton/G. Steinem/I. Gandhi/G. Meir/M. Thatcher
E. Shockley/A. Grove/J. Welch/L. Gerstner/L. Ellison/B. Gates/
S. Jobs/S. McNealy/T. Turner/R. Murdoch/W. Wriston
A. Carnegie/J.P. Morgan/H. Ford/S. Honda/J.D. Rockefeller/
T.A. Edison
Rummy/Norm/Henry/Wolfie
Elizabeth Cady Stanton/Susan B. Anthony/Martha Cary
Thomas/Carrie Chapman Catt/Alice Paul/Anna Elizabeth
Dickinson/Arabella Babb Mansfield/Margaret Sanger
“You can’t behave in a calm,
rational manner. You’ve got to
be out there on the lunatic
fringe.” — Jack Welch,
on GE’s quality program
“When it comes to transformative technologies,
overoptimistic investors are actually working for the
common good—even if they don’t know it. We can be
glad that investors financed the construction of
thousands of miles of track in the middle of the
nineteenth century, despite the fact that most of
them dropped a bundle doing it. The same goes for
over-optimistic investors who poured money into
semiconductors thirty years ago, financed undersea
fiber-optic cables in the late nineties, and now
are poised to lose their shirts in the coming
nanobubble. In the dreams of avarice lie the seeds of
progress.” —james Surowiecki/New Yorker/03.2004
“the wildest
chimera of a
moonstruck
mind”
—The Federalist on
Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase
“Roosevelt’s duplicity, Churchill’s
self-absorption” … “We are all
worms. But I do believe that I am a
glow-worm.” (WSC) … “Imperial
and bold” [WSC and TR] …
“arrogance and instability” …
“rough, sarcastic, bullying”
Source: Jon Meacham, Franklin and Winston, et al.
“a vainglorious selfpromoter spoiling for
a fight”
—Arthur Koestler on Galileo
“In my experience,
all successful
commanders are
prima donnas,
and must be so
treated.” —George S. Patton
Herman Melville on JPJ:
“intrepid, unprincipled,
reckless, predatory, with
boundless ambition,
civilized in externals but a
savage at heart.” —from Evan
Thomas, John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father
of the American Navy
Audie Murphy was the most
decorated soldier in WW2.
He won every medal we had
to offer, plus 5 presented by
Belgium and France. There
was one common medal he
never won …
… the Good
Conduct medal.
“Men with no vices
have very few
virtues.” —A. Lincoln
Jim Collins vs. Michael Maccoby
“quiet, workmanlike, stoic”
vs.
“larger-than-life leaders”/ “egoists,
charmers, risk-takers with big
visions”: Carnegie, Rockefeller,
Edison, Ford, Welch, Jobs, Gates
“In Tom’s world it’s always
better to try a swan
dive and deliver a
colossal belly flop than to
step timidly off the
board while holding your
nose.” —Fast Company /October2003
The Re-imagineer’s Credo … or,
Pity the Poor Brown*
Technicolor Times demand …
Technicolor Leaders and Boards who recruit …
Technicolor People who are sent on …
Technicolor Quests to execute …
Technicolor (WOW!) Projects in partnership with …
Technicolor Customers and …
Technicolor Suppliers all of whom are in pursuit of …
Technicolor Goals and Aspirations fit for …
Technicolor Times.
*WSC
“In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias
they had warfare, terror, murder,
bloodshed—and produced
Michelangelo, da Vinci and the
Renaissance. In Switzerland they had
brotherly love, 500 years of democracy
and peace, and what did they
produce—the cuckoo clock.”
Orson Welles, as Harry Lime, in “The Third Man”