Tom Peters’
Re-Imagine
EXCELLENCE
!
University of Auckland Business School
12 February 2015
(For more see tompeters.com and our fully annotated 23-part Master
Compendium [“Mother of All Presentations”] at excellencenow.com)
In Search of Excellence, written in 1982, was seen as a no-holds-
barred critique of American business—which had been found
wanting when the Japanese de facto attacked Detroit and humbled
the USA’s bellwether companies, GM, Ford and Chrysler.
The book was also seen as a 360-page no-holds-barred attack on
American business schools and the MBA. That was not untrue,
despite the fact (or perhaps because) both authors had a Stanford
Graduate School of Business diploma on their CVs.
The first shot fired in this “battle” was actually by a couple of
Harvard b-school professors writing in 1980 in the Harvard Business
Review. Their article was titled “Managing Our Way to Economic
Decline.” They argued that the b-schools were too preoccupied with
marketing and finance and other abstractions, and inattentive to the
likes of product quality—and the people who made the product.
ISOE, effectively commissioned by McKinsey, continued that line of
thought and upped the volume by several notches.
Thirty-three years later everything has changed—and nothing has
changed. The results for me are largely included in this
presentation, especially prepared for the Auckland Business School.
You will find herein the contents of my ideal MBA program—more or
less, some trivia, like finance, is AWOL.
Enjoy!
First Things First:
CONRAD HILTON …
CONRAD HILTON, at a gala celebrating
his career, was called to the podium and
“What were the
most important
lessons you learned
in your long and
distinguished
career?” His answer …
asked,
“Remember
to tuck the
shower curtain
inside the
bathtub.”
“Amateurs talk
about strategy.
Professionals talk
about logistics.”
—Omar Bradley, commander of American troops/D-Day
!
EXCELLENCE
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
In Search of Excellence/twitterized/127 characters
including quotation marks and spaces:
“Cherish your people.
Cuddle your customers.
Wander around. ‘Try it’
beats ‘talk about it.’
Pursue EXCELLENCE.
Tell the truth.”
EXCELLENCE is not a “longterm” "aspiration.”
EXCELLENCE is the ultimate
short-term strategy.
EXCELLENCE is … THE
NEXT
5
MINUTES.*
(*Or NOT.)
EXCELLENCE is not an "aspiration."
EXCELLENCE is … THE NEXT FIVE MINUTES.
EXCELLENCE
Or not.
EXCELLENCE
Or not.
EXCELLENCE
Or not.
EXCELLENCE
Or not.
EXCELLENCE
Or not.
EXCELLENCE
Or not.
EXCELLENCE
Or not.
EXCELLENCE
Or not.
EXCELLENCE
Or not.
EXCELLENCE
Or not.
EXCELLENCE
Or not.
EXCELLENCE
Or not.
is your next conversation.
is your next meeting.
is shutting up and listening—really listening.
is your next customer contact.
is saying “Thank you” for something “small.”
is the next time you shoulder responsibility and apologize.
is waaay over-reacting to a screw-up.
is the flowers you brought to work today.
is lending a hand to an “outsider” who’s fallen behind schedule.
is bothering to learn the way folks in finance (or IS or HR) think.
is waaay “over”-preparing for a 3-minute presentation.
is turning “insignificant” tasks into models of … EXCELLENCE.
EXCELLENCE is
a PERSONAL
choice … NOT
an institutional
choice!
“[This year’s] graduates are told [by
commencement speakers] to pursue
happiness and joy. But, of course, when you
read a biography of someone you admire, it’s
rarely the things that made them happy that
compel our admiration. It’s the things they did
to court unhappiness—the things they did that
were arduous and miserable, which sometimes
It’s
excellence, not happiness,
that we admire most.”
cost them friends and aroused hatred.
—David Brooks, “It’s Not About You,” op-ed, New York Times, 30 May 2011
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
“It may sound radical, unconventional, and
bordering on being a crazy business idea.
However— as ridiculous as it sounds—joy is the
core belief of our workplace.
Joy
is the reason my company,
Menlo Innovations, a customer software design
and development firm in Ann Arbor, exists. It
defines what we do and how we do it. It is the
single shared belief of our entire team.”
Joy, Inc.:
How We Built a Workplace People Love
—Richard Sheridan,
SERVICE.
PERIOD.
ORGANIZATIONS
EXIST TO SERVE.
PERIOD.
LEADERS LIVE TO
SERVE. PERIOD.
People
People
People
People
People:
1/4,096
“Business has to
give people
enriching,
rewarding lives …
1/4,096: excellencenow.com
“Business has to give people enriching,
or it's
simply not
worth doing.”
rewarding lives …
—Richard Branson
There are 4,096 slides in my 23-part
MOAP/“Mother Of All Presentations,”
three years in the making. ONE slide by
definition had to come first. The one on
the previous slide, a quote from the
inimitable Richard Branson, was
#1 …
“You have to
treat your
employees like
customers.”
—Herb Kelleher,
upon being asked his “secret to success”
Source: Joe Nocera, NYT, “Parting Words of an Airline Pioneer,”
on the occasion of Herb Kelleher’s retirement after 37 years at Southwest
Airlines (SWA’s pilots union took out a full-page ad in USA Today
thanking HK for all he had done) ; across the way in Dallas, American
Airlines’ pilots were picketing AA’s Annual Meeting)
“We look for ...
listening, caring,
smiling, saying
‘Thank you,’ being
warm.”
— Colleen Barrett, former President, Southwest Airlines
“hostmanship”/
“consideration
renovation”
“The path to a
hostmanship
culture paradoxically does not go through
the guest. In fact it wouldn’t be totally wrong to say that the guest has nothing to do
with it. True hostmanship leaders focus on their employees. What drives
exceptionalism is finding the right people and getting them to love their work and see
it as a passion. ... The guest comes into the picture only when you are ready to ask,
‘Would you prefer to stay at a hotel where the staff love their work or where
“We went
through the hotel and made a ...
‘consideration renovation.’ Instead of
redoing bathrooms, dining rooms, and
guest rooms, we gave employees new
uniforms, bought flowers and fruit, and
changed colors. Our focus was totally on
the staff. They were the ones we wanted
to make happy. We wanted them to wake up every morning excited
management has made customers its highest priority?’”
about a new day at work.” —Jan Gunnarsson and Olle Blohm, Hostmanship:
The Art of Making People Feel Welcome.
“ … The guest comes into
the picture only when you
are ready to ask, ‘Would you
prefer to stay at a hotel
where the staff love their
work or where management
has made customers its
highest priority?’”
EXCELLENT
customer experience
depends … entirely …
on EXCELLENT
employee experience!
If you want to WOW your
FIRST
customers,
you
must WOW those who
WOW the customers!
“Contrary to conventional
corporate thinking, treating
retail workers much better
may make everyone
(including their employers)
much richer.” * **
*Duh!
**Cited in particular, The Good Jobs Strategy,
by M.I.T. professor Zeynep Ton.
Wegmans
(was #1/Best Company to Work For in USA)
Container Store
(was #1/Best Company to Work For in USA)
Whole Foods
Costco
Publix
Darden Restaurants
Build-A-Bear
Workshops
Starbucks
“In a world where customers wake up
every morning asking, ‘What’s new, what’s
success
depends on a company’s
ability to unleash initiative,
imagination and passion of
employees at all levels —and this
different, what’s amazing?’
can only happen if all those folks are
connected heart and soul to their work
[their ‘calling’], their company and their
mission.” —John Mackey and Raj Sisoda, Conscious Capitalism:
Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business
“The greatest satisfaction for management has come not from the
Camellia
financial growth of
itself, but rather from having
participated in the vast improvement in the living and working conditions
of its employees, resulting from the investment of many tens of millions of
pounds into the tea gardens’ infrastructure of roads, factories, hospitals,
employees’ housing and amenities. … Within the Camellia Group there is a
strong aesthetic dimension, an intention that it should comprise
companies and assets of the highest quality, operating from inspiring
Above
all, there is a deep concern for the welfare
of each employee. This arises not only
from a sense of humanity, but also from
the conviction that the loyalty of a secure
and enthusiastic employee will in the
long-term prove to be an invaluable
company asset.” —Camellia: A Very Different Company
offices and manufacturing in state of the art facilities. …
($600M enterprise/$160M pretax profit/#3 tea producer/etc.)
The Good Jobs Strategy:
How the Smartest
Companies Invest in
Employees to Lower Costs
& Boost Profits
—Zeynep Ton, MIT Sloan School
Notes: Cases all retail, including Costco and Trader Joe’s.
E.g., Costco: Average hourly pay $20.89—40% greater
than #1 competitor, Sam’s Club.
Brand =
Talent.
Our Mission
TO DEVELOP AND MANAGE TALENT;
TO APPLY THAT TALENT,
THROUGHOUT THE WORLD,
FOR THE BENEFIT OF CLIENTS;
TO DO SO IN PARTNERSHIP;
TO DO SO WITH PROFIT.
WPP
FROM
FASHION TRENDS GURU
TO KICKS FROM
PICKING/DEVELOPING
PEOPLE!*
Les Wexner:
*Limited Brands founder Les Wexner queried
on astounding long-term growth & profitability:
“I got excited about
developing people” —as excited as he had been
It happened because
about predicting fashion trends in his early years.
"When I hire
someone, that's
when I go to
work for
them.”
—John DiJulius, "What's the Secret
to Providing a World-class Customer Experience"
DDOs/
Deliberately Developmental Organizations
“These companies operate on the
foundational assumptions that adults
can grow, that not only is attention to the
bottom line and the personal growth of all
employees desirable, but the two are
interdependent. Both profitability and individual
development rely on structures that are built into every
aspect of how the company operates. … Decurion and
Bridgewater [cases] offer a form of proof that the quest for
business excellence and the search for personal realization
need not be mutually exclusive—and can, in fact, be
essential to each other.”
E.g., At Bridgewater Associates, every employee (new hire to
CEO) has a
“crew”
that “supports his or her growth, both
professionally and personally.”
Source: “Making Business Personal,” Robert Kegan et al., HBR/04.14
“I start with the
premise that the
function of
leadership is to
produce more
leaders, not more
followers.”
—Ralph Nader
The
7-Step
Method
7 Steps to Sustaining Success
You take care of the people.
The people take care of the service.
The service takes care of the customer.
The customer takes care of the profit.
The profit takes care of the re-investment.
The re-investment takes care of the re-invention.
The re-invention takes care of the future.
(And at every step the only measure is EXCELLENCE.)
7 Steps to Sustaining Success: And it starts with …
You take
care of the
people.
Profit Through
Putting People
First Business
Book Club
Profit Through Putting People First Business Book Club
Nice Companies Finish First: Why Cutthroat Management Is Over—and
Collaboration Is In, by Peter Shankman with Karen Kelly
Uncontainable: How Passion, Commitment, and Conscious Capitalism Built a
Business Where Everyone Thrives, by Kip Tindell, CEO Container Store
Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business, by John Mackey,
CEO Whole Foods, and Raj Sisodia
Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and
Purpose, by Raj Sisodia, Jag Sheth, and David Wolfe
The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to
Lower Costs and Boost Profits, by Zeynep Ton, MIT
Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love, by Richard Sheridan, CEO
Menlo Innovations
Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside
Down, by Vineet Nayar, CEO, HCL Technologies
The Customer Comes Second: Put Your People First and Watch ’Em Kick Butt,
by Hal Rosenbluth, former CEO, Rosenbluth International
It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy,
by Mike Abrashoff, former commander, USS Benfold
Turn This Ship Around; How to Create Leadership at Every Level,
by L. David Marquet, former commander, SSN Santa Fe
Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big,
by Bo Burlingham
Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job, by Dennis Bakke,
former CEO, AES Corporation
The Dream Manager, by Matthew Kelly
The Soft Edge: Where Great Companies Find Lasting Success, by Rich Karlgaard,
publisher, Forbes
Training =
Investment
#1
6/2/3*
SIX MONTHS to develop
THREE MINUTES of new material
*It takes Jerry Seinfeld
TWO
or
(documentary: Comedian)
Basketball coach John Wooden, perhaps the best coach of
“I was never much
of a game coach, but I
was a pretty good
practice coach.”
anything, ever:
Hall of fame football coach Bill Walsh on preparation:
“The score takes care
of itself.”
In the Army, 3-star
generals worry about
training. In most
businesses, it's a
“ho-hum” mid-level
staff function.
Why
(why why why why why why why why why why
is intensiveextensive training obvious
for the army & navy &
sports teams & performing
why why why)
not
arts groups--but
for the average business?
Is your CTO/Chief
Training Officer your top
paid “C-level” job (other
than CEO/COO)?
Are your top trainers
paid/cherished as much as
your top marketers/
engineers?
Is your CTO/Chief Training Officer your top paid “C-level” job (other than CEO/COO)?
If not, why not?
Are your top trainers paid as much as your top marketers and engineers?
If not, why not?
Are your training
courses so good they
make you giggle and
tingle?
If not, why not?
Randomly stop an employee in the hall: Can she/he meticulously describe her/his development plan for the next 12
months?
If not, why not?
Why is your world of business any different than the (competitive) world of rugby, football, opera, theater,
the military?
If “people/talent first” and hyper-intense continuous training are laughably obviously for them, why not you?
Is your CTO/Chief Training Officer your top paid “C-level” job (other than CEO/COO)?
If not, why not?
Are your top trainers paid as much as your top marketers and engineers?
If not, why not?
Are your training courses so good they make you giggle and tingle?
If not, why not?
Randomly stop an employee
in the hall: Can she/he
meticulously describe her/his
development plan for the
next 12 months?
If not, why not?
Why is your world of business any different than the (competitive) world of rugby, football, opera,
theater,
the military?
If “people/talent first” and hyper-intense continuous training are laughably obviously for them,
why not you?
Gamblin’ Man
>> 5 of 10 CEOs see
training as expense rather than
investment.
Bet #2: >> 5 of 10 CEOs see
training as defense rather than
offense.
Bet #3: >> 5 of 10 CEOs see
training as “necessary evil”
rather than “strategic
opportunity.”
Bet #1:
>> 8 of 10
CEOs, in 45-min
“tour d’horizon” of
their biz, would
NOT mention
training.
Bet #4:
What is the best reason to go
bananas over training?
GREED. (It pays off.)
(NB: Training should be an official part of
the
R&D budget and a capital expense.)
Training #1: Bottom Line
NOBODY gets off the
hook! “Training & Development
Maniac” applies as much to the
leader of the
4-person
business as to the chief of
the 44,444-person business.
“Training” On
Steroids: An
Education
Revolution*
*“Revolution” is a wildly overused word
—but I can think of no other in this instance.
“Right now, labor
markets and jobs are
changing faster than
schools, and that means
graduates are being left
behind.” —Tyler Cowen, author
Average Is Over, in Time (10.25.13)
“All human beings are
entrepreneurs.”
—Muhammad Yunus
“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
“My wife and I went to a [kindergarten] parent-teacher
conference and were informed that our budding refrigerator
artist, Christopher, would be receiving a grade of
‘Unsatisfactory’ in art. We were shocked. How could any child—
let alone our child—receive a poor grade in art at such a
HIS TEACHER INFORMED
US THAT HE HAD REFUSED TO
COLOR WITHIN THE LINES,
WHICH WAS A STATE
REQUIREMENT FOR
DEMONSTRATING ‘GRADE-LEVEL
MOTOR SKILLS.’ ”
young age?
—Jordan Ayan, AHA!
“How many artists are there in the room? Would you please raise
your hands. FIRST GRADE: En masse the children leapt from their
seats, arms waving. Every child was an artist. SECOND GRADE:
About half the kids raised their hands, shoulder high, no higher.
The hands were still. THIRD GRADE: At best, 10 kids out of 30
would raise a hand, tentatively, self-consciously. By the time I
reached SIXTH GRADE, no more than one or two kids raised their
hands, and then ever so slightly, betraying a fear of being
identified by the group as a ‘closet artist.’ The point is:
EVERY SCHOOL I VISITED
WAS PARTICIPATING IN
THE SYSTEMATIC
SUPPRESSION
OF CREATIVE GENIUS.”
—Gordon MacKenzie, retired creative director, Hallmark, from Orbiting the Giant Hairball
S
T
E
M
cience
echnology
ngineering
athematics
S
T
E
cience
echnology
A
ngineering
rts*
M
athematics
(*Courtesy John Maeda, president, RISD)
The Anti-Education Era:
Creating Smarter Students Through
Digital Learning —James Paul Gee
Reality Is Broken:
Why Games Make Us Better and How They
Can Change the World —Jane McGonigal
Everything Bad Is Good For You:
How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually
Making Us Smarter —Steven Johnson
Extra Lives:
Why Video Games Matter
—Tom Bissell
Towards Addiction to …
LEARNING
“When I enter a video game, I learn something
about a fictitious world. And in that video game,
I’m allowed to go at my own pace. I’m constantly
assessed—assessment becomes my friend. I feel
good when I master the next level. If you could
only take that experience of a video game back
into student learning, we could make learning
My deep, deep desire is to
find a magic formula for learning
in the online age that would
make it as addictive as playing
video games.”
addictive.
—Sebastian Thrum, founder, Udacity,
lead developer of Google Glass, etc. (Foreign Affairs, 11-12.13)
The very best and the
very brightest and the
most energetic and
enthusiastic and
entrepreneurial and
tech-savvy of our university
graduates must—must,
not should—be lured
into teaching.
RADICAL curricular revision
imperative. (STEM/STEAM.)
RADICAL digital strategy.
REVOLUTIONARY new approach to
teacher recruitment/development.
RADICAL re-assessment of tertiary
education (E.g., “MOOC-ization.”)
RADICAL re-assessment business ed.
RADICAL role re-assessment by
corporations (businesses-aseducators).
(Good news: Nobody’s got it right. Kids are doing it without you—if you’ll let them.)
Hiring
“Development can help great people
be even better— but
if
I had a dollar to spend, I’d
70 cents
spend
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
“It’s simple, really,
Tom. Hire for s,
and, above all,
promote for
s.”
—Starbucks regional manager,
on why so many smiles at Starbucks shops
Observed closely: The use of
“I”
or
“We”
during a
job interview.
Source: Leonard Berry & Kent Seltman, chapter 6, “Hiring for Values,”
Management Lessons From Mayo Clinic
Andrew Carnegie’s Tombstone Inscription …
Here lies a man
Who knew how to enlist
In his service
Better men than himself.
Source: Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management
Quiet
“We live with a value system that I call the Extrovert Ideal—the omnipresent belief
that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight. The
archetypal extrovert prefers action to contemplation, risk-taking to heed-taking,
certainty to doubt. … We think that we value individuality, but all too often we admire
The
Extrovert Ideal has been documented in many
studies. Talkative people, for example, are rated
as smarter, better looking, more interesting, and
more desirable as friends. Velocity of speech
counts as well as volume: We rank fast talkers as
more competent and likeable than slow ones. But
we make a grave mistake to embrace the
Extrovert Ideal so unthinkingly. … As the science journalist
one type of individual … Introversion is now a second-class personality trait. …
Winifred Gallagher writes, ‘The glory of the disposition that stops to consider stimuli
rather than rushing to engage with them is its long association with intellectual and
artistic achievement. Neither E = mc squared or Paradise Lost was dashed off by a
party animal.’ Even in less obviously introverted occupations, like finance, politics, and
activism, some of the greatest leaps forward were made by introverts … figures like
Eleanor Roosevelt, Warren Buffett and Gandhi achieved what they did not in spite of
but because of their introversion.” —Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
“The next time you see a
person with a composed face
and a soft voice, remember
that inside her mind she might
be solving an equation,
composing a sonnet,
designing a hat. She might,
that is, be deploying the
power of quiet.”
—Susan Cain,
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
2/Year =
Legacy
Promotion Decisions
“life and
death
decisions”
Source: Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management
“A man should never
be promoted to a
managerial position if his
vision focuses on people’s
weaknesses rather than
on their
strengths.”
—Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management
Evaluation
EVALUATING
#1
PEOPLE =
DIFFERENTIATOR
Source: Jack Welch, now Jeff Immelt on
GE’s top strategic skill (
!!!!)
Self-
Evaluation
“Being aware of yourself
and how you affect
everyone around you is
what distinguishes a
superior leader.”
—Edie Seashore (strategy + business #45)
“To develop
others, start
with yourself.”
—Marshall Goldsmith
"Everyone thinks
of changing the
world, but no one
thinks of changing
himself."
—Leo Tolstoy
st
1 -Line
Bosses
(Cadre of) =
Productivity Asset
#1!
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?
Employee retention
& satisfaction & productivity:
Overwhelmingly
based on the
first-line
manager!
Source: Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman, First, Break All the
Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently
“People leave
managers not
companies.”
—Dave Wheeler
Is there ONE “secret” to
productivity and
employee satisfaction?
YES!
The Quality of your
FULL CADRE of …
1st-line Leaders.
!
WOMEN RULE
“Research
suggests that to
succeed, start
by promoting
women.”
Source: Nicholas Kristof, “Twitter, Women, and Power,” NYTimes, 1024.13
For One (BIG) Thing …
“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.”
Source: Nicholas Kristof, “Twitter, Women, and Power,” NYTimes, 1024.13
“In my
experience, women make
much better executives than
men,” says Kip Tindell author of the forthcoming
From Dan Rockwell/Leadership Freak/0924.14:
UNCONTAINABLE and CEO of The Container Store. Four
areas women are especially better:
Communication. Listening.
Collaboration. Teamwork. Seven
other areas women are better: Taking initiative. Selfdevelopment. Integrity. Drive. Developing others.
Inspiring. Building relationships.
“AS
LEADERS,
WOMEN
RULE:
New Studies find that
female managers outshine their male
counterparts in almost every measure”
TITLE/ Special Report/ BusinessWeek
“Women are rated higher in fully 12
of the 16 competencies that go into
outstanding leadership. And two of
the traits where women outscored
men to the highest degree — taking
initiative and driving for results —
have long been thought of as
particularly male strengths.”
—Harvard Business Review (Courtesy: Dan
Rockwell/Leadership Freak)
Women’s Strengths Match New
Economy Imperatives: Link [rather than
rank] workers; favor interactive-collaborative
leadership style [empowerment beats topdown decision making]; sustain fruitful
collaborations; comfortable with sharing
information; see redistribution of power
as victory, not surrender; favor multidimensional feedback; value technical &
interpersonal skills, individual & group
contributions equally; readily accept
ambiguity; honor intuition as well as pure
“rationality”; inherently flexible; appreciate
cultural diversity.
Source: Judy B. Rosener, America’s Competitive Secret: Women Managers
Women’s Negotiating Strengths
*Ability to put themselves in their
counterparts’ shoes
*Comprehensive, attentive and detailed
communication style
*Empathy that facilitates trust-building
*Curious and attentive listening
*Less competitive attitude
*Strong sense of fairness and ability to persuade
*Proactive risk manager
*Collaborative decision-making
Source: Horacio Falcao, Cover story/May 2006, World Business, “Say It
Like a Woman: Why the 21st-century negotiator will need the female touch”
“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)
Warren Buffett
Invests Like a Girl:
And Why You
Should Too
—Louann Lofton
Portrait of a Female Investor
1. Trade less than men do
2. Exhibit less overconfidence—more likely to know
what they don’t know
3. Shun risk more than male investors do
4. Less optimistic, more realistic than their male
counterparts
5. Put in more time and effort researching possible
investments—consider details and alternate points
of view
6. More immune to peer pressure—tend to make
decisions the same way regardless of who’s watching
7. Learn from their mistakes
8. Have less testosterone than men do, making them
less willing to take extreme risks, which, in turn,
could lead to less extreme market cycles
Warren Buffett Invests Like a Girl: And Why
You Should Too, Louann Lofton, Chapter 2, “The Science Behind the Girl”
Source:
THE MORAL
IMPERATIVE
CIRCA 2014
THE MORAL
IMPERATIVE:
PEOPLE
DEVELOPMENT
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:
#2: Help people be
successful.*
#1: Help people
grow.** ***
*Especially circa 2014; “Grow or die (professionally)” is fact, not hyperbole.
**With a nod to Matthew Kelly’s The Dream Manager
***#2 and #1 are clearly related, but #1/grow has more to do with
long-term preparedness.
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.
“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
Joe J. Jones
1942 – 2010
Net Worth
$21,543,672.48
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.”
“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
The
idea is fable.”
maximize shareholder wealth.
—Lynn Stout, professor of corporate and business law, Cornell
The Shareholder Value Myth:
How Putting Shareholders First Harms
Investors, Corporations, and the Public
law school, in …
“In a way, the world is a great liar.
“It shows you it worships and admires money, but at the
end of the day it doesn’t.
“It says it adores fame and celebrity, but it doesn’t, not
really.
“The world admires, and wants to hold on to, and not lose,
goodness. It admires virtue. At the end it gives its greatest
tributes to generosity, honesty, courage, mercy, talents
well used, talents that, brought into the world, make it
better. That’s what it really admires. That’s what we talk
about in eulogies, because that’s what’s important. We
don’t say, ‘The thing about Joe was he was rich!’
“We say, if we can …
‘The thing about Joe was he
took good care of people.’”
—Peggy Noonan, “A Life’s Lesson,” on the astounding response to the
passing of Tim Russert, the Wall Street Journal, June 21–22, 2008
CONTEXT
Context:
1,000,000
“The greatest
shortcoming of the
human race is our
inability to
understand the
exponential
function.”
1/855:
—Albert A. Bartlett
“What’s really interesting is
that over the
next five
years we’re going to see every
industry exposed to reinvention of
how people put products and
services together, how work
is done, what kind of jobs and
skills are needed, what can
be handled by technology.”
—John Sculley, startup investor, former Apple CEO
China/Foxconn:
1,000,000
robots/next 3 years
Source: Race AGAINST the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
“Since 1996, manufacturing
China itself has
actually fallen by an estimated
25 percent. That’s over
30,000,000 fewer Chinese
employment in
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 [replaced] by
automation.” —Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age:
Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a time of Brilliant Technologies
“Automation has become so
sophisticated that on a typical
passenger flight, a human pilot holds
the controls for a grand total of
3 minutes
…
.
[Pilots] have become, it’s not
much of an exaggeration to say,
computer operators.”
Source: Nicholas Carr, “The Great Forgetting,” The Atlantic, 11.13
“Meet Your
Next Surgeon:
Dr. Robot”
Source: Feature/Fortune/15 JAN 2013/on Intuitive Surgical’s
da Vinci
/multiple bypass heart-surgery robot
(“Almost all health care people get is going to be done by
algorithms within a decade or two.” —Michael Vassar/MetaMed)
SENSOR PILLS: “… Proteus Digital Health is one of
They make a
silicon chip the size of a grain of sand that is embedded
into a safely digested pill that is swallowed. When the chip
mixes with stomach acids, the processor is powered by the
body’s electricity and transmits data to a patch worn on
the skin. That patch, in turn, transmits data via Bluetooth
to a mobile app, which then transmits the data to a central
database where a health technician can verify if a patient
has taken her or his medications. “This is a bigger deal than it
several pioneers in sensor-based health technology.
may seem. In 2012, it was estimated that people not taking their
prescribed medications cost $258 BILLION in emergency room visits,
hospitalization, and doctor visits. An average of 130,000 Americans die
each year because they don’t follow their prescription regimens closely
enough...” (The FDA approved placebo testing in April 2012; sensor pills
are ticketed to come to market in 2015 or 2016.)
Source: Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy
Robot Wars!
“The combination of new
market rules and new
technology was turning
the stock market into, in
a war of
robots.”
effect,
—Michael Lewis, “Goldman’s Geek
Tragedy,” Vanity Fair, 09.13
Betterment/
“Ambitions of a
Robo Adviser”
“could put tens of
thousands of U.S. investment
advisors out of their jobs”
—FT/1217.14/
“Just like other members of the
the algorithm gets
to vote on whether the
firm makes an
investment in a specific
company or not. The
board,
program will be the sixth
member of DKV's board.”
Source: Business Insider, 13 May 2014: “A Hong Kong VC fund
has just appointed an algorithm to its board.”
“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.”
company.’
—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)
Persado (vs. copywriter): emotion words,
product characteristics, “call to action,” position
of text, images
Copywriter/1.3%: Up To $250 To Spend On
All Ships In All Destinations.
2 Days Left
vs.
Algorithm/4.1%: No kidding! You Qualify!
Experience An Incredible
Vacation With Us :-)
“A creative person is good but random.
We’ve taken the randomness out by
building an ontology of language.”
—Lawrence Whittle, head of sales
Source: Wall Street Journal/ 0825.14/
“It’s Finally Time to Take AI Seriously”
“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 the World
—Christopher Steiner,
“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
Automate This:
How Algorithms
Came to Rule
the World
—Christopher Steiner
“Software
is eating
the world.”
—Marc Andreessen
“A bureaucrat is
an expensive
microchip.”
—Dan Sullivan, consultant and executive coach
“The intellectual
talents of highly trained
professionals are no
more protected from
automation than is the
driver’s left turn.”
—Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage: Automation and Us
Multiple Choice Examination
You will you lose your job to;
choose one …
(1) An offshore contractor?
(2) An algorithm?
(3) A robot?
Source: Inspired by Dan Pink
IoT/The Internet of Things
IoE/The Internet of
Everything
M2M/Machine-to-Machine
Ubiquitous computing
Embedded computing
Pervasive computing
Industrial Internet
Etc.* ** ***
*“More Than 50
BILLION connected devices by 2020” —Ericsson
**Estimated 212 BILLION connected devices by 2020—IDC
***“By 2025 IoT could be applicable to $82 TRILLION of output or
approximately one half the global economy”—GE (The WAGs to end all WAGs!)
“Ford is working with the
healthcare industry on a
solution that would notify a
nearby hospital if you were
having a heart attack in your
car, which can send an
ambulance … before you even
know you’re having one. …”
—Daniel Kellmereit & Daniel Obodovski, The Silent Intelligence: The Internet of Things
“This Bio-Drone Grows
Itself, And Then Melts
Into A Puddle Of Sugar
When It's Done Flying”
Source: Headline, Fast Company, 08 December 2014
And We’re
Just Starting
G
R
I
N
enetics
obotics
nformatics
anotechnology
Destruction
“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
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
“The median worker is
losing the race against the
machine.”
—Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Race Against The Machine
Median inflation adjusted
wages, men 30-50 with
jobs, 1969-2009:
$33K,
-27%
Source: “The Slow Disappearance of the American
Working Man,” Bloomberg Businessweek/08.11
“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 [
”
University].
Deloitte/Oxford
—Headline, Telegraph (UK),
11 November 2014
Creative
Destruction
“We are in no danger of
running out of new
combinations try. Even
if technology froze today, we have more
possible ways of configuring the
different applications, machines, tasks,
and distribution channels to create new
processes and products than we could
ever exhaust.” —Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Race
Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation,
Driving Productivity and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy
“This boom, built around systems
which match jobs with independent
contractors on the fly, marks a
striking new stage in a deeper
transformation. Using the now ubiquitous
platform of the smartphone to deliver labour
services in a variety of new ways will challenge
many of the fundamental assumptions of
twentieth-century capitalism, from the nature
of the firm to the structure of careers.” “The
‘on demand economy’ is the result of pairing the
workforce with the smartphone.”
—Economist, “There’s an App For That,” 0103.15
Tongal: 40K video makers, Super
Bowl ad for Colgate-Palmolive for
$17K.
Business Talent Group/LA: Bosses
on the fly
Axiom: 650 lawyers, $100M
Mechanical Turk/Amazon: Anything!
ResearchGate/Ijad Madisch:
5M members, 10K new per day
human
beings are
entrepreneurs. When we
Muhammad Yunus:
“All
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.”
—Muhammad Yunus,
Nobel Laureate/The News Hour/PBS/1122.2006
Repeat:
Job
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:
Context:
Let’s Not Get
Too Carried
Away
Life BEFORE Clay Christensen Invented “Disruption”: My mom (1909-2005) lived
through the advent of mass market cars, commercial radio, routine longdistance phone calls, portable phones, cell phones, satellites, satellite
phone call transmission, movies with sound, color movies, TV, TV
dinners, microwave ovens, commercial use of aircraft, jets, extensive
electrification, the Great Depression, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Walter
Johnson, Bob Feller, Barry Bonds, Derek Jeter, the West Coast Offense,
the Civil Rights Movement, an African-American Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff/Secretary of State, Gay Pride, women win the right to
vote, Gandhi, Churchill, WWI, WWII, the birth of the U.S. Navy Seabees,
relativity, the A-bomb, the EEC, the EU, the Euro, the Korean War, the
Vietnam War, the Iraq War, 9/11, the Cold War, the disintegration of the
USSR, the resurgence of China, the death and resurrection of Germany
and Japan, Oklahoma & New Mexico & Arizona & Hawaii & Alaska
become states, William Howard Taft* (*just missed Teddy Roosevelt),
FDR, Ronald Reagan, Father Coughlin, Jim and Tammy Bakker,
mainframe computers, PCs, hyperlinks, the iPod, DARPA-net, the
Internet, air conditioning, weed whackers, Mickey Mouse, Frank Sinatra,
Elvis, the Beatles, Madonna, the Model T, the Cadillac Escalade, Nancy
Drew, the first four Harry Potter books, antibiotics, MRIs, polio vaccine,
genetic mapping, WWII rockets, space flight, man-to-the-moon, more or
less permanent space station.”**
(**But, to be sure, not long enough to see the Cubs win another World Series or to take a selfie.)
And a Little
(More) Not So
Bad News
“Taking the longer view [espoused by declinists] , one
would expect that the American share of the global
economy had been shrinking as the various upstarts
Over the past 40 years,
though, the U.S. share
has remained remarkably
constant. It was 27 percent
in 1970 and 25.4 percent in
2012. So somebody else must be contracting faster
kept rising.
[of the global economy]
than the United States to make room for the expanding
rest. The losers in the great GDP race are the two great
risers of the past, Europe and Japan.”
—Josef Joffe, publisher-editor of Die Zeit, in The Myth of America’s Decline:
Politics, Economics, and a Half Century of False Prophecies
INNOVATION:
FIVE TACTICS
/49*
*No kidding … the ONLY thing I’ve learned “for sure” in the 49 years
I’ve been involved in management in one way or another.
Lesson49:
WTTMSW
WHOEVER
TRIES
THE
MOST
STUFF
WINS
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
“WE HAVE A
‘STRATEGIC
PLAN.’ IT’S
CALLED DOING
THINGS.”
— Herb Kelleher
READY.
FIRE!
AIM.
H. Ross Perot (vs “Aim! Aim! Aim!” /EDS vs GM/1985)
“Burt Rutan wasn’t a fighter jock; he was an engineer who had
been asked to figure out why the 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 had built model airplanes as a
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.”
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
“MOVE FAST.
BREAK
THINGS.”
—Facebook
I want to be a Photographer.
Take a ton of photos. Start a photo blog.
Organize an art show for your best work. Make stuff.
I want to be a Writer.
Write a ton of pieces. Establish a voice on social media.
Start a blog. Write guest posts for friends. Make stuff.
Talk is cheap.
Just make stuff.
—Reid Shilperoot, brand strategist, on the one piece of
advice that has helped him overcome creative blocks
“EXPERIMENT
FEARLESSLY”
Tactic #1
Source: BusinessWeek, “Type A Organization Strategies: How to Hit a Moving Target”—
“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 (11.08.10)
“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
Culture of Prototyping
“Effective prototyping may
THE MOST
VALUABLE CORE
COMPETENCE an
be
innovative organization can
hope to have.” —Michael Schrage
“FAIL.
FORWARD.
FAST.”
High Tech CEO, Pennsylvania
“Fail faster.
Succeed
Sooner.”
David Kelley/IDEO
“No matter.
Try again. Fail
again. Fail
better.”
—Samuel Beckett
“REWARD
excellent failures.
PUNISH mediocre
successes.”
—Phil Daniels, Sydney exec
“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)
“The secret of fast
progress is
inefficiency, fast
and furious and
numerous failures.”
—Kevin Kelly
“The essence
of capitalism is
encouraging failure,
not rewarding
success.”
—Nassim Nicholas Taleb/Reason TV/0124.13
Ideas Economy:
CAN YOUR
BUSINESS FAIL
FAST ENOUGH TO
SUCCEED?
Source: ad for Economist Conference/0328.13/Berkeley CA (caps are Economist)
“It is not enough to
‘tolerate’ failure—
you must
‘celebrate’
failure.”
—Richard Farson (Whoever Makes the
Most Mistakes Wins)
“YOU MISS
100%
OF
THE SHOTS YOU
NEVER TAKE.”
—Wayne Gretzky
WTTMSASTMSUTFW
WTTMSASTMSUTFW
WHOEVER
TRIES
THE
MOST
STUFF
AND
SCREWS
THE
MOST
STUFF
UP
THE
FASTEST
WINS
“All life is an
experiment. The
more experiments
you make, the
better.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Act fast.
Fail fast.
Correct fast.
Make bigger and more
interesting mistakes.
All of life is an
experiment.
We Are
What
We Eat
We Are What
We Eat
We Are Who We
Hang Out With
“It is hardly possible to
overrate the value of placing human
beings in contact with persons dissimilar 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
“HANG
OUT WITH ‘COOL’ AND
THOU SHALT BECOME
MORE COOL. HANG
OUT WITH ‘DULL’ AND
THOU SHALT BECOME
MORE DULL. PERIOD.”
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’ ”
Measure/Manage: Portfolio “Strangeness”/“Quality”
1. Customers
2. Vendors
3. Out-sourcing Partners
4. Acquisitions
5. Purposeful “Theft”
6. Diversity/“d”iversity
7. Diversity/Crowd-sourcing
8. Diversity/Weird
9. Diversity/Curiosity
10. Benchmarks
11. Calendar
12. MBWA
13. Lunch/General
14. Lunch/Other functions
15. Location/Internal
16. Location/HQ
17. Top team
18. Board
“The Billion-man
Research Team:
Companies offering
work to online
communities are
reaping the benefits of
crowdsourcing.”
—Headline, FT
“Who’s the most
interesting person
you’ve met in the last
90 days? How do I
get in touch with
them?”
—Fred Smith
Ouch!
“The Bottleneck …
“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
Diversity: Hang out with cool and thou
shalt become more cool. Hang out with
dull and thou shalt become more dull.
Diversity: Your “hang out with” “portfolio”
can/should be as carefully concocted/
managed/ measured as your strategic
plan—it IS your de facto strategic plan!
Diversity: Every relationship-partnership
decision (employee/ vendor/customer/etc.)
is a strategic decision: “Innovate, ‘Yes’ or
‘No.’”
XFX =
#1
XFX = #1*
*Cross-Functional eXcellence
NEVER
WASTE A
LUNCH!
% XF
lunches*
*Measure!
evaluation!
Monthly! Part of
XFX: SOCIAL
ACCELERATORS …
“Allied commands depend on
mutual confidence
and this confidence is
gained, above all
development
of friendships.”
through the
—General D.D. Eisenhower, Armchair General*
*“Perhaps his most outstanding ability [at West Point]
he made friends and earned the
trust of fellow cadets who came from widely
varied backgrounds; it was a quality that would pay great
was the ease with which
dividends during his future coalition command.”
“The capacity to develop close and
enduring relationships is the mark of
a leader. Unfortunately, many
leaders of major companies believe
their job is to create the strategy,
organization structure and
organizational processes—then they
just delegate the work to be done,
remaining aloof from the people
doing the work.” —Bill George,
Authentic Leadership
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???)
Innovation Index: Move every
2
project (definition)
notches up on the
“WOW-ification
Scale” … THIS WEEK.
Innovate
or Die:
Ubiquitous!
Iron Innovation Equality Law:
The quality and
quantity and
imaginativeness
of innovation shall be
the same in all
functions —e.g., in HR and
purchasing as much as in marketing or
product development.*
10
VALUE-ADDED
STRATEGIES
TGRs:
8/80
Customers describing their service
experience as “superior”:
8%
Companies describing
the service experience they provide as
“superior”:
80%
—Source: Bain & Company survey of 362 companies, reported in John DiJulius,
What's the Secret to Providing a World-class Customer Experience?
BEGINS
(and ENDS)
It
in the …
PARKING
LOT*
*Disney
<TGW
and …
>TGR
(Things Gone
WRONG-Things Gone RIGHT)
“Experiences
are as distinct
from services
as services are
from goods.”
—Joe Pine & Jim Gilmore, The Experience Economy:
Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage
C
*Chief e
O*
Xperience Officer
TGRS.
MANAGE ’EM.
MEASURE ’EM.*
*I use “manage-measure” a lot. Translation: These are
not “soft” ideas; they are exceedingly important things
that can be managed—AND measured.
TGRs:
K=R=P
“Courtesies of a small and trivial
character are the ones which
strike deepest in the grateful and
appreciating heart.” —Henry Clay
“The deepest principle in human nature
is the craving* to be appreciated.”
—William James
*“Craving,” not “wish” or “desire” or “longing”/Dale Carnegie, How to Win
Friends and Influence People (“The BIG Secret of Dealing With People”)
“The deepest urge in human nature is
the desire to be important.” —John Dewey
"Let's not forget
that small
emotions are the
great captains of
our lives."
–—Van Gogh
“When dealing with people,
remember you are not dealing
with creatures of logic, but
with creatures of emotion,
creatures bristling with
prejudice and motivated by
pride and vanity.” —Dale Carnegie
(from Timeless Wisdom, compiled by Gary Fenchuk)
139,380 former
patients from 225 hospitals:
Press Ganey Assoc:
NONE
of THE top 15
factors determining Patient Satisfaction
referred to patient’s health outcome.
Instead: directly related to Staff
Interaction; directly correlated with
Employee Satisfaction
Source: Putting Patients First, Susan Frampton, Laura Gilpin, Patrick Charmel
“There is a misconception that supportive interactions
require more staff or more time and are therefore more
costly. Although labor costs are a substantial part of any
hospital budget, the interactions themselves add nothing to
KINDNESS
IS FREE.
the budget.
Listening to patients
or answering their questions costs nothing. It can be argued
that negative interactions—alienating patients, being nonresponsive to their needs or limiting their sense of control—
can be very costly. … Angry, frustrated or frightened
patients may be combative, withdrawn and less
cooperative—requiring far more time than it would have
taken to interact with them initially in a positive way.”
—Putting Patients First, Susan Frampton, Laura Gilpin, Patrick Charmel
(Griffin Hospital/Derby CT; Planetree Alliance)
K=R=P
Kindness =
Repeat Business =
Profit.
K = R = P/Kindness = Repeat business = Profit
Kindness:
Kind.
Thoughtful.
Decent.
Caring.
Attentive.
Engaged.
Listens well/obsessively.
Appreciative.
Open.
Visible.
Honest.
Responsive.
On time all the time.
Apologizes with dispatch for screw-ups.
“Over”-reacts to screw-ups of any magnitude.
“Professional” in all dealings.
Optimistic.
Understands that kindness to staff breeds kindness to others/outsiders.
Applies throughout the “supply chain.”
Applies to 100% of customer’s staff.
Explicit part of values statement.
Basis for evaluation of 100% of our staff.
Kindness … WORKS!
Kindness …
PAYS!
The Manager’s
Book of Decencies:
How Small
Gestures Build
Great Companies.
—
Steve Harrison, Adecco
TGRs:
3 Minutes
“I regard apologizing as the
most magical, healing,
restorative gesture human
beings can make. It is the
centerpiece of my
work with executives who
want to get better.”
—Marshall Goldsmith, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There:
How Successful People Become Even More Successful.
THERE ONCE
WAS A TIME WHEN A
Relationships
(of all varieties):
THREE-MINUTE
PHONE CALL WOULD
HAVE AVOIDED SETTING OFF THE
DOWNWARD SPIRAL THAT
RESULTED IN A COMPLETE
RUPTURE.*
*Divorce, loss of a BILLION $$$ aircraft sale, etc., etc.
THE PROBLEM IS
RARELY/NEVER THE
PROBLEM. THE
RESPONSE TO THE
PROBLEM INVARIABLY
ENDS UP BEING THE
REAL PROBLEM.
(OPPORTUNITY).
TGRs:
LBTs*
*Little BIG Things
LITTLE =
Big carts =
Source: Walmart
Bag sizes = New markets:
Source: PepsiCo
2X: “When Friedman
slightly
curved
the right angle of an
entrance corridor to one property, he
was ‘amazed at the magnitude of
change in pedestrians’ behavior’—the
percentage who entered increased from
one-third to nearly two-thirds.”
—Natasha Dow Schull, Addiction By Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas
SEE GREEN
= RECOVER
20% FASTER
(1) AMENABLE TO RAPID
EXPERIMENTATION/FAILURE “FREE”
(NO BAD “PR,” NO $$)
(2) QUICK TO IMPLEMENT/QUICK TO
ROLL OUT
(3) INEXPENSIVE TO IMPLEMENT/
ROLL OUT
(4) HUGE MULTIPLIER
(5) AN “ATTITUDE”
(6) DOES NOT BY AND LARGE REQUIRE A
“POWER POSITION” FROM WHICH
TO LAUNCH EXPERIMENTS.
Social Business/
Customer
Engagement
“Customer engagement is moving
from relatively isolated market
transactions to deeply connected
and sustained social
relationships. This basic change
in how we do business will make
an impact on just about
everything we do.”
Social Business By Design: Transformative Social Media Strategies
For the Connected Company —Dion Hinchcliffe & Peter Kim
Social Survival Manifesto*
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Hiding is not an option.
Face it, you are outnumbered. (“level playing field, arrogance denied”)
You no longer control the message.
Try acting like … a human being.
Learn to listen, or else. (“REALLY listening to others a must”)
Admit that you don’t have all the answers.
Speak plainly and seek to inform.
8.
Quit being a monolith.
9.
Try being less evil.
(“Your employees, speaking
online as individuals, are a crucial resource …
can be managed through frameworks that
ENCOURAGE participation”)
(“Internet culture largely built on
the principal of the Gift Economy … give value
away to your online communities”)
10. Pay it forward, now.
*Tom Liacas; socialdisruptions.com
Teva Canada
SharePoint: Joint problem
solving/collaboration within
supply chain org
Strategy-Nets: Supply chain
plus sales, marketing,
customer service
Moxie: blogs, wikis, joint doc
editing, etc.
Source: Dion Hinchcliffe & Peter Kim, Social Business By Design
Biz 2014: Get Aboard the “S-Train”
SM/Social Media.
SX/Social eXecutives.
SE/Social Employees.
SO/Social Organization.
SB/Social Business.
Seven Characteristics of the Social Employee
1. Engaged
2. Expects Integration of the
Personal and Professional
3. Buys Into the Brand’s Story
4. Born Collaborator
5. Listens
6. Customer-Centric
7. Empowered Change Agent
Source: Cheryl Burgess & Mark Burgess,
The Social Employee
Marbles, a Ball and Social Employees ay IBM
“Picture a ball and a bag of marbles side by side. The two
items might have the same volume—that is, if you dropped
them into a bucket, they would displace the same amount of
water. The difference, however, lies in the surface area,
Because a bag of marbles is comprised
of several individual pieces, the
combined surface area of all the
marbles far outstrips the surface area
of a single ball. The expanded surface area
represents a social brand’s increased diversity. These
surfaces connect and interact with each other in unique
ways, offering customers and employees alike a variety of
paths toward a myriad of solutions. If none of the paths prove
to be suitable, social employees can carve out new paths on
their own.” —Ethan McCarty, Director of Enterprise Social Strategy, IBM (from Cheryl
Burgess & Mark Burgess,
The Social Employee
Formal IBM Social Business
Via a “wiki
experiment;” IBM
employees create crowdsourced policy.*
Policy:
*Subsequently “Digital IBMer Hub”; “Connections” social
media platform, etc. etc.
Source: IBM case, in Cheryl Burgess & Mark Burgess, The Social Employee
IBM Social Business Markers/2005-2012
*433,000 employees on IBM Connection
*26,000 individual blogs
*91,000 communities
*62,000 wikis
*50,000,000 IMs/day
*200,000 employees on Facebook
*295, 000 employees/800,000 followers
of the brand
*35,000 on Twitter
Source: IBM case, in Cheryl Burgess & Mark Burgess, The Social Employee
SB/SE
> SM*
*“Social BUSINESS”/“Social EMPLOYEE”/“Social Media”
Social Business/
New Ball Game
“We’re moving toward an age of nearly perfect
information. Review sites, shopping apps on
smartphones, an extended network of acquaintances
available through social media, and unprecedented
access to experts mean that consumers operate in a
radically different, socially interactive information
environment.* … Consumers tend to make better
decisions and become less susceptible to context or
framing manipulations. For businesses, it means
marketing is changing forever.”
—Itamar Simonson and Emanuel Rosen,
Value:
Absolute
What Really Influences Customers in the
Age of (Nearly) Perfect Information
*Google:
ZMOT
(ZERO Moment Of Truth)
ZMOT
: ZERO Moment Of Truth/Google*
“You know what a ‘moment of truth’ is. It’s when a prospective
customer decides either to take the next step in the purchase
funnel, or to exit and seek other options. … But what is a ‘zero
moment of truth’? Many behaviors can serve as a zero moment of
truth, but what binds them together is that the purchase is being
researched and considered before the prospect even enters the
classic sales funnel … In its research, Google found that
84%
of shoppers said the new mental model,
ZMOT, shapes their decisions. …”
—Jay Baer, Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is About Help, Not Hype
*See www.zeromomentoftruth.com for ZMOT in book-length format
“Amy Howell
[social marketer extraordinaire,
ignites
epidemics. In a good way,
of course. Epidemics of
excitement. Epidemics of
business connections.
Epidemics of influence.”
founder of Howell Marketing]
—Mark Schaeffer, ROI/Return on Influence: The Revolutionary
Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing
“I would rather engage in a Twitter
conversation with a single
customer I than see our company
attempt to attract the attention of
millions in a coveted Super Bowl
commercial. Why? Because having people discuss your
brand directly with you, actually connecting one-to-one, is far more
valuable—not to mention far cheaper!. …
“Consumers want to discuss what they like, the companies they
support, and the organizations and leaders they resent. They want a
community. They want to be heard. …
“[I]f we engage employees, customers, and prospective customers in
meaningful dialogue about their lives, challenges, interests, and
concerns, we can build a community of trust, loyalty, and—possibly over
time—help them become advocates and champions for the brand.”
—Peter Aceto, CEO, Tangerine (from the Foreword to A World Gone Social: How
Companies Must Adapt to Survive, by Ted Coine & Mark Babbit)
DESIGN
Design Rules!
APPLE market cap
> Exxon Mobil*
*August 2011
“Design is
treated like a
religion at
BMW.” —Fortune
“With its carefully conceived mix of colors and textures,
STARBUCKS
aromas and music,
is more
indicative of our era than the iMac. It is to the Age of
Aesthetics what McDonald’s was to the Age of
Convenience or Ford was to the Age of Mass Production—
the touchstone success story, the exemplar of … the
‘Every Starbucks
store is carefully designed to
enhance the quality of everything
the customers see, touch, hear,
smell or taste,’ writes CEO Howard Schultz.”
aesthetic imperative. …
—Virginia Postrel, The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic
Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture and Consciousness
“We don’t have a good language to talk
about this kind of thing. In most people’s
vocabularies, design means veneer. … But
to me, nothing could be further from the
DESIGN IS
THE FUNDAMENTAL
SOUL OF A MANMADE CREATION.”
meaning of design.
—Steve Jobs
DESIGN is the
principal difference
Hypothesis:
love and
hate!*
between
*Not “like” and “dislike”
“Only one company
can be the cheapest.
All others must use
design.”
—Rodney Fitch, Fitch & Co.
Source: Insights, definitions of design, the Design Council (UK)
Ann Landers as management guru/
three criteria for products, projects, a
communication, etc.:
Good.
True.
Helpful.
O*
C
*Chief
Design
Officer
“Businesspeople don’t
need to ‘understand
designers better.’
Businesspeople need to
be designers.”
—Roger Martin/Dean/Rotman Management School/University of Toronto
Design is …
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
The reception area
The loo!!
Dialogues at the call center
Every electronic (or paper) form
Every business process “map”
Every email
Every meeting agenda/setting/etc.
Every square meter of every facility
Every new product proposal
Every manual
Every customer contact
A consideration in every promotion decision
The presence and ubiquity of an “Aesthetic sensibility”/
“Design mindfulness”
* An encompassing “design review” process
* Etc.
* Etc.
Hypothesis: Men
CANNOT
design for women’s
!!??
needs
Women BUY
(Everything)
!
“Forget CHINA,
INDIA and the
INTERNET: Economic
Growth Is Driven by
WOMEN.”
Source: Headline, Economist
W>
2X (C + I)*
*“Women now drive the global economy. Globally, they control about $20
trillion in consumer spending, and that figure could climb as high as
$28 trillion
in the next five years. Their
$13 trillion in total yearly earnings could reach $18 trillion in the same
period. In aggregate, women represent a growth market bigger than China and India combined—more than
twice as big in fact. Given those numbers, it would be foolish to ignore or underestimate the female consumer. And
yet many companies do just that—even ones that are confidant that they have a winning strategy when it comes to
women. Consider Dell’s …”
Source: Michael Silverstein and Kate Sayre, “The Female Economy,” HBR, 09.09
“Women are
THE majority
market”
—Fara Warner/The Power of the Purse
Women as Decision Makers/Various sources
Home Furnishings …
Vacations …
92%
94%
(Adventure Travel … 70%/ $55B travel equipment)
91%
D.I.Y.
… 80%
Consumer Electronics … 51%
Cars … 68% (influence 90%)
Houses …
(major “home projects”)
(66% home computers)
All consumer purchases …
Bank Account …
83% *
89%
67%
Small business loans/biz starts … 70%
Health Care … 80%
Household investment decisions …
*In the USA women hold >50% managerial positions including >50% purchasing officer positions;
hence women also make the majority of commercial purchasing decisions.
Women as …
55%
Purchasing managers: 42%
Wholesale/retail buyers: 52%
Purchasing agents:
Employee health-benefit
plans:
60%
Source: Martha Barletta/TrendSight Group/0517.11
MOST
SIGNIFICANT
VARIABLE in EVERY
“The
sales situation is the
GENDER
of the buyer, and
more importantly, how the
salesperson communicates to
the buyer’s gender.”
—Jeffery Tobias Halter, Selling to Men, Selling to Women
The Perfect Answer
Jill and Jack buy
slacks in black…
Sales/After-sales Process
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Kick-off – Women
Research – Women
Purchase – Men
Ownership – Women
Word-of-mouth – Women
Source: Martha Barletta, Marketing to Women: How to Increase Your Share of the World’s Largest Market
The (ENORMOUS)
“Services Added”
Opportunity
“Rolls-Royce now earns
more from tasks such
as managing clients’ overall
procurement strategies and
maintaining aerospace
engines it sells than it does
from making them.”
—Economist
“You are headed
for commodity
hell if you don’t
have services.”
—Lou Gerstner, on IBM’s revolution (1997)
M
IBM
IB
to
$50B*
*IBM Global Services/
“Systems integrator of choice”
PS
UPS
U
to
“Big Brown’s New Bag: UPS Aims to
Be the Traffic Manager for
Corporate America” —Headline/BW
“UPS wants to take over the sweet
spot in the endless loop of goods,
information and capital that all the
packages [it moves] represent.” —ecompany.com
“It’s all about solutions. We work
with customers on creating and
running better, stronger, cheaper
supply chains.” —Bob Stoffel, UPS senior exec
IDEO
Product Design
Product Design Training
Innovation Training
WHITE-COLLAR SURVIVAL STRATEGY #1:
Department as Smallish/Entrepreneurial
BUSINESS
E.g.: Training Inc., a 14person unit* in a 50-person HR
department in a $200M
business unit in a $3B
corporation—aiming for
Excellence & WOW!
*PSF/
Professional Service Firm (See my …
Professional Service Firm 50: Fifty Ways to Transform Your “Department” Into
A Professional Service Firm Whose Trademarks Are Passion and Innovation.)
The Professional Service Firm50: Fifty Ways to Transform
Your “Department” into a Professional Service Firm Whose
Trademarks are Passion and Innovation!
Era #1/Obvious Value: “Our ‘it’ works, is
delivered on time” (“Close”)
Era #2/Augmented Value: “How our ‘it’
can add value—a ‘useful it’ ” (“Solve”)
Era #3/Complex Value Networks: “How
our ‘system’ can change you and
deliver ‘BUSINESS ADVANTAGE’”
(“Culture-Strategic change”)
Source: Jeff Thull, The Prime Solution: Close the Value Gap,
Increase Margins, and Win the Complex Sale
“The business of selling is not just about matching
viable solutions to the customers that require them.
It’s equally about managing
the change process the
customer will need to go
through to implement the
solution and achieve the value
promised by the solution. One of
the key differentiators of our position in the market is
our attention to managing change and making change
stick in our customers’ organization.”
—Jeff Thull, The Prime Solution: Close the Value Gap, Increase Margins, and Win the Complex Sale
AND THE
WINNERS
AREN’T/ARE
-1/+1/2
S&P 500
+1/-1*
*Every …
!
2 weeks
Source: Richard Foster (via Rita McGrath/HBR/12.26.13
“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
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
“Data drawn from the real world
attest to a fact that is beyond
EVERYTHING
IN EXISTENCE TENDS
TO DETERIORATE.”
our control:
—Norberto Odebrecht, Education Through Work
AND THE
WINNERS
AREN’T/ARE
The Magnificent
Monsters of
Motueka
(et al.)
THE RED
CARPET
STORE
(Joel Resnick/Flemington NJ)
*Basement Systems Inc.
(Larry Janesky/Seymour CT)
*Dry Basement Science
(100,000++ copies!)
*1990: $0; 2003: $13M;
2010:
$80,000,000
The Magicians of Motueka (PLUS)
!
W.A. Coppins Ltd.*
(Coppins Sea Anchors/
PSA/para sea anchors)
*Textiles, 1898; thrive on
“wicked problems”
U.S. Navy STLVAST (Small To Large Vehicle At Sea
Transfer); custom fabric from W. Wiggins Ltd./Wellington
(specialty nylon, “Dyneema,” from DSM/Netherlands)
—e.g.,
Aizen Kobo
Indigo
Workshop
Going “Social”: Location and Size Independent
“Today, despite the fact that we’re just a little swimming
pool company in Virginia, we have the most trafficked
swimming pool website in the world. Five years ago, if
you’d asked me and my business partners what we do, the
answer would have been simple, ‘We build in-ground
‘We
are the best teachers
… in the world … on the
fiberglass swimming pools.’ Now we say,
subject of fiberglass swimming pools,
and we also happen to build them.’”
—Jay Baer, Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is About Help, Not Hype
“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
Retail Superstars:
Inside the 25 Best
Independent Stores
in America
—by George Whalin
JUNGLE JIM’S INTERNATIONAL MARKET, FAIRFIELD, OH:
“An adventure in
‘shoppertainment,’ begins in the parking lot
and goes on to
1,600
cheeses and
1,400
varieties of hot sauce—not to mention 12,000 wines priced from
$8-$8,000
4,000
a bottle; all this is brought to you by
vendors. Customers from every corner of the globe.”
BRONNER’S CHRISTMAS WONDERLAND, FRANKENMUTH, MI, POP
5,000: 98,000-square-foot “shop” features
ornaments,
50,000
6,000
Christmas
trims, and anything else you can
name pertaining to Christmas. …”
“ ‘Commodity’ is a
state of mind.
ANYTHING can be
DRAMATICALLY
differentiated.”
Middle-sized
NicheMicro-niche
Dominators!
I love …
"Own" a niche through EXCELLENCE
(Writ large: Germany’s MITTELSTAND)
!
MITTELSTAND*
*“agile creatures darting between the
legs of the multinational monsters” (Bloomberg
BusinessWeek)
Michael Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed’: THE THREE RULES:
How Exceptional Companies Think*:
1. Better before cheaper.
2. Revenue before cost.
3. There are no other rules.
(*From a database of over 25,000 companies from hundreds of industries covering 45 years, they
uncovered 344 companies that qualified as statistically “exceptional.”)
Jeff Colvin, Fortune: “The Economy Is Scary … But Smart
Companies Can Dominate”:
They manage for value—not for EPS.
They keep developing human capital.
They get radically customer-centric.
LEADERSHIP
MBWA
25/50
“I’m always stopping by our
at least
a week.
stores—
25
I’m also in other
places: Home Depot, Whole Foods, Crate &
Barrel. I try to be a sponge to pick up as
much as I can.” —Howard Schultz
Source: Fortune, “Secrets of Greatness”
MBWA
Managing
By
Wandering
Around
When Bob Waterman and I wrote In Search of
Excellence in 1982, business was mostly “by the
numbers”—and the Americans were struggling (to put
it mildly) against hands on, tactile stuff … like superior
Japanese auto quality.
Then, at Hewlett Packard, we were introduced to the
famed “HP Way,” the centerpiece of which was
in-touch management. HP had a term for this …
(MANAGING BY
WANDERING AROUND.)
MBWA.
Bob and I fell in immediate love. Not only was the idea
per se important and effective and cool, but it
symbolized everything we were coming to cherish—
enterprises where bosses-leaders were in immediate
touch with and emotionally attached to workers,
customers, the product.
The idea is as arguably more important in 2015 than
it was in 1982.
Glib But TRUE
“Decisions
are made by
those who
show up.”
—Aaron Sorkin
“Most managers spend a great deal of time thinking about what they plan to do, but relatively little time thinking about what
they plan not to do. As a result, they become so caught up … in fighting the fires of the moment that they cannot really
attend to the long-term threats and risks facing the organization. So the first soft skill of leadership the hard way is to
cultivate the perspective of Marcus Aurelius: avoid busyness, free up your time, stay focused on what really matters.
Let me put it bluntly: every leader should
routinely keep a substantial portion of
his or her time—I would say as much as
50
percent—unscheduled.
…
Only when you have substantial ‘slop’ in your schedule—unscheduled time—will you have the space to reflect on what you
are doing, learn from experience, and recover from your inevitable mistakes. Leaders without such free time end up tackling
issues only when there is an immediate or visible problem. Managers’ typical response to my argument about free time is,
Yet we waste so much time in
unproductive activity—it takes an enormous effort on the part of the
leader to keep free time for the truly important things.”
‘That’s all well and good, but there are things I have to do.’
—Dov
Frohman (& Robert Howard), Leadership The Hard Way: Why Leadership Can’t Be Taught—
And How You Can Learn It Anyway (Chapter 5, “The Soft Skills Of Hard Leadership”)
“Rather than proudly
announce that your ‘door
is always open,’ get out of
your office and knock on
your employees’ doors
instead.”
—Jason Fried, founder, 37signals
“IT’S
ALWAYS
SHOWTIME.”
—
“IT’S ALWAYS
SHOWTIME.”
—David D’Alessandro, Career Warfare
“You must
be
the change you wish
to see in the world.”
Gandhi
“Nothing is so
contagious as
enthusiasm.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“I am a
dispenser of
enthusiasm.”
—Ben Zander, symphony conductor and management guru
“The leader must have
infectious optimism. … The
final test of a leader is the
feeling you have when you
leave his presence after a
conference. Have you a
feeling of uplift and
confidence?”
—Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery
“A leader is
a dealer in
hope.”
—Napoleon
“A man without
a smiling face
must not open
a shop.”
—Chinese Proverb
“Make it fun to work at
your agency. … Encourage
Get rid
of sad dogs
who spread
doom.”
exuberance.
—David Ogilvy
4, 8, 12
“The
4 most
important
words in any
organization are …
THE FOUR MOST IMPORTANT WORDS IN ANY ORGANIZATION
“WHAT
DO YOU
THINK?”
ARE …
Source: courtesy Dave Wheeler, posted at tompeters.com
Tomorrow: How
many times will you
“ask the WDYT
question”?
(Count ’em!!)
(Practice makes better!)
(This is a STRATEGIC skill!)
8
MBWA
:
Change the World With EIGHT Words
What do you think?*
How can I help?**
*Dave Wheeler: “What are the four most important words in the boss’ lexicon?”
**Boss as CHRO/Chief Hurdle Removal Officer **********************************
Are you a full-fledged
“professional” when it
comes to helping?
Some Help With Helping …
Help works when the recipient subsequently feels smarter—not
dumber.
Regularly help too soon—and you will set up expectation of inaction
until your "help" is provided.
Help poorly conveyed spawns powerlessness and resentment in
recipient.
Helping requires a sniper's rifle or surgeon's scalpel—not a shotgun
or machete.
Helping strategies vary (significantly) from individual to individual—
leave the “cookie cutter” at home.
Effectively "helping" may be the most difficult
leadership task of all!
"Help" is only truly successful when the recipient says, and believes:
"I did it myself!"
Near truism: Nobody wants help. But we would all like to have
received help.
"Don't be helpful. Be available.
Helpful people are a nuisance."
Guitarist Robert Fripp:
12
MBWA
:
Change the World
With TWELVE Words
What do you think?*
How can I help?**
What have you learned?***
*Dave Wheeler: “What are the four most important words in the boss’ lexicon?”
**Boss as CHRO/Chief Hurdle Removal Officer **********************************
***What (new thing) have you learned (in the last 24 hours)? ********************* *
You = Your
Calendar
You = Your
calendar*
*The calendar
NEVER
lies.
YOUR CALENDAR
KNOWS PRECISELY
WHAT YOU
REALLY CARE
ABOUT.
DO YOU????
“Dennis, you need a …
‘TO-DON’T ’
List !”
!
Meetings ROCK
(Make that: SHOULD Rock)
Bitch all you
want, but
meetings
are what you
(boss/leader) do!
Meetings are
#1
do. Therefore,
thing bosses
100% of
those meetings:
EXCELLENCE.
ENTHUSIASM.
ENGAGEMENT.
LEARNING. TEMPO.
Prepare for a
meeting/every meeting
as if your professional
life and legacy
depended on it.
It does.
“I always write
‘LISTEN’ on
the back of my hand
before a meeting.”
Source: Tweet viewed @tom_peters
#1
CEO Failing?
“If I had to
pick one failing
of CEOs, it’s
that …
—Co-founder of one of the largest investment services firms in the USA/world
“If I had to pick one failing of
they
don’t read
enough.”
CEOs, it’s that …
#1T
CEO Failing?
“Unfortunately, Kahneman argues
laureate Daniel Kahneman’s masterpiece
[Nobel
Thinking, Fast and
Slow very often our brain is to
],
lazy to think slowly and methodically.
Instead, we let the fast way of thinking
take over. As a consequence, we
often ‘see’ imaginary causalities,
and thus fundamentally misunderstand
the world.”
Source: Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work,
and Think, by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier
Thinking, Fast and Slow
“Why are experts inferior to algorithms? One reason is
that experts try to be clever, think outside the box …
This may work in the odd case, but more often than not
it reduces validity. …”
“The important conclusion from this research is that
an algorithm that is constructed on the back of an
envelope is often good enough to compete with an
and certainly good
enough to outdo expert judgment.”
optimally weighted formula—
“It is wrong to blame anyone for failing to forecast accurately
in an unpredictable world. However, it seems fair to
blame professionals for believing they can succeed at an
impossible task.”
Source: Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
(Chapter: “intuitions Vs. Formulas”)
For a definitive list of
159
cognitive
biases, see …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
Cognitive Biases: Behavioral, Social, and Memory
Actor-observer Bias
Ambiguity Effect
Anchoring or Focalism
Attentional Bias
Availability Cascade
Availability Heuristic
Backfire Effect
Bandwagon Effect
Base Rate Fallacy or Base Rate
Neglect
Belief Bias
Bias Blind Spot
Bizarreness Effect
Change Bias
Cheerleader Effect
Childhood Amnesia
Choice-supportive Bias
Clustering Illusion
Confirmation Bias
Congruence Bias
Conjunction Fallacy
Conservatism (Bayesian)
Conservatism or Regressive Bias
Consistency Bias
Context Effect
Contrast Effect
Cross-race Effect
Cryptomnesia
Curse of Knowledge
Decoy Effect
Defensive Attribution Hypothesis
Denomination Effect
Distinction Bias
Dunning-Kruger Effect
Duration Neglect
Egocentric Bias
Egocentric Memory Bias
Empathy Gap
Endowment Effect
Essentialism
Exaggerated Expectation
Acknowledgement
!
Acknowledgement
“The deepest principle
in human nature is the
craving* to be
appreciated.”
—William James
*“Craving,” not “wish” or “desire” or
“longing”/Distinction per Dale Carnegie in How to Win
Friends and Influence People, chapter titled “The BIG
Secret of Dealing With People”
“The deepest urge
in human nature
is the desire to be
important.”
—John Dewey
(In Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence
People (“The BIG Secret of Dealing With People”)
"Appreciative words are the
most powerful force
for good on earth.”
—George W. Crane, physician, columnist
“The two most powerful
things in existence: a
kind word and a
thoughtful gesture.”
—Ken Langone, co-founder, Home Depot
“Employees who
don't feel significant
rarely make
significant
contributions.”
—Mark Sanborn
“It was much later that I realized Dad’s
secret. He gained respect by giving it.
He talked and listened to the fourthgrade kids in Spring Valley who shined
shoes the same way he talked and
listened to a bishop or a college
HE WAS
SERIOUSLY INTERESTED
IN WHO YOU WERE AND
WHAT YOU HAD TO SAY.”
president.
—Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Respect
“You can make more
friends in two months
by becoming interested
in other people than
you can in two years
by trying to get other
people interested in
you.”
—Dale Carnegie
“When I left the dining room after
sitting next to Gladstone, I thought he
was the cleverest man in England. But
when I sat next to Disraeli I left
feeling I was the cleverest
person.”
—Jennie Jerome (WSCs American mother)
“When you are talking to
,
you feel like he doesn’t care about
anything or anybody else around but
you. He makes you feel like
[Bill Clinton]
the most important person in
the room.”
—Mark Hughes, screenwriter, Forbes blogger
“Leadership is about how
you make people feel—
about you, about the
project or work you’re
doing together, and
especially about
themselves.” —Betsy Myers,
Take the Lead: Motivate, Inspire, and Bring Out
the Best in Yourself and Everyone Around You
1 Mouth
2 Ears
“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
.
Best Listeners Win …
“IF YOU DON’T
LISTEN, YOU
DON’T SELL
ANYTHING.”
—Carolyn Marland
*8 of 10 sales presentations fail
*50% failed sales
talking
“at” before
listening!
presentations …
—Susan Scott, “Let Silence Do the Heavy Lifting,” chapter title,
Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life,
One Conversation at a Time
“My education in leadership began in Washington when I was an assistant to
Defense Secretary William Perry. He was universally loved and admired by
heads of state … and our own and allied troops. A lot of that was because
of the way he listened. Each person who talked to him had his
complete, undivided attention. Everyone blossomed in his presence,
because he was so respectful, and I realized I wanted to affect
people the same way.
“Perry became my role model but that was not enough. Something bigger had
to happen, and it did. It was painful to realize how often I just pretended to
hear people. How many times had I barely glanced up from my work
when a subordinate came into my office? I wasn’t paying attention; I
was marking time until it was my turn to give orders. That revelation
led me to a new personal goal. I vowed to treat every encounter with every
person on Benfold (Abrashoff was the Captain) as the most important thing at
that moment. It wasn’t easy, but my crew’s enthusiasm and ideas kept me
going.
“It didn’t take me long to realize that my young crew was smart, talented and
full of good ideas that usually came to nothing because no one in charge had
I decided that my job
was to listen aggressively …”
ever listened to them. …
—Mike Abrashoff, It’s Your Ship:
Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy
Suggested
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.”
LISTEN =
“PROFESSION” =
STUDY = PRACTICE =
EVALUATION =
ENTERPRISE VALUE
Change
Change Agents:
140 Characters
CHANGE. CHANGE AGENTS. 140 CHARACTERS.
Change agentry: Forget the word “enemies.” Focus on/obsess on … ALLIES.
Big change is not about fighting the bad guys. It’s about surrounding them with your
continuously recruited allies.
Success at change: Building a stable of allies. Failure: Pissing and moaning and picking fights.
Change agent time distribution: 50% recruiting Allies. 40% tending Allies. 10% other. 0%
fighting enemies.
Change: Allies do not automatically remain allies. Tend them and do NOT NOT NOT neglect them—the latter
is a common sin.
Change the 4F Way: Find a Fellow Freak Faraway. (Change agents need playmates and distant playpens.)
Change you want: It’s already happening somewhere. Find it!
Change is about end runs—not smash-mouth plunge down the middle.
Allies: Recruit the quiet ones as much or more than the noisy ones.
Change: Making loud noises is usually a loser’s strategy.
Change: Recruit allies 2 or 3 levels “down” … where the real work is done and from which the system can be
indirectly manipulated.
Change: “Suck down” for success.
ALLIES. ALLIES. ALLIES. ALLIES. ALLIES. ALLIES. (Then more
ALLIES.)
Change:
Change agents: Commit no minor sins. Don’t let the bad guys find a narrow opening and bring you down for
trivial reasons.
Change agents: Keep a civil tongue at all costs.
Change agents: Speak not ill of thine enemies. Even to pals in private. All the walls have ears.
Change agents: No: Charts and graphs. Instead: Demos. Demos. Then more demos.
Change: Success is more about momentum around small wins than it is about big wins.
Change: Engage your allies in the design process—even if it introduces impurities. They must FEEL true
ownership.
100% of change-that-works is NON-linear.
Change: Joyfully let/encourage your allies to take 100% credit for the small wins they’re involved in.
Serious change includes bad days, bad weeks, bad months, perhaps bad years.
Change agents: Re-read all emails 3 times before sending.
SM is a marvel. Do NOT shortchange face-to-face with Allies.
Change agents: Successful small wins with outsiders provide enormous street cred.
Change agent: Preaching to the choir is just fine. If the members of the choir preach to
their choirs it becomes a ... MOVEMENT!
Step Up To
Creating/
Living/
Maintaining an
Effective Culture
“What matters most
to a company over time?
Strategy or culture?
WSJ/0910.13:
Dominic Barton, MD, McKinsey & Co.:
“Culture.”
“Culture precedes
positive results. It
doesn’t get tacked on
as an afterthought on
the way to the victory
stand.”
—NFL Hall of Fame Coach Bill Walsh
.
“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 thousands of people
Yet I came to see in
my time at IBM that culture
isn’t just one aspect of the
is very, very hard.
game
—IT IS THE
GAME.”
—Lou Gerstner, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance
Hard is Soft.
Soft is Hard.
0/800
“INSANELY GREAT”
STEVE JOBS
“RADICALLY THRILLING”
BMW
“Astonish me!”
(Sergei Diaghilev, to a lead dancer)
“Build something great!”
(Hiroshi Yamauchi, Nintendo, to a senior game designer)
“Make it immortal!”
(David Ogilvy, to a copywriter).
Raise your sights!
Blaze new trails!
Compete with the
immortals!
—David Ogilvy, on Ogilvy & Mather’s corporate culture
“Let us create such
a building that
future generations
will take us for
lunatics.”
—the church hierarchs at Seville, on a prospective cathedral
“We are crazy. We should do
something when people say it is
If people say
something is ‘good’, it
means someone else
is already doing it.”
‘crazy.’
—Hajime Mitarai, CEO, Canon
“You can’t behave in
a calm, rational
manner. You’ve got
to be out there on
the lunatic fringe.”
— Jack Welch
“Normal” =
“0
*There are …
for
ZERO
800”
… “normal people” in the history books.
“If you ask me what I
have come to do in
this world, I who am
an artist, I will reply: I
am here to live my life
out loud.”
— Émile Zola
“The reasonable man adapts
himself to the world; the
unreasonable one persists in
trying to adapt the world to
himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable
man.” —G.B. Shaw, Man and Superman: The Revolutionist’s Handbook
“Whenever anything is being
accomplished, it is being done, I
have learned, by a monomaniac
with a mission.” —Peter Drucker
Kevin Roberts’ Credo
1. Ready. Fire! Aim.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
If it ain’t broke ... Break it!
Hire crazies.
Ask dumb questions.
Pursue failure.
Lead, follow ... or get out of the way!
Spread confusion.
Ditch your office.
Read odd stuff.
10.
AVOID MODERATION!
Excellence. Always.
If not Excellence,
what?
If not Excellence
now, when?
This 78-year-old aims to do no less than
change the world—beginning with
changing dramatically the culture of a
2,000+ year old institution.
(And you?)