You can watch the 2:10 minute video on YouTube and, if you like, download a PDF of its transcript.

That is, my net worth and the usefulness (if any) of my work are not related except indirectly.

I think finance is absolutely a centerpiece of our economic well-being. Hence I trust that Mr. Winkelried has done work of value to my country and the world in his decades at Goldman Sachs. I assume, in fact, that there should be a multiplier—that is, the economic usefulness of Mr. Winkelried's work is a multiple of his compensation; he's hopefully been a "net contributor" to our collective well-being.

So it's sad that the Fortune guy would only imagine valuing Mr. Winkelried in terms of his net worth—and thence assigning no societal economic value to Mr. Winkelried's decades of 20-hour days.

I know nothing about Mr. Winkelried. But I think the Fortune guy has a whopper of a problem.

(This Post is from the Auckland airport, as I await a flight to Nelson.)

Twenty-five years ago, my life (and yours, too, probably) was changed by Tom and Bob's book, In Search of Excellence. After that, on a regular basis, Tom has provided us with shots of brilliance and unsettling reminders that we've got a long way to go to reach our potential as organizations and individuals.

Along the way, there's a question that's been nibbled at but never really answered. I mean, I already know many of the 687 ways to create excellence and the imperatives of excellence, but what is it, really?

At first, organizations got excited about the formula: excellence = quality. If we can meet spec, regularly and on budget, we win.

But the quality mantra only takes you so far.

Take, for example, my water company. Are they excellent? Every time I turn on the tap, water comes out. The bills aren't outrageous. I never need to call them. Are they excellent? Or boring?

What about the local grocery or the other boring commodity providers in my life? By my definition, once you start providing a commodity that your customers treat as a commodity, you're no longer excellent.

Here's my take:

Excellence means that you're indispensable. At least right now, in this moment, there's no one else I would choose but you. You, the excellent one, are so surprising, so delightful, so over-the-top and, yes, so human that there really isn't anyone else I'd rather dance with.

The "in the moment" nature of excellence makes it a moving target. JetBlue was excellent, for a while, but then others started catching up and new management started slowing down. Suddenly, it wasn't a JetBlue flight any more, it was just a flight. Easy to switch to Virgin Atlantic or someone else.

Excellence isn't about meeting the spec, it's about setting the spec. It defines what the consumer sees as quality right this minute, and tomorrow, if you're good, you'll reset that expectation again.

The surefire way to achieve excellence, then, is not to create a written spec and match it. The surefire way is to be human. To be artistic: to make a connection with the customer and to somehow change them for the better. The reason Tom and I and others can continue to write about excellence twenty-five years later is that we're not writing about business at all. We're writing about people.

When the Ritz-Carlton hotel empowers every employee from chambermaid to manager to "make things right," they're not engaging in the sort of quality control most managers are comfortable with. In fact, if they were able to write down exactly what to do in every situation, the excellence factor would disappear. What the hotel accomplishes with its policy is this: they challenge their employees to become artists.

The art of connection, the art of being human, the art of making a difference. Artists do things that have never been done before. They dig deep to create passion. They connect by changing things for the better.

The economy has been better, and the economy has been worse. Through it all, the market seeks out, recognizes, and embraces artists, people we can't live without. That's our opportunity right now.

To be excellent means you must be an artist.

[See Seth Godin's new book, Linchpin. It's about art and gifts and connection and yes, excellence.]

After Cannes, I made a six hour drive to Florence to join Susan for six days of "vacation." I put vacation in quotes, because if the home of the Renaissance doesn't get you thinking and refresh your mind in at least a quasi-professional way, I don't know what will. (To be sure, try as one might, one's thinking may be made a bit sluggish by the Constant Carb Assaults.)

I'm sure a passel of readers with art history degrees (surely we have at least one such reader, eh?) could do justice to the art and cathedrals—but not me. I was on a 6-day "shock & awe" junket, though it was hardly my first visit to Florence. "Shock & Awe"? Yes, it was simply and literally overwhelming; e.g., the magnificent Uffizi gallery, a solid candidate for "world's best." (I left it emotionally drained.)

But as the bankers were bashed at home last week, the story in 14th century Florence was also of bankers, in many cases offending sensibilities to the point that they were offed. Florence is home to the Renaissance and home to the de Medici's, who dominated the commercial sphere in a way that makes today's finance gang look lightweight—both in terms of influence and wretched excess. The de Medicis also commissioned much of the art, wonderful indeed, world-changing beyond a shadow of doubt—but, like today, much of it for their exclusive use. (They also more or less bought the Papacy upon occasion.) (NB: In the same vein, one of Bach's patrons had him imprisoned—another burned some of his music. Ah, the volatile moods of the super-rich!)

"All this" also made me think of globalization, which was also very much alive and very much in good health, save a bloody war here and there and there and here, during the Renaissance-de Medici epoch. Among other things, those thoughts led me to resurrect a marvelous quote from a 2008 article by Peter Jones and Lionel Casson in the Spectator, titled "For Real Globalization, Look at Ancient Rome":

"There is nothing new about a global world. We were living in one 2,000 years ago. ... The Roman in the street ate bread baked with wheat grown in North Africa or Egypt, and fish that had been caught and dried near Gibraltar, He cooked with North African oil in pots and pans of cooper mined in Spain, ate off dishes fired in French kilns, drank wine from Spain or France. ... The Roman of wealth dressed in garments of wool from Miletus or linen from Egypt; his wife wore silks from China, adorned herself with diamonds and pearls from India, and made up with cosmetics from South Arabia. ... He lived in a house whose walls were covered with colored marble veneer quarried in Asia Minor; his furniture was of Indian ebony or teak inlaid with African ivory."

The more things change ...

But, uh, none of the above is about why this Post is titled "Mea Culpa"!

The "mea culpa" refers to my absorbing "distraction" (attraction) during the trip. Namely, Twitter. First, I like Twitter as a communication tool, though I plead guilty as charged by some in terms of mostly using it as a one-way communication vehicle—no small sin. Second, I find the 140-character limit a magnificent challenge! I am in the "beginner's mind" mode—and I am definitely learning anew that "practice makes better," or so I assume and hope. I believe that one can have a full-scale "opinion piece" on a serious topic that occupies 140 characters or less. Hence, I am choosing mostly to use Twitter as a straightforward opinion registry, and am leaving the mega-link practice to many many many others. In short, there are a host of things I really really give a shit about—I've been saying my piece in as many settings as possible for over 35 years, and I'm not inclined to stop; as I recently tweeted, my "live stuff" has absorbed about 5 or 6 million miles and about 9,000 flight legs since 1973.

I love our Friends & Family here at tompeters.com, but am a linear focuser more than a multi-tasker, so Twitter-Am-Mostly-Me at the moment.

Out of possibly zillions, here's a selection of lists and suggestions for how to survive and thrive in 2010:
• Twelve Resolutions on How to be a Mensch, by Bruna Martinuzzi
• Ten Things I Know for 2010, from Ian Sanders
• How to Take Advantage of Social Media in Your Email Marketing from American Express Open Forum
• Ten Practical Tips for Saving Money on Travel from the New York Times

Cool Friend Andrea Learned sent us this trend prediction for 2010: Sustainability Communication.

Lots of fun, this one came to us in the emails. Out of the box (not to say out of control) ideas for consulting at BBC.co.uk: Listen to Peter Day's interview with Neil Mullarkey on comedy and Peter Cook on rock 'n roll. Or use this link.

Also from the emails, a unique idea: Jingle-a-Day for a year.

And finally, "Hire My Friend" is a free application on Facebook that allows you to promote your job-seeker friends within your friend network by announcing their candidacy in your Live/News feed, and placing an information box about them on your profile. Or, become a fan of "Hire My Friend."

The White House website
American Red Cross
Partners in Health
Soles4Souls)

Adecco Final
Adecco Long

Tom is in Cannes at the moment, and, if you follow him on Twitter, you know he finds it a bit over the top. But right now, in terms of weather, it has to beat Vermont!

The late CIA Director William Casey insisted that employees read the management classic In Search of Excellence to encourage every officer to take personal responsibility for solving problems, rather than kicking them on to the next guy in line. CIA Director Leon Panetta should use these searing events to foster a culture of initiative and accountability at a CIA that wants to do the job—but that needs leadership and reform.

Needless to say, Tom is extremely flattered to be mentioned.

In response, one of our frequent commenters, who goes by the name of Zorro, posted:

Tom seems determined to have the US become a second rate power. The companies covered in Small Giants include a deli, a record company, a beer company, and a company that makes those things that go "beep-beep" when a truck backs up. The Retail Superstars covers nothing but retail stores. Somehow this is going to transform our economy—if it does, it will make it look exactly like it did from 2001–2008. Meanwhile, China has just turned on the world's fastest train route. We make great sandwiches, beer, and back up alarms—the Chinese put in place the world's fastest commuter train.

Bo Burlingham then weighed in:

Well, Zorro, I have to wonder if you actually read Retail Superstars, or Small Giants, for that matter. George Whalin made absolutely no claim that the companies he was writing about were going to "transform the economy," nor did I make any such claim about the Small Giants. That wasn't the point of either book, and that mentality has nothing to do with why Tom liked them. My point was that bigness and greatness have nothing to do with one another. George's point was that the greatest retailers (judged by the standards of their industry, which are the only ones that matter) are actually the independents. You may think that such companies are unimportant, but the U.S. economy would collapse without them. Are you aware, for example, that 50% of the US workforce works in companies with 20 to 500 employees? That's where all the innovation is coming from as well. Why? Because big companies are bad at it. That's why they buy small innovative businesses. That segment of the economy is essentially America's R&D lab. Among other things, they are coming up with the innovations that are going to utterly transform the world of manufacturing in the next 10 years and deprive China of its cheap labor advantage—because the labor component will become far less important than the ability to develop effective business systems and management, which is an area in which the Chinese stink. And where do you think the major manufacturing industries of today—the innovations that have created our world—have come from? Did you miss the 1980s and 1990s? I do worry about the future of that kind of entrepreneurship in this country, but the big threat comes not from China and India, but from our own protectionists, big unions, and government over-regulation. (See Sarbanes-Oxley, and then ask yourself why there were no IPOs in 2008, and how that stymied the development of the manufacturing powerhouses you apparently believe are important to our future.) As for the Retail Superstars and the Small Giants, they have a different role to play that is every bit as important as "making things." (And BTW, the back-up alarm/emergency light company you deride makes a lot of things, and it's the world leader in what it makes.) Those companies are the heart and soul, not just of our economy, but of our society. They are community leaders in thousands of cities and towns around the United States. Their practices shape the communities we live in, the values we live by, and the quality of the lives we lead. Yes, they are anathema to big labor, because they aren't unionized. That's why big labor is pushing card checks. Then again, their working standards and efficiency far exceed that of the unionized giants, whose lunches they regularly eat.

The Sunday New York Times had a special section called "Education Life." One article, "Career U.," describes some of the changes we might expect in university education. For example, the president of the University of Michigan was surprised (to put it mildly) when she learned five years ago that 10% of incoming freshmen, some 600, had started their own businesses while in high school. She and her colleagues responded by creating about 100 entrepreneurship courses. The article tickles our imagination by describing a few of the more inventive new master's programs:

1. Learning to listen. (Narrative medicine.)
2. Homeland security.
3. Cybersecurity.
4. Urban environment. (Sustainability.)
5. Sustainable cultures. (Beyond environmental sustainability.)
6. Education leadership.
7. Cars of the Future.
8. Construction management. (Hmmm, I got one of those from Cornell in 1966, with the diploma coming by mail to Hue, South Vietnam, where I was doing, yes, construction management for the U.S. Navy. What goes around comes around, I guess.)
9. Specialized MBAs. (E.g., market research, energy, pharmaceutical management, wine and spirits at ESSEC B-school near Paris.)
10. New media.

All in all, a worthwhile read.

[Above, snow, 3 January 2010—about a 2-foot accumulation.]