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NOTE:
Master*
Excellence
part two (of 7)
innovate.
Or.
Die.
18 june 2007
part
two
EXCELLENCE.
INNOVATE.
OR.
DIE.
EXCELLENCE.
INNOVATE.
AXIOMATIC.
“To grow, companies
need to break out of a
vicious cycle of
competitive
benchmarking and
imitation.”
—W. Chan Kim & Renée
Mauborgne, “Think for Yourself —
Stop Copying a Rival,” Financial Times
EXCELLENCE.
INNOVATION.
THE REAL STORY.
Tom Peters/03.29.2007
The Mess
Is The
Message!
Period!
What makes
God laugh?
People
making
plans!
What makes
tom laugh?
“Gurus”
(and once-
famous CEOs)
giving
LLLs
(logical linear
on
“systems”* of
innovation!
lectures)
*especially with lots of charts and graphs and Greek
mathematical symbols and little tiny numbers
NOTE: few ideas are more important—
and more honored in the breach.
Innovation is
MESSY
to the extreme. Such an assertion
(reality!) determines the success of
innovation “strategies,” perhaps the
wrong word. This unfolding “story”
is one of the most important in my
efforts to alter enterprise thinking.
Try it. Try it. Try it
ry it. Try it. Screw
up. Try it. Try it. Try
t. Try it. Try it. Try
t. Try it. Screw it up
t. Try it. Try it. try
Get mad. Do
something
about it. Now.
The “5Ps” of Innovation Success:
Pissed-off-ed-ness
Passion
pals
Politics [Political skill]
Persistence
InnoTacs
“Acquisitions are about
buying market share. Our
challenge is to
create markets.
There is a big difference.”
—Peter Job, former CEO, Reuters
Characteristics of the “Also rans”*
“Minimize risk”
“Respect the chain
of command”
“Support the boss”
“Make budget”
*Fortune, article on “Most Admired Global Corporations”
“Companies have
defined so much
‘best practice’
that they are now
more or less
identical.”
—Jesper Kunde, Unique Now ... Or Never
“It is not the
strongest of the
species that survives,
nor the most
intelligent, but the
one most responsive
to change.”
—Charles Darwin
InnoTacs
Try it. Try it. Try it
ry it. Try it. Screw
up. Try it. Try it. Try
t. Try it. Try it. Try
t. Try it. Screw it up
t. Try it. Try it. try
What makes
God laugh?
People
making
plans!
“We have a
‘strategic plan.’
It’s called doing
things.”
— Herb Kelleher
A man approached JP Morgan, held up an envelope, and said, “Sir, in
my hand I hold a guaranteed formula for success, which I will gladly
sell you for $25,000.”
“Sir,” JP Morgan replied, “I do not know what is in the envelope,
however if you show me, and I like it, I
give you my word as a gentleman that I will pay you what you ask.”
The man agreed to the terms, and handed over the envelope. JP
Morgan opened it, and extracted a single sheet of paper. He gave it
one look, a mere glance, then handed the piece of paper back to the
gent.
And paid him the
agreed upon $25,000.
1. Every morning, write
a list of the things
that need to be done
that day.
2.
Do them.
Source: Hugh MacLeod/tompeters.com/NPR
“This is so simple it sounds stupid, but it is amazing
how few oil people really understand that
you only find
oil if you drill
wells.
You may think you’re finding it
when you’re drawing maps and
studying logs, but you have to drill.”
Source: The Hunters, by John Masters, Canadian O & G wildcatter
“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
“Experiment
fearlessly”
Source: BW0821.06, Type A Organization Strategies/
“How to Hit a Moving Target”—Tactic #1
“We ground
up more pig
brains!”
The True Logic* of Decentralization:
6 divisions = 6 “tries”
6 divisions = 6 DIFFERENT leaders =
6 INDEPENDENT “tries” = Max
probability of “win”
6 divisions = 6 very DIFFERENT
leaders = 6 very INDEPENDENT
“tries” = Max probability of “far
out”/”3-sigma” “win”
*“Driver”: Law of Large #s
SERIOUS
PLAY
Culture of Prototyping
“Effective prototyping may
the most
valuable core
competence an
be
innovative organization can
hope to have.” —Michael Schrage
Think about It!?
Innovation =
Reaction to the
Prototype
Source: Michael Schrage
“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 = The sidelines, from
Harriet Rubin in The Princessa)
“The key to a great
painting is the nerve,
after weeks of effort,
to ‘bet the painting’
on the next brush
stroke,”
Master musician, San Francisco
Screw.
things.
“FAIL, FAIL
AGAIN. FAIL
BETTER.”
—Samuel Beckett
“Fail .
Forward.
Fast.”
High Tech CEO, Pennsylvania
“Fail faster.
Succeed Sooner.”
David Kelley/IDEO
Sam’s
Secret
#1!
“Reward
excellent failures.
Punish mediocre
successes.”
Phil Daniels, Sydney exec
“If people tell me
they skied all day
and never fell
down, I tell them to
try a different
mountain.”
—Michael Bloomberg (BW/0625.07)
“In business, you reward
people for taking risks.
When it doesn’t work out
you promote them-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 (BW/0625.07)
Read This!
Richard Farson & Ralph Keyes:
Whoever Makes
the Most Mistakes
Wins: The Paradox
of Innovation
“The Silicon Valley of
today is built less atop
the spires of earlier
triumphs than upon the
rubble of earlier
debacles.”—Newsweek/ Paul Saffo
“The secret of fast progress
is inefficiency, fast and
furious and numerous
failures.” --Kevin Kelly
try.
Miss.
READY.
FIRE!
“We are in a
brawl with no rules.”
Paul Allaire/Xerox:
TP:
“There’s
[literally]
only one
Screw
Around Vigorously!
possible answer …
RAF
RFA
RFFFA RFFFA … FFFFA
RAAAAAAAAAAA …
IID DSS*
INID DSS**
*If In Doubt … Do Some S$%^ (stuff)
**If Not In Doubt … Do Some S%*&
Life 101: A 40-year Reflection
Go on offense.
Give everybody a shot.
Decentralize.
Try a bunch of stuff.
Make it up as you go along.
Get some stuff wrong.
Laugh a lot.
Get some stuff right.
Become a “success.”
Extract “lessons learned” or “best practices.”
Thicken the Book of Rules for Success.
Become evermore serious.
Enforce the rules to increasingly tight tolerances.
Go on defense.
Install walls.
Protect-at-all-costs today’s franchise.
Centralize.
Calcify.
Install taller walls.
Write more rules.
Become irrelevant and-or die.
No try.
No deal.
“You miss
100% of
the shots you
never take.”
—Wayne Gretzky
“Intelligent people
can always come up
with intelligent
reasons to do
nothing.”
—Scott Simon
“Andrew Higgins , who built landing craft in
WWII, refused to hire graduates of
He believed
that they only teach
you what you can’t do
in engineering school. He
engineering schools.
started off with 20 employees, and by the
middle of the war had 30,000 working for
him. He turned out 20,000 landing craft.
D.D. Eisenhower told me, ‘Andrew Higgins
won the war for us. He did it without
engineers.’ ”
—Stephen Ambrose/Fast Company
Try.
Try.
Try.
Try.
try.
Try.
Try.
Try.
Try.
try.
Try.
Try.
Try.
Try.
try.
Try.
Try.
Try.
Try.
try.
Try.
Try.
Try.
Try.
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”
Innovation:
mad. Start Doing
something
about it. Now.
Get
EXCELLE
ALWAYS.
End.
PART TWO