Tom Peters’ Re-Imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age Frito Lay/Austin/05.04.2004 Slides at … tompeters.com “Uncertainty is the only thing to be sure of.” —Anthony Muh, head of investment in Asia, Citigroup Asset Management “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” —General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff, U. S. Army Montgomery Ward … K-Mart … Sears … Macy’s … Hutzler’s … Wannamaker’s … DEC … Wang … Compaq … Chase Manhattan … American Motors … Chrysler … U. S. Steel … Bethlehem Steel … AT&T … Soviet Union … Wal*Mart … Dell … Microsoft … U.S.A. … 1. All Bets Are Off. “14 MILLION service jobs are in danger of being shipped overseas” — The Dobbs Report/USN&WR/11.03/re new UCB study “The world has arrived at a rare strategic inflection point where nearly half its population—living in China, India and Russia—have been integrated into the global market economy, many of them highly educated workers, who can do just about any job in the world. We’re talking about three billion people.” —Craig Barrett/Intel/01.08.2004 “There is no job that is America’s God-given right anymore.” —Carly Fiorina/ HP/ 01.08.2004 E.g. … Jeff Immelt: 75% of “admin, back room, finance” “digitalized” in years. Source: BW (01.28.02) “This is a dangerous world and it is going to become more dangerous.” “We may not be interested in chaos but chaos is interested in us.” Source: Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century “The organizations we created have become tyrants. They have taken control, holding us fettered, creating barriers that hinder rather than help our businesses. The lines that we drew on our neat organizational diagrams have turned into walls that no one can scale or penetrate or even peer over.” —Frank Lekanne Deprez & René Tissen, Zero Space: Moving Beyond Organizational Limits. “Our military structure today is essentially one developed and designed by Napoleon.” Admiral Bill Owens, former Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Eric’s Army Flat. Fast. Agile. Adaptable. Light … But Lethal. Talent/ “I Am an Army of One.” Info-intense. Network-centric. “Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee.” —Ali OODA Loop/Boyd Cycle “Unraveling the competition”/ Quick Transients/ Quick Tempo (NOT JUST SPEED!)/ Agility/ “So quick it is disconcerting” (adversary over-reacts or under-reacts)/ “Winners used tactics that caused the enemy to unravel before the fight” (NEVER HEAD TO HEAD) BOYD: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (Robert Coram) “Blitzkrieg is far more than lightning thrusts that most people think of when they hear the term; rather it was all about high operational tempo and the rapid exploitation of opportunity.”/ “Arrange the mind of the enemy.”—T.E. Lawrence BOYD: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (Robert Coram) Thunder Run/3rd Infantry Division/04.07.2004/“We wanted to create as much chaos as possible.”—COL David Perkins/“Disorient and demoralize”—DHR “There will be more confusion in the business world in the next decade than in any decade in history. And the current pace of change will only accelerate.” Steve Case “We are in a brawl with no rules.” Paul Allaire “Strategy meetings held once or twice a year” to “Strategy meetings needed several times a week” Source: New York Times on Meg Whitman/eBay Successful Businesses’ Dozen Truths: TP’s 30-Year Perspective 1. Insanely Great & Quirky Talent. 2. Disrespect for Tradition. 3. Totally Passionate (to the Point of Irrationality) Belief in What We Are Here to Do. 4. Utter Disbelief at the Bullshit that Marks “Normal Industry Behavior.” 5. A Maniacal Bias for Execution … and Utter Contempt for Those Who Don’t “Get It.” 6. Speed Demons. 7. Up or Out. (Meritocracy Is Thy Name. Sycophancy Is Thy Scourge.) 8. Passionate Hatred of Bureaucracy. 9. Willingness to Lead the Customer … and Take the Heat Associated Therewith. (Mantra: Satan Invented Focus Groups to Derail True Believers.) 10. “Reward Excellent Failures. Punish Mediocre Successes.” 11. Courage to Stand Alone on One’s Record of Accomplishment Against All the Forces of Conventional Wisdom. 12. A Crystal Clear Understanding of Brand Power. 2. The Destruction Imperative. “Wealth in this new regime flows directly from innovation, not optimization. That is, wealth is not gained by perfecting the known, but by imperfectly seizing the unknown.” Kevin Kelly, New Rules for the New Economy Forbes100 from 1917 to 1987: 39 members of the Class of ’17 were alive in ’87; 18 in ’87 F100; 18 F100 “survivors” underperformed the market by 20%; just 2 (2%), GE & Kodak, outperformed the market 1917 to 1987. S&P 500 from 1957 to 1997: 74 members of the Class of ’57 were alive in ’97; 12 (2.4%) of 500 outperformed the market from 1957 to 1997. Source: Dick Foster & Sarah Kaplan, Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market “Good management was the most powerful reason [leading firms] failed to stay atop their industries. Precisely because these firms listened to their customers, invested aggressively in technologies that would provide their customers more and better products of the sort they wanted, and because they carefully studied market trends and systematically allocated investment capital to innovations that promised the best returns, they lost their positions of leadership.” Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma Forget>“Learn” “The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out.” Dee Hock No Wiggle Room! “Incrementalism is innovation’s worst enemy.” Nicholas Negroponte “Perfection is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse.” — C. Northcote Parkinson Just Say No … “I don’t intend to be known as the ‘King of the Tinkerers.’ ” CEO, large financial services company “Beware of the tyranny of making Small Changes to Small Things. Rather, make Big Changes to Big Things.” —Roger Enrico, former Chairman, PepsiCo 2A. Yo, Jim Collins. Or: The Case for … Technicolor! I. Good to Great II. Built to Last III. Quiet, Humble Leaders I. Good to Great II. Built to Last III. Quiet, Humble Leaders Good to Great: Fannie Mae … Kroger … Walgreens … Philip Morris … Pitney Bowes … Abbott … Kimberly-Clark … Wells Fargo SET THE AGENDA. Great Companies … (Period.) AGENDA SETTERS: “Set the Table”/ Pioneers/ Questors/ Adventurers US Steel … Ford … Macy’s … Sears … Litton Industries … ITT … The Gap … Limited … Wal*Mart … P&G … 3M … Intel … IBM … Apple … Nokia … Cisco … Dell … MCI … Sun … Oracle … Microsoft … Enron … Schwab … GE … Southwest … Laker …People Express … Ogilvy … Chiat/Day … Virgin … eBay … Amazon … Google … Sony … BMW … CNN … I. Good to Great II. Built to Last III. Quiet, Humble Leaders Built to Last v. Built to Flip “The problem with Built to Last is that it’s a romantic notion. Large companies are incapable of ongoing innovation, of ongoing flexibility.” “Increasingly, successful businesses will be ephemeral. They will be built to yield something of value – and once that value has been exhausted, they will vanish.” Fast Company “The difficulties … arise from the inherent conflict between the need to control existing operations and the need to create the kind of environment that will permit new ideas to flourish—and old ones to die a timely death. … We believe that most corporations will find it impossible to match or outperform the market without abandoning the assumption of continuity. … The current apocalypse—the transition from a state of continuity to state of discontinuity—has the same suddenness [as the trauma that beset civilization in 1000 A.D.]” Richard Foster & Sarah Kaplan, “Creative Destruction” (The McKinsey Quarterly) I. Good to Great II. Built to Last III. Quiet, Humble Leaders Huh? “Quiet, workmanlike, stoic leaders bring about the big transformations.”--JC Wellington Nelson Disraeli Churchill Montgomery Thatcher “Humble” Pastels? T. Paine/P. Henry/A. Hamilton/T. Jefferson/B. Franklin A. Lincoln/U.S. Grant/W.T. Sherman TR/FDR/LBJ/RR/JFK Patton/Monty/Halsey M.L. King/C. de Gaulle/M. Gandhi/W. Churchill Picasso/Mozart/Copernicus/Newton/Einstein/Djarassi/Watson H. Clinton/G. Steinem/I. Gandhi/G. Meir/M. Thatcher E. Shockley/A. Grove/J. Welch/L. Gerstner/L. Ellison/B. Gates/ S. Jobs/S. McNealy/T. Turner/R. Murdoch/W. Wriston A. Carnegie/J.P. Morgan/H. Ford/S. Honda/J.D. Rockefeller/ T.A. Edison Rummy/Norm/Henry/Wolfie Elizabeth Cady Stanton/Susan B. Anthony/Martha Cary Thomas/Carrie Chapman Catt/Alice Paul/Anna Elizabeth Dickinson/Arabella Babb Mansfield/Margaret Sanger “You can’t behave in a calm, rational manner. You’ve got to be out there on the lunatic fringe.” — Jack Welch, on GE’s quality program “In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—and produced Michelangelo, da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce—the cuckoo clock.” Orson Welles, as Harry Lime, in The Third Man 3. The Heart of the Value Added Revolution: The “Solutions Imperative.” “While everything may it is also increasingly the same.” be better, Paul Goldberger on retail, “The Sameness of Things,” The New York Times “The ‘surplus society’ has a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality.” Kjell Nordström and Jonas Ridderstråle, Funky Business “Companies have defined so much ‘best practice’ that they are now more or less identical.” Jesper Kunde, Unique Now ... or Never Funky Business: “To succeed we must stop being so goddamn normal. In a winner-takes-all world, normal = nothing.” “This is an essay about what it takes to create and sell something remarkable. It is a plea for originality, passion, guts and daring. You can’t be remarkable by following someone else who’s remarkable. One way to figure out a theory is to look at what’s working in the real world and determine what the successes have in common. But what could the Four Seasons and Motel 6 possibly have in common? Or Neiman-Marcus and Wal*Mart? Or Nokia (bringing out new hardware every 30 days or so) and Nintendo (marketing the same Gameboy 14 years in a row)? It’s like trying to drive looking in the rearview mirror. The thing that all these companies have in common is that they have nothing in common. They are outliers. They’re on the fringes. Superfast or superslow. Very exclusive or very cheap. Extremely big or extremely small. The reason its so hard to follow the leader is this: The leader is the leader precisely because he did something remarkable. And that remarkable thing is now taken—so it’s no longer remarkable when you decide to do it.” —Seth Godin, Fast Company/02.2003 “We make over three new product announcements a day. Can you remember them? Our customers can’t!” Carly Fiorina 09.11.2000: HP bids $18,000,000,000 for PricewaterhouseCoopers consulting business! “These days, building the best server isn’t enough. That’s the price of entry.” Ann Livermore, Hewlett-Packard “Customer Satisfaction” to “Customer Success” “We’re getting better at [Six Sigma] every day. But we really need to think about the customer’s profitability. Are customers’ bottom lines really benefiting from what we provide them?” Bob Nardelli, GE Power Systems Nardelli’s goal ($50B to $100B by 2005): “… move Home Depot beyond selling ‘goods’ to selling ‘home services.’ … He wants to capture home improvement dollars wherever and however they are spent.” E.g.: “house calls” (At-Home Service: $10B by ’05?) … “pros shops” (Pro Set) … “home project management” (Project Management System … “a deeper selling relationship”). Source: USA Today/06.14.2002 “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/06.01 (E.g., UPS Logistics manages the logistics of 4.5M Ford vehicles, from 21 mfg. sites to 6,000 NA dealers) And the Winners Are … Televisions –12% Cable TV service +5% Toys -10% Child care +5% Photo equipment -7% Photographer’s fees +3% Sports Equipment -2% Admission to sporting event +3% New car -2% Car repair +3% Dishes & flatware -1% Eating out +2% Gardening supplies -0.1% Gardening services +2% Source: WSJ/05.16.03 4. A World of Scintillating “Experiences.” “Experiences are as distinct from services as services are from goods.” Joseph Pine & James Gilmore, The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage The “Experience Ladder” Experiences Services Goods Raw Materials “Club Med is more than just a ‘resort’; it’s a means of rediscovering oneself, of inventing an entirely new ‘me.’ ” Source: Jean-Marie Dru, Disruption “The [Starbucks] Fix” Is on … “We have identified a ‘third place.’ And I really believe that sets us apart. The third place is that place that’s not work or home. It’s the place our customers come for refuge.” Nancy Orsolini, District Manager “Guinness as a brand is all about community. It’s about bringing people together and sharing stories.”—Ralph Ardill, Imagination, in re Guinness Storehouse Experience: “Rebel Lifestyle!” “What we sell is the ability for a 43-year-old accountant to dress in black leather, ride through small towns and have people be afraid of him.” Harley exec, quoted in Results-Based Leadership WHAT CAN BROWN DO FOR YOU? “I see us as being in the art business. Art, entertainment and mobile sculpture, which, coincidentally, also happens to provide transportation.” Bob Lutz: Source: NYT 10.19.01 “Lexus sells its cars as containers for our sound systems. It’s marvelous.” —Sidney Harman/ Harman International Duet … Whirlpool … “washing machine” to “fabric care system” … white goods: “a sea of undifferentiated boxes” … $400 to $1,300 … “the Ferrari of washing machines” … consumer: “They are our little mechanical buddies. They have personality. When they are running efficiently, our lives are running efficiently. They are part of my family.” … “machine as aesthetic showpiece” … “laundry room” to “family studio” / “designer laundry room” (complements Sub-Zero refrigerator and home-theater center) Source: New York Times Magazine/01.11.2004 1997-2001 >$600: 10% to 18% $400-$600: 49% to 32% <$400: 41% to 50% Source: Trading Up, Michael Silverstein & Neil Fiske 5. Experiences+: Embracing the “Dream Business.” DREAM: “A dream is a complete moment in the life of a client. Important experiences that tempt the client to commit substantial resources. The essence of the desires of the consumer. The opportunity to help clients become what they want to be.” —Gian Luigi Longinotti-Buitoni The marketing of Dreams (Dreamketing) Dreamketing: Touching the clients’ dreams. Dreamketing: The art of telling stories and entertaining. Dreamketing: Promote the dream, not the product. Dreamketing: Build the brand around the main dream. Dreamketing: Build the “buzz,” the “hype,” the “cult.” Source: Gian Luigi Longinotti-Buitoni (Revised) Experience Ladder Dreams Come True Awesome Experiences Solutions Services Goods Raw Materials “The sun is setting on the Information Society—even before we have fully adjusted to its demands as individuals and as companies. We have lived as hunters and as farmers, we have worked in factories and now we live in an information-based society whose icon is the computer. We stand facing the fifth kind of society: the Dream Society. … The Dream Society is emerging this very instant—the shape of the future is visible today. Right now is the time for decisions—before the major portion of consumer purchases are made for emotional, nonmaterialistic reasons. Future products will have to appeal to our hearts, not to our heads. Now is the time to add emotional value to products and services.” —Rolf Jensen/The Dream Society:How the Coming Shift from Information to Imagination Will Transform Your Business Six Market Profiles 1. Adventures for Sale 2. The Market for Togetherness, Friendship and Love 3. The Market for Care 4. The Who-Am-I Market 5. The Market for Peace of Mind 6. The Market for Convictions Rolf Jensen/The Dream Society: How the Coming Shift from Information to Imagination Will Transform Your Business 6. The “Soul” of “Experiences”: [Mostly Ignored] Design Rules! Design Transforms even the [Biggest] Corporations! TARGET … “the champion of America’s new design democracy” (Time) “Marketer of the Year 2000” (Advertising Age) Lady Sensor, Mach3, and … $70M on developing the OralB CrossAction toothbrush 23 patents, including 6 for the packaging Source: www.ecompany.com [06.00] LISTERINE’s … PocketPaks Westin’s … Heavenly Bed All Equal Except … “At Sony we assume that all products of our competitors have basically the same technology, price, performance and Design is the only thing that differentiates one product from another in the marketplace.” features. Norio Ohga “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 meaning of design. of a man-made creation.” Steve Jobs DESIGN is the principal difference between love and hate! Hypothesis: THE BASE CASE: I am a design fanatic. Though not “artistic,” I love “cool stuff.” But it goes [much] further, far beyond the personal. Design has become a professional obsession. I SIMPLY BELIEVE THAT DESIGN PER SE IS THE PRINCIPAL REASON FOR EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT [or detachment] RELATIVE TO A PRODUCT OR SERVICE OR EXPERIENCE. Design, as I see it, is arguably the #1 DETERMINANT of whether a productservice-experience stands out … or doesn’t. Furthermore, it’s another “one of those things” that damn few companies put – consistently – on the front burner. Message (?????): Men cannot design for women’s needs. “Perhaps the macho look can be interesting … if you want to fight dinosaurs. But now to survive you need intelligence, not power and aggression. Modern intelligence means intuition—it’s female.” Source: Philippe Starck, Harvard Design Magazine (Summer 1998) 15 “Leading” Biz Schools Design/Core: 0 Design/Elective: 1 Creativity/Core: 0 Creativity/Elective: 4 Innovation/Core: 0 Innovation/Elective: 6 Source: DMI/Summer 2002 7. Trends Worth Trillion$$$ I: Women Roar. ????????? Home Furnishings … 94% Vacations … 92% (Adventure Travel … 70%/ $55B travel equipment) Houses … 91% D.I.Y. (major “home projects”) … 80% Consumer Electronics … 51% (66% home computers) Cars … 68% (90%) All consumer purchases … 83% Bank Account … 89% Household investment decisions … 67% Small business loans/biz starts … 70% Health Care … 80% 2/3rds working women/ 50+% working wives > 50% 80% checks 61% bills 53% stock (mutual fund boom) 43% > $500K 95% financial decisions/ 29% single handed 1970-1998 Men’s median income: +0.6% Women’s median income: + 63% Source: Martha Barletta, Marketing to Women 91% women: ADVERTISERS DON’T UNDERSTAND US. (58% “ANNOYED.”) Source: Greenfield Online for Arnold’s Women’s Insight Team (Martha Barletta, Marketing to Women) FemaleThink/ Popcorn “Men and women don’t think the same way, don’t communicate the same way, don’t buy for the same reasons.” “He simply wants the transaction to take place. She’s interested in creating a relationship. Every place women go, they make connections.” “Resting” State: 30%, 90%: “A woman knows her children’s friends, hopes, dreams, romances, secret fears, what they are thinking, how they are feeling. Men are vaguely aware of some short people also living in the house.” Barbara & Allan Pease, Why Men Don’t Listen & Women Can’t Read Maps “As a hunter, a man needed vision that would allow him to zero in on targets in the distance … whereas a woman needed eyes to allow a wide arc of vision so that she could monitor any predators sneaking up on the nest. This is why modern men can find their way effortlessly to a distant pub, but can never find things in fridges, cupboards or drawers.” Barbara & Allan Pease, Why Men Don’t Listen & Women Can’t Read Maps “Female hearing advantage contributes significantly to what is called ‘women’s intuition’ and is one of the reasons why a woman can read between the lines of what people say. Men, however, shouldn’t despair. They are excellent at imitating animal sounds.” Barbara & Allan Pease, Why Men Don’t Listen & Women Can’t Read Maps Senses Vision: Men, focused; Women, peripheral. Hearing: Women’s discomfort level I/2 men’s. Smell: Women >> Men. Touch: Most sensitive man < Least sensitive women. Source: Martha Barletta, Marketing to Women Editorial/Men: Tables, rankings.* Editorial/Women: Narratives that cohere.* *Redwood (UK) Read This Book … EVEolution: The Eight Truths of Marketing to Women Faith Popcorn & Lys Marigold EVEolution: Truth No. 1 Connecting Your Female Consumers to Each Other Connects Them to Your Brand “The ‘Connection Proclivity’ in women starts early. When asked, ‘How was school today?’ a girl usually tells her mother every detail of what happened, while a boy might grunt, ‘Fine.’ ” EVEolution “Women don’t buy They join them.” brands. EVEolution 2.6 vs. 1. Men and women are different. 2. Very different. 3. VERY, VERY DIFFERENT. 4. Women & Men have a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y nothing in common. 5. Women buy lotsa stuff. 6. WOMEN BUY A-L-L THE STUFF. 7. Women’s Market = Opportunity No. 1. 8. Men are (STILL) in charge. 9. MEN ARE … TOTALLY, HOPELESSLY CLUELESS ABOUT WOMEN. 10. Women’s Market = Opportunity No. 1. “Customer is King”: 4,440 “Customer is Queen”: 29 Source: Steve Farber/Google search/04.2002 8. Trends Worth Trillion$$$ II: Boomer Bonanza/ Godzilla Geezer. Subject: Marketers & Stupidity “It’s 18-44, stupid!” Subject: Marketers & Stupidity “18-44 is stupid, stupid!” Or is it: 2000-2010 Stats 18-44: -1% 55+: +21% (55-64: +47%) 44-65: “New Consumer Majority” * *45% larger than 18-43; 60% larger by 2010 Source: Ageless Marketing, David Wolfe & Robert Snyder “The New Consumer Majority is the only adult market with realistic prospects for significant sales growth in dozens of product lines for thousands of companies.” —David Wolfe & Robert Snyder, Ageless Marketing “Baby-boomer Women: The Sweetest of Sweet Spots for Marketers” —David Wolfe and Robert Snyder, Ageless Marketing 50+ $7T wealth (70%)/$2T annual income 50% all discretionary spending 79% own homes/40M credit card users 41% new cars/48% luxury cars $610B healthcare spending/ 74% prescription drugs 5% of advertising targets Ken Dychtwald, Age Power: How the 21st Century Will Be Ruled by the New Old “Households headed by someone 40 or older enjoy 91% ($9.7T) of our population’s net worth. … The mature market is the dominant market in the U.S. economy, making the majority of expenditures in virtually every category.” —Carol Morgan & Doran Levy, Marketing to the Mindset of Boomers and Their Elders “Advertisers pay more to reach the kid because they think that once someone hits middle age he’s too set in his ways to be susceptible to advertising. … In fact, this notion of impressionable kids and hidebound geezers is little more than a fairy tale, a Madison Avenue gloss on Hollywood’s cult of youth.”—James Surowiecki (The New Yorker/04.01.2002) “Marketers attempts at reaching those over 50 have been miserably unsuccessful. No market’s motivations and needs are so poorly understood.” —Peter Francese, founding publisher, American Demographics “Focused on assessing the marketplace based on lifetime value (LTV), marketers may dismiss the mature market as headed to its grave. The reality is that at 60 a person in the U.S. may enjoy 20 or 30 years of life.” —Carol Morgan & Doran Levy, Marketing to the Mindset of Boomers and Their Elders “Women 65 and older spent $14.7 billion on apparel in 1999, almost as much as that spent by 25- to 34-yearolds. While spending by the older women increased by 12% from the previous year, that of the younger group increased by only 0.1%. But who in the fashion industry is currently pursuing this market?” —Carol Morgan & Doran Levy, Marketing to the Mindset of Boomers and Their Elders “ ‘Age Power’ will st 21 rule the century, and we are woefully unprepared.” Ken Dychtwald, Age Power: How the 21st Century Will Be Ruled by the New Old No: “Target Marketing” Yes: “Target Innovation” & “Target Delivery Systems” 9. THINK WEIRD … the HVA/ High Value Added Bedrock. The High Standard Deviation Enterprise. THINK WEIRD: Saviors-in-Waiting Disgruntled Customers Off-the-Scope Competitors Rogue Employees Fringe Suppliers Wayne Burkan, Wide Angle Vision: Beat the Competition by Focusing on Fringe Competitors, Lost Customers, and Rogue Employees CUSTOMERS: “Futuredefining customers may account for only 2% to 3% of your total, but they represent a crucial window on the future.” Adrian Slywotzky, Mercer Consultants Primary Obstacles to “Marketing-driven Change” 1. Fear of “cannibalism.” 2. “Excessive cult of the consumer”/ “customer driven”/ “slavery to demographics, market research and focus groups.” 3.Creating “sustainable advantage.” Source: John-Marie Dru, Disruption 20 of 26 7 of top 10* *P&G: Declining domestic sales in 20 of 26 categories; 7 of top 10 (The “billiondollar” problem.) categories. Source: Advertising Age 01.21.2002/BofA Securities Account planning has become “focus group balloting.” —Lee Clow “Chivalry is dead. The new code of conduct is an active strategy of disrupting the status quo to create an unsustainable series of competitive advantages. This is not an age of defensive castles, moats and armor. It is rather an age of cunning, speed and surprise. It may be hard for some to hang up the chain mail of ‘sustainable advantage’ after so many battles. But hypercompetition, a state in which sustainable advantages are no longer possible, is now the only level of competition.” Rich D’Aveni, Hypercompetition: Managing the Dynamics of Strategic Maneuvering “HAVE MBAs KILLED OFF MARKETING? Prof Rajeev Batra says: ‘What these times call for is more creative and breakthrough reengineering of product and service benefits, but we don’t train people to think like that.’ The way marketing is taught across business schools is far too analytical and datadriven. ‘We’ve taken away the emphasis on creativity and big ideas that characterize real marketing breakthroughs.’ In India there is an added problem: most senior marketing jobs have been traditionally dominated by MBAs. Santosh Desai, vice president, McCann Erickson, an MBA himself, believes in India engineer-MBAs, armed with this Lego-like approach, tend to reduce marketing into neat components. ‘This reductionist thinking runs counter to the idea that great brands must have a core, unifying idea.’ ”—Businessworld/04Nov2002/“Why Is Marketing Not Working?” COMPETITORS: “The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn’t prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot.” Mark Twain “To grow, companies need to break out of a vicious cycle of competitive benchmarking and imitation.” —W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne, “Think for Yourself —Stop Copying a Rival,” Financial Times/08.11.03 “The short road to ruin is to emulate the methods of your adversary.” — Winston Churchill Employees: “Are there enough weird people in the lab these days?” V. Chmn., pharmaceutical house, to a lab director (06.01) We become who we hang out with! WEIRD IDEAS THAT WORK: (1) Hire slow learners (of the organizational code). (1.5) Hire people who make you uncomfortable, even those you dislike. (2) Hire people you (probably) don’t need. (3) Use job interviews to get ideas, not to screen candidates. (4) Encourage people to ignore and defy superiors and peers. (5) Find some happy people and get them to fight. (6) Reward success and failure, punish inaction. (7) Decide to do something that will probably fail, then convince yourself and everyone else that success is certain. (8) Think of some ridiculous, impractical things to do, then do them. (9) Avoid, distract, and bore customers, critics, and anyone who just wants to talk about money. (10) Don’t try to learn anything from people who seem to have solved the problems you face. (11) Forget the past, particularly your company’s success. Bob Sutton, Weird Ideas That Work: 11½ Ideas for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation Kevin Roberts’ Credo 1. Ready. Fire! Aim. 2. If it ain’t broke ... Break it! 3. Hire crazies. 4. Ask dumb questions. 5. Pursue failure. 6. Lead, follow ... or get out of the way! 7. Spread confusion. 8. Ditch your office. 9. Read odd stuff. 10. Avoid moderation! Advice to Corporate Leaders: “Consider the metaphor of the windmill: You can harness raw power but you can’t control it. … Hire artists, clowns, or other disrupters to come in and challenge your corporate environment. … Hire a corporate anthropologist to analyze how tolerant your organization is of deviants and other innovators. … Once the anthropologist leaves, hire a shaman to drive out the evil spirits of conformity. …” Source: Ryan Matthews & Watts Wacker, Fast Company (03.02) Innovation Index: How many of your Top 5 Strategic Initiatives score 7 or higher (out of 10) on a “Weirdness/Profundity Scale”? 10. Leading in Totally Screwed-Up Times: The Passion Imperative “Ninety percent of what we call ‘management’ consists of making it difficult for people to get things done.” – P.D. “I don’t know.” Organizing Genius / Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman “Groups become great only when everyone in them, leaders and members alike, is free to do his or her absolute best.” “The best thing a leader can do for a Great Group is to allow its members to discover their greatness.” The Kotler Doctrine: 1965-1980: R.A.F. (Ready.Aim.Fire.) 1980-1995: R.F.A. (Ready.Fire!Aim.) 1995-????: F.F.F. (Fire!Fire!Fire!) “I’m not comfortable unless I’m uncomfortable.” —Jay Chiat “If things seem under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” Mario Andretti “Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.” Phil Daniels, Sydney exec (and, de facto, Jack) BZ: “I am a … Dispenser of Enthusiasm!” “In Tom’s world, it’s always better to try a swan dive and deliver a colossal belly flop than to step timidly off the board while holding your nose.”—Fast Company /October2003 The Re-imagineer’s Credo … or, Pity the Poor Brown* Technicolor Times demand … Technicolor Leaders and Boards who recruit … Technicolor People who are sent on … Technicolor Quests to execute … Technicolor (WOW!) Projects in partnership with … Technicolor Customers and … Technicolor Suppliers all of whom are in pursuit of … Technicolor Goals and Aspirations fit for … Technicolor Times. *WSC “Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.” —James Dean “the wildest chimera of a moonstruck mind” —The Federalist on Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase