Sadly, almost half of those surveyed are looking for a more worthwhile job than the one they now have. And ironically, although those in the private sector see the charitable and public sectors as being more promising places to find worthwhile work, at the same time, a quarter of public and charity sector workers are frustrated enough by bureaucracy and red tape to be considering a move in the opposite direction!

I am left wondering, in today's world of Brand You, whether the challenge of finding meaning in one's work should be down to the employee herself? Surely it is up to each of us to make the connections and to discover for ourselves the purpose in what we are employed to do? It would be great if leaders could do this for us, but since work means different things to each of us, surely we have at least some responsibility to do this for ourselves?

To follow the tone of Tom's recent "reality" blog, what do you believe is realistic to expect of our leaders as they set a context for our work? And what should be done by people for themselves?

A week ago, Tom posted an entry about a recent book by an adoring courtier of Jack Welch, though reading it suggested to Tom ... "a self-serving picture of an organization run by a misogynist egomaniac—you'd have to be nuts or a former male Navy Seal to want to have worked there. Welch comes across as a brutal, soulless, foul-mouthed boss who revels in putting people down in the most demeaning ways."

And yes, it's inarguable, as one of my favorite MBA ex-clients who wishes he could have been a courtier in Welch's operation has said, that Welch's combination of vision and execution made him "Six Sigma" as an organizational operative. Stats nuts know that Six Sigma represents the 99.99999980268th percentile, and it's no coincidence that to get there he achieved soullessness.

Continued reading When Five Sigma Trumps Six Sigma...

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I've been talking about the power of listening, offering what I'll call the "spiritual" version—which I commend. But I thought I also owed you the "secular" version, including a doubtless inappropriate remark. You'll find it below and as an attached PPT.

Listening may or may not be an "act of love" or way to "tap into people's dreams," but it sure as hell is (1) an uncommon act of courtesy and recognition of worth from which (2) you will invariably learn amazing stuff if you can just keep your damn mouth shut and ears open with an expression of interest on your face and (3) it will build-maintain relationships beyond your wildest dreams. (And if you are young, which I am not, the surprisingly uncommon act of listening is the most foolproof seduction "tool"-"method" ever invented, because no one, M or F, is ever able to resist the overwhelming attraction that comes from being listened to and taken seriously—and when I was young I was always amazed at how the most unlikely sorts, compared to me, "got the girl" because they were able to keep their mouths shut and ears open and at least act as if they cared more than anything on earth about what they were hearing.) Also, above, Dubai, 26°C (78°F), 1210.07, from my hotel room window.

Then I realized that it shouldn't come as a surprise that a professional athlete lives with reinvention on his mind and in his repertoire. Any day could bring a trade, an injury, a slump. And, at the end of their careers—the ultimate reinvention. Sometime after the age of thirty(?), forty(?), fifty if they're extremely lucky, they all must re-imagine themselves. And Tom's message, for years, has been that the rest of us have to look at our careers the same way. Are your Brand You skills and reputation polished to the point where you could replace your livelihood overnight?

Nonetheless, I wish to hell my U.S.A. could find a way to get back into the positive mental orbit. Suddenly (9/11/01), we are all about borders and barriers. Don't I believe there's a serious terror threat? Well, actually, that's my point.

I think there is a severe terrorist threat—and that there will be for as far into the future as I or my 20-something boys can see. (And there will doubtless be nasty events in the process.) The disruptive power of one person, or a small band, is matchless, and will only get worse. Forever and ever, Amen—and regardless of the size of our Army or the CIA or Homeland Security.

And, I think, perhaps arrogantly, that the single most important step toward ameliorating (not eradicating—impossible, even unthinkable) the terrorist threat (small bands, not nations with well-defined positions on maps) is for the United States to continue to be the matchless, energetic, open, self-improving Beacon of Hope it has been for two-and-a-quarter centuries. (Maybe we can even brighten the wattage of that Beacon.) I'm reading a marvelous and thoughtful book, Inventing Human Rights. In effect, there was not even the idea of human rights until the 1700s. And—clearly!—the American and French revolutions were the seminal landmarks in the one giant step for mankind toward human liberty. Then the U.S., unlike France, blessed with an infinite horizon, what we now call the continental United States, took the next giant step and effectively invented Positive Thinking. "Strike out on your own! Move West (the Appalachians first)! Re-define yourself." Re-imaginings and Re-definition and Exploration and Entrepreneurship and Brand You (sorry, couldn't help myself—but Ben Franklin would have applauded) were and are the underpinnings of America's great, successful, productive society—along with our steady flow of immigrant-malcontents setting out on ridiculously dangerous voyages of re-definition and self discovery. (Immigrant = In Search of Re-definition. Right?)

My conclusion then, as an apparently strong voice in the unabashedly Positivist Reagan Revolution, is that the power of positive thinking must be retained or regained at all costs. (My White House friends of that era tell me that In Search of Excellence was a seminal clarion call, perceived as such, for American businesses to stop hiding behind our growing protectionist walls and emulation of Japanese management—and come out swinging in our own style, which we subsequently did). Which to me means that we must deal with, and to some extent learn to live with, the near-infinite in length threat of havoc, never to be fully eradicated, caused by somebody at any given time pissed off about something—and return posthaste to our more careful to be sure, historic positivist selves. Of course we must be "tough with terrorists," but the idea that bombs and fortified borders and cowering behind said borders are the solution is insane. Positivist, open, daring, freedom-obsessed America is still the world's best hope.

I say all this because I have been troubled of late, very troubled, by the strident words of several of our 2008 presidential candidates from both parties. Their message: Build walls and hide now and forevermore.

And I say that all this from me is the antithesis of a political statement. American-style Positivism is my life's work at home and abroad. Cubicle slaves and bedraggled corporations—in Turkey or Romania or Siberia or in Kansas City or Miami or Boston—rise up and cast off your self-imposed shackles. Join the Global Economy (you have no choice, for God's sake), re-imagine and re-invent yourselves or your company. Understand that pioneering is the back to the future requisite. It is indeed—again—your great grandfather's world of self-reliance.

To hide is the ultimate victory for Osama and other terrorists. If we build walls, bomb, and slash the flow of immigrants, we may survive for awhile, even decades—but we will cease to be America and to be the globe's Beacon of Liberty and the Infinite Possibilities of Re-imaginings.

(Why the hell do you think I called my last book Re-imagine—it was a 300-page Technicolor rant that said ... rise up and regain your great grandfathers' sense of infinite possibilities and accountability. My Grandfather Peters came to our Beacon of Hope, Baltimore variety, in about 1870 and proceeded, from nothing, to become a wildly successful contractor and philanthropist—until he was wiped out, never to recover, by the Great Depression. He was gone before I arrived, but I never stop thinking of him, his victories, and his losses; perhaps he was my Quintessential American Beacon, when, at age 22, helped along by the Navy, I migrated to California and proceeded to stay there for the next 35 years—making my way, as a noisy participant, through the birthing and coming of age of the Silicon Valley colossus; in the process I avoided my father's tiresome professional life as a Cubicle Slave in the Tall Towers of the Eastern Seaboard.)

Four deafening cheers for the power of positive thinking—and acting! May we re-discover it posthaste!

Reminds me of a favorite quote I often use in my presentations:

"It's always Showtime."—David D'Alessandro, Career Warfare

This from a must read-ingest, major Wall Street Journal piece (yesterday/0328): "Mr Blinder ... remains an implacable opponent of tariffs and trade barriers. But now he is saying loudly that a new industrial revolution—communication technology that allows services to be delivered from afar—will put as many as 40 million American jobs at risk of being shipped out of the country in the next decade or two." And that staggering stat, per Mr Blinder, is "only the tip of a very big iceberg."

Four-zero million!
Just the start!
Zounds!

Suggests to me it's time, per a Post earlier this week, to dust off the "Brand You Plan." There probably will be, alas, counter-productive Federal legislation. But that will be a wee finger in the dike.

The message is clear—and, to a point, simple. Work on your "value proposition" with renewed urgency. Your odds of landing on your feet are directly proportional to the uniqueness of what you have to sell to the world.

(As I've said 100, or 1,000, times, this does not translate into dog-eat-dog competition. To the contrary, you will be the architect of, valued participant in intricate Webs of Value Added that involve many, many others from here, there, and everywhere.)

Hence, unprecedented team skills and individual prowess are both a must.

I'm not an alarmist. (Much.) Still, I'd argue that ... today is the day to act! (Yesterday would be better.) Is the project you are working on right now worthy of becoming a chapter, or at least a sidebar, in your emergent & urgent "Brand You Saga"? If not, what do you aim on doing to make it so? Moreover, what on-line course/s (or whatever) are you looking at as another part of your "investment portfolio"?

The problem is more or less simple. The solution is more or less simple. All that's left is the 98.3 percent called Urgent Execution.

See for yourself.

[Note that the link takes you to Fisch's blog. I'd recommend that you explore there for a moment or two.—CM]

Time: 1 minute, 22 seconds

MP3 File

"Do one thing every day that scares you."—Eleanor Roosevelt

Tom Peters (me) and Alan Webber, co-founder of Fast Company, congratulate Time and welcome Time's "Person of the Year" ... "You." As co-inventors of the "Brand You" notion, over a decade ago, we are delighted to see the world catching up and, more important, waking up!

The "Brand You life" is damned hard work ... and so, so, so satisfying compared to "your father's world" as, likely, a Dilbertian "cubicle slave." Talk about liberating! As Time says, it's all about self-control. Nothing cooler! And nothing more daunting, because, of course, self-control only works, on the Web or off, age 19 or 69, with its disciplined mate, self-responsibility, at its side.

(To be sure, Time's "You,"circa 2006, is a bit less restrictive than our "Brand You." While we were celebrating, as does Time, the newfound possibilities of self-control/self-management ... we were also erecting defenses for your or my "career" against the incursion of microprocessors and lower-wage offshore substitutes. Nonetheless, "You" or "Brand You" ... we, too, salute you and your year and your potential.)

[Tom's photo above: Amsterdam canal. See more at Flickr.]

"A VP says to an IT guy, 'Have you installed Google on my computer yet?' And the IT guy responds, 'Just yesterday.'"

I don't know the answers to any of those questions, other than "open to debate." But there is something I do know ... for sure. The folks who came from England on the Mayflower, landing somewhere or other, and breaking bread with someone or other ... were a flinty, tough, strong-minded, determined, resilient bunch. And America's subsequent long march to global leadership is indeed a reflection of wave after wave of such determined, tough immigrants ... many of whom, after a generation or two, broke into the clear and made a mark. For example, my Grandfather Peters, who came here from Germany in 1870 or so, and became a leading Baltimore contractor; my grandmother Peters, in turn, founded one of that grand city's leading charities of the day.

So my perhaps odd "Thanksgiving message" (how pretentious!), or rant (far less pretentious), is about, um, "Brand You."

Huh?

Yup. "Brand You" was not, as some critics contend, an idea born of the '90s desire for self-adulation. To the contrary, in the late '90s I saw technology begin to supplant workers, increasingly skilled workers; then as the calendar turned to the new millennium-century I saw the astonishing explosion of energy and determination arising in the likes of India.

American economic isolation came to an end in a flash. We all, even "management gurus," became part, overnight, of a global labor market. Wages stagnated. Outsourcing soared, and technology got smarter and smarter. A pal, Dan Pink, said, more or less, "Here are the options: Do you choose to lose your job to an Indian? Or a microprocessor?"

It's not quite that dire in reality. But it is psychologically. Any sense of lifetime job security is caput. Health insurance is a distant dream for millions. Pensions are no guarantee of a cushy, or at least adequate, retirement after 40 years as a loyal Cubicle Slave.

Enter—as I saw it and see it—Brand You. What Brand You really means (to me) is a glorious (yes, glorious) return to the idea of those flinty Pilgrim men and women. A return to Franklin's (the true Father of Brand You) principles and Emerson's self-reliance. And the spirit of the brave ones heading West in the rickety Conestoga wagons. Or the spirit of Charles Lindbergh. Or Jackie Robinson. Or Martin Luther King or Elizabeth Cady Stanton ... or Carly Fiorina.

Ms Fiorina flatly said, "There is no job that is America's God-given right." Wired guru Michael Goldhaber adds, "If there is nothing very special about your work, no matter how hard you apply yourself you won't get noticed, and that increasingly means you won't get paid much either." And Sally Field tells us, "The only thing you have power over is to get good at what you do. That's all there is; there ain't no more."

Yes, I do see this as good news, and not just for Ivy Leaguers. Ivy Leaguers? America—God bless America—now has about 11 million women-owned businesses—damn few were started by Ivy Leaguers. (But that's another story.) In our abiding attention to Google's or Yahoo's next micro-move we blithely ignore the thousands of brave entrepreneurs I talked to last year who had the guts to roll the dice, skip out on ordinary means of security, and take on the responsibilities of starting and owning tanning salons!

Is it a lonely life that I propound? To the contrary. Those hearty first white New Englanders were at once self-reliant ... but had the support of an extraordinarily tight-knit community. My "Brand Yous"? On their own—but, if they're wise, creating their own, resilient communities of reputation and support. Face-to-face or, increasingly, online. (Web 2.0? 3.0? Who cares; it can work.) I mostly work alone, or, rather, with the assistance of a wee group of colleagues in Vermont and Boston. And a powerful band of supporters from hither and, increasingly, thither. To tell the truth, I feel a lot more secure with my self-created network and devotion to self-improvement than I ever did at, say, McKinsey or Stanford. It's up to me, per Sally Field, to constantly get better-different than yesterday; and it's up to me to expand and mind my network.

Hence my flavor of Brand You is at once distinctly Solo and distinctly about creating and minding a Network-Community of, mostly, one's own construction.

My Thanksgiving suggestion is to remember the true nature and character and determination of those Pilgrim Fathers & Mothers as their little band, alone on the East coast of a great continent, carved out the beginnings of a truly New World that eventually became a Beacon of Freedom and Opportunity for all others around the globe.

(Have we dimmed the light of that Beacon of late? Perhaps. But "they" still line up at the portals of our embassies around the world—wanting in. God help us when those lines get shorter.)

There is an absolutely stunning article in this issue of Fortune about Teach for America founder Wendy Kopp. As a Princeton senior, 17 years ago, she had a dream. Seventeen years later fully 10% of the graduating classes of Yale and Dartmouth, in the midst of a more or less bull market for college hires, applied to Teach for America. All told 19,000 seniors applied for 2,400 slots. After only a few weeks of "basic training," these bold, young Brand Yous, circa 2006, will enter classrooms in some of the toughest schools in America. Hats off, way off, to the Golden Ten Percent at Yale and Dartmouth. And hats off, way, way off to Wendy Kopp. Can one person make an enormous difference in a still complacent nation of 300,000,000? Damn right.

Happy Thanksgiving to our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other locales. To, especially, our active-duty National Guard types, often serving a second tour in the desert. Happy Thanksgiving, Wendy Kopp. Happy Thanksgiving, Yalies and Dartmouth youngsters and the rest of the 19,000 volunteering for tough active duty of another sort. Happy Thanksgiving, brave tanning salon owners and pioneering women business owners.

The hell with those pensions-for-time-served-in-cramped-cubicles. Welcome to a New Age of Self-reliance in a flattening global society of equals.

Thanksgiving considerations, honoring the chutzpah of our Pilgrim forebears:

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"—Mary Oliver

"A year from now you may wish you had started today."—Karen Lamb

[Tom is home—and the family's Designated Shopper; part of Susan's list is above.—CM]

Do the same search at Microsoft's Windows Live and Ask.com, and while the numbers of results are significantly lower, they remain more or less constant day to day and week to week. Go figure.

Yesterday [Meet the Press, 09.24.06], in response to a question by Tim Russert, President Clinton said in part: "The biggest problem confronting the world today is the illusion that our differences matter more than our common humanity. That's what's driving the terrorism."

As my out-of-U.S. work, for the first time, eclipses my in-U.S. work, I do to some extent (a significant extent) see my role as "Ambassador at large"—salesman for humanistic capitalism perhaps. You may recall that I returned to "excellence" (Excellence. Always.—my new signature) and the "basics" on the occasion of my April trip to Siberia. (Trying to answer my own query: "Why the hell am I in Siberia?") Furthermore I added a PPT slide and said, and believe, that:

"Business* [*at its "excellent" best] can be: An emotional, vital, audacious, innovative, joyful, frightening, risky, creative, entrepreneurial endeavor that breathes life & fire into our work & life & elicits maximum concerted human potential in the wholehearted effort to help others ** [**employees, clients, suppliers, communities, owners, temporary partners] succeed & profit & imagine & reach places they'd never dreamed they could go."

To usurp Clinton, that is effectively a plea to vigorously engage as many as possible to produce and pursue the fruits of our "common humanity." Amidst my far-flung travels, when I discuss "cultural differences," my unyielding perspective is that "of course they exist"—but a person who exudes common human decency will prevail—if not with bowls of profit, at least with the self-knowledge that her or his passing has added rather than subtracted from humanity's plight.

So, thanks, Mr President. Guess I'll keep on truckin.'

For me, as you know, the answer to everything is ... another PowerPoint. (Hmmmm ... maybe I am an idiot.)

The poet (my favorite) Mary Oliver said: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Picasso said: "Every child is born an artist. The trick is to remain an artist."

I'm hardly he-who-wears-rose-colored-glasses. Yet I do have a rather exalted view of human potential—daily headlines on human barbarism notwithstanding. Attached you'll find the Special PowerPoint Presentation: "Peter & Mary on Their Fellow Humans."

Katie Couric is quoted as follows in BusinessWeek's "What Makes a Winner: The Competition Issue" (08.21-28.06): "Television is one of the most competitive arenas anywhere. I think the only way to thrive and survive in that atmosphere is to have the love of competition in your blood."

(For the record: As an avowed, vociferous champion of women in leadership roles, I'm delighted that Ms Couric has become the first solo woman anchor on network evening news.)

That quote helps me realize why I don't watch evening news. If your ultimate goal is to "compete," presumably for ratings supremacy, in my opinion you are/one is doomed to mediocrity.

Start here: I am an obnoxiously intense competitor, and have been for a half century, with no let up in sight. Among other things, today I regularly Google myself against the "competition" in "speaking world"—weekly vs Jack Welch and Rudy Giuliani. (Mostly keepin' the lead, though RG will nail me as the presidential election campaign approaches—but then he won't be on the circuit.) I want badly to "win" in comparative speakers' ratings at big conferences—and I'm in despair for days when that doesn't happen. I track book sales; etc; etc.

But ...

But the fact of the matter is that the only person I truly compete against is myself. Is it the best damned speech I could give? Did I push "them" hard enough, too hard? Did I connect in a way that makes a difference in a few attendees' lives? Is there enough genuinely new material in the speech? Did I take risks with new-provocative material? (Risks that might clobber those evaluations after the fact. OH LORD, I SHUDDER AS I RECALL TWO RECENT EXAMPLES—I survived 'em both, and one led directly to a Big corporate change.) Was the entire two hours or whatever spent, without a second's letup, living on or near or past the edge? Were they scared-aroused? Was I scared? Was I literally sick with mental & physical exhaustion when I staggered off the stage? Can I sincerely continue to claim, even if only to myself, that I am perpetually re-imaging the entire world of management thinking & business practice (yikes)? Etc.

When Rather "competed" against Brokaw and Jennings for ratings, the competition per se was the thing—and the product for all three, while competent, was and long has been same-same. Take a true risk, and perhaps watch ratings wobble for 6 months? What a joke!

In late 2003, Dorling Kindersley and I published Re-imagine! Did I want good sales? Damn right! But if "good sales" had been the principal goal I would have penned the "big book" that other publishers wanted. I went to DK because of one and only one thing (surely not the advance!): I wanted to re-imagine the business book! (And they were game.) Did I track sales? Of course. (We—publisher and I—were moderately happy.) But I mostly loved the Amazon reviews: Nothing in the middle! People loved the book, and indeed its attempt to change the genre. Or hated it. (NB: As a speaker, I far prefer 1s or 10s in my evaluations to a bucket of 7s.)

Renée Mauborgne and Chan Kim, authors of Blue Ocean Strategy, tell us: "To grow, companies need to break out of a vicious cycle of competitive benchmarking and imitation." "Value innovation is about making the competition irrelevant by creating uncontested market space. We argue that beating the competition within the confines of the existing industry is not the way to create profitable growth." (As usual, Churchill more or less got there first: "The short road to ruin is to emulate the methods of your adversary.")

Here's the sort of thing I dearly wish Ms Couric had said: "Ratings are the least of it. Evening TV news is stale, in the tank, even laughable. It doesn't need a 'cool' or 'refreshing' 'female' anchor. It needs to be blown up and re-thought from the ground up. If the program I anchor looks or smells or feels anything at all like evening news of the Cronkite-Rather era I will have failed miserably and horribly abused a golden opportunity, even if I do edge out the guys at the other networks."

Kim and Mauborgne dote on Cirque du Soleil. (Me too.) Our Montreal pals re-imagined the whole idea of "circus"—and took an insane risk in the process. And they indeed turned their and our world upside down—in fact they unequivocally invented a new planet within the larger solar system of entertainment. That's the idea!

In On Becoming a Leader, Warren Bennis makes this intriguing claim, based on his muscular research: "No leader sets out to be a leader per se, but rather to express him- or herself freely and fully. That is leaders have no interest in proving themselves, but an abiding interest in expressing themselves."

I burst at the seams, at 63.8, as I anticipate the opening of the 2006 "fall season" in Adelaide 10 days from now. I want to "express myself"—to bore in deeper to the souls & hearts & minds of my participants, to make my renovated message of Excellence resonate and act as a clarion call to "risky" action in halls and boardrooms across the/all lands.

Will I read the evaluations from Adelaide? Of course! Will I still Google Welch & Rudy & me? Of course! But the-speech-is-the-thing! My "competition," my hypercompetitive-need: Will it have been the best & most provocative & original & troubling & exciting speech I have ever even attempted to give? If not, as 'tis said, it will be a long plane trip back from Australia!

Please, please Ms Couric—don't "compete" with those other predictable saps. Stun us with the audacity of your effort to help us understand anew and cope with the bizarre world in which we are trying to somehow make our way.

Your comments [in reaction to this blog] have been fabulous and stunningly thoughtful, and I will respond as the days go by. One person said he was surprised that I'd consider not speaking to B & J. I had to respond ... before I head down the driveway at my VT farm. Namely:

No! No! No!

I was simply trying to make the generic point about slippery slopes—and plastic definitions. If one is an avowed, vociferous champion for the "War on Childhood Obesity," could one in good faith speak to B & J about making the process of "marketing-megacalories-to-kids" more "excellent"?

At one level I have and will consider the nature of every institution I speak to, if for no other reason that time is in short supply and there is (praise be) an "oversupply" of opportunities. As to my examples of B & J, lawyers, and those whose service level pisses me off—the specifics were for illustrative purposes only!

(NB: I happen to be a fan of lawyers. Societies based on the Rule of Law tend to do a little better than others over time.)

Incidentally, I have had B & J problems—before they sold out to Unilever. E.g., the Holier-than Thou B & J founders bragged that no one was paid more than six (?) times as much as anybody else. "No one," that is, except Ben and Jerry and a few others who owned the company. (I don't care what their W-2s proclaimed.) Then there was the new CEO hunt based on applications submitted on ice cream container lids. How cool! Well, it didn't produce viable candidates, so B & J went to a headhunter, and after they had their man they had him fill out an ice cream lid. If you were looking for the one thing I most hate, and you said "hypocrisy"—you'd be spot on. (NB: As best I can determine, the Lid Tale is not Urban Legend.) (NB2: This case of hypocrisy would not have led me to turn down a speaking gig.)(NB3: I have not in fact, pre or post buyout, talked to B & J. "Why not?" you ask. Um ... they haven't invited me.)

Keep those comments coming!

(NB4: Why this discussion redux? Because I took a vacation pause and Susan happened to ask an "innocent" question that wasn't! It was, oddly, in reflection upon a novel she'd just finished. I think such Fundamental Noodling is imperative. I have a Catholic priest pal with a huge urban parish. I occasionally act as his de facto confessor—an apt role for a moderately lapsed Presbyterian. He often ... yes "often" ... at age 55+ ... as he puts it, "question my beliefs, and go through long troubled periods of wavering faith." He argues—and I wholeheartedly agree!—that you should never trust a religious leader who doesn't question his/her faith from time to somewhat frequent time. Among other things it leads him to greater empathy—and hence effectiveness as counselor—with the troubled among his parishioners. TP: So, too, "management gurus"!)