Dispatches from the New World of Work

A Personal Top Ten Tom Quotes from London

Further to Valarie's "tuck it in" clip from Tom's London speech, here's my personal top ten takeaway thoughts from another mega happening in London. Tom, sorry if these are not quite verbatim. I did my best. You deliver the hits faster than I can scribble them down!

1. Excellence comes from human beings doing things of value that customers find memorable.

2. Remember. You are the only human being in the world who can help this particular customer at this particular moment in time.

3. The thing that keeps a business ahead of the competition is excellence in execution.

4. Brand inside is more important than brand outside for sustained success.

5. Leaders' careers will usually be determined by their handling of one or two critical events that no one could possibly anticipate or plan for.

6. Make sure that you spend your time on the things you say are your priorities.

7. Tuck the shower curtain in and give away two-cent candy!

8. It's remarkable how quickly an excellent culture can be torn apart by poor management.

9. Irrelevance comes from always doing the things you know how to do in the way you've always done them.

10. If you love your company and love what you do, you will serve your customers better—period!

Enjoy!

Tucking the Shower Curtain

I was lucky to get to London for the Tom event yesterday. Repeating his message from this blog post, Tom told the story about Conrad Hilton, founder of Hilton hotels. At a gala celebrating his life, he was asked, "What was the most important lesson you've learned in your long and distinguished career?" His reply was, "Remember to tuck the shower curtain inside the bathtub."

At first glance, one may think, that's it? But, think about it ... paying attention to detail makes all the difference when we are trying to achieve excellence. When we miss the little things, we miss the opportunity to achieve excellence; we fall just short of it.

My question of the day is, "What shower curtain do you need to tuck in?"

Wow!

Got my foot caught in power cord, here in my Las Vegas hotel room. Hence, my computer did not just "fall off a table" three feet high—it flew (!!) off the table, landing about three, or perhaps more, feet away. It "took a licking and kept on ticking." Hooray for my Panasonic CF-W5 TOUGHBOOK!

Dr Franklin "Gives Good Tea"

As you recall I offered up last week Excellence for "The Rest of Us." This weekend I wrote an alternate introduction: "Dr Franklin 'Gives Good Tea': America Defeats Great Britain!" It's attached.

Wrong.
Thirty Times Over.

While on holiday in New Zealand ... I got to thinking. As time goes by, "one" (me) tends to complexify one's approach to almost everything. The innocence (and clarity) of "days gone by" is blurred. I know that I am "guilty as charged." (By me.) And I think most of the other "gurus" (horrid term, but it's become part of the biz language) have also gotten away from reality. Hence, I began taking notes for a book-like "thing" that is not, in fact, a book. I titled it:

Excellence for "The Rest Of Us":
A "Book" for "Real People," Working in "The Real World" in 2008

The book-that's-not-a-book begins with a Thirty Count Indictment of "guruworld." I have provided 30 contrasting pairs, "Guru focus" versus "RW," Real World. Below I am offering the list, FYI.

The "Indictment" is the opener of a 62-page (so far) "paper" (that's not a book). Attached you will find the entire 62-page, 19,000-word plus document.

Enjoy!
(Or not.)
More to come!

[If you wonder about the origin of "all this," perhaps the sign, discovered on a beach on Golden Bay, New Zealand, will offer a hypothesis.]

Guru focus versus the "real world":

Guru focus: Big companies and attendant first-order, industry-redefining strategic issues.
Real World: Most of us, still, in 2008, don't work for Big Companies; we labor in "SMEs," Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. (Or the likes of government agencies.) And if we are in a big company or agency, most of our focus is the 17-person department in which we labor. (As to "SMEs," Germany is, ahead of China, the planet's #1 exporter, thanks mainly to focused, high-end middle-sized companies, the Mittlestand enterprises.)

Guru focus: Public corporations.
RW: Most of us work in privately owned companies. (Or in those government agencies.)

Guru focus: Cool industries.
RW: Most of us aren't in "Cool" industries, we do pretty ordinary stuff—like my pal, Larry Janesky, who makes a buck, and then another ($60 million, actually), creating "dry basements," that are free of toxic mold and can be used as a spare room or for a playroom or storing anything and everything; or Australian Jim Penman, who has over 2,500 franchises worldwide doing such things as walking dogs, washing dogs, and installing antennae.

Guru focus: "Excellence" is reserved for GE and GE and GE (or Google or, until last week, Boeing).
RW: "Excellence," bar none, is the fabulous, friendly, informative, instantly responsive pharmacy next door that takes on docs and insurance companies with vigor and usually victory. (Gary Drugs on Charles Street in Boston, for me.)

Guru focus: Boss-less, flat, friction-free, self-defining organizational settings.
RW: Most of us have "bosses." Most of us are assigned tasks.

Guru focus: "Getting ahead" means becoming a "Brand You," in a world where what our peers think of us is more important than the Boss's evaluation.
RW: Most of us still must cater to our bosses to get ahead.

Guru focus: "Cover boy" CEOs with G-4s, trophy wives, and the kids from all three marriages in prep schools with tuitions starting at $50K.
RW: Most of us work for government agencies or in schools or fire departments or in private companies perhaps run by the "millionaire next door," who owns two suits, a 2006 Lexus, stops in the coffee shop on the way to work, and sends his kids to public school.

Guru focus: New "virtual organization" forms of doing business; workplaces with hierarchy are "so yesterday."
RW: Most of us work amidst a rather clear "hierarchy" as depicted on a standard organization chart. (Though there are probably a few less layers then there were a few years ago.) (Want hierarchy? Try Home Depot.)

Guru focus: Creative right-brain weirdos, "with it" in these odd times.
RW: The majority of us are not "new age creatives," but are occasionally quite clever ... and pretty good at "blocking and tackling" in order to "get done what needs to be done."

Guru focus: The immediate threat, to millions upon millions, of being "outsourced."
RW: Most of us aren't especially threatened by the prospect of having our jobs outsourced to India or China or Romania.

Guru focus: Global enterprises "playing in the big league," in a "flat world."
RW: Many (most) of us are only marginally affected by globalization, and our firms don't sell more than a modest share of their products or, especially, services beyond our national borders. (The primary reach of the 18-person accountancy in a mid-sized city of 84,000 is perhaps three miles.)

Guru focus: A world where "the Web is everything, changes everything."
RW: Most of us haven't had our world turned anything like "upside down" by the Web, though the Web has surely had a significant impact. (We communicate with the plumber by Blackberry email from our car, but he's still 5 hours late!)

Guru focus: Our ability to be in instant communication with anyone, anywhere.
RW: Use email, but still practice MBWA—Managing By Walking Around.

Guru focus: An encompassing IS-IT strategy, with everything wired to everything else.
RW: While integrating IS is very important, most of us muddle through, trying to ensure that the IT-enhanced bits (the front-line sub-systems) are marvels of simplicity that deliver the goods for those front-line folks and their internal-external customers.

Guru focus: Strategic planners and CEOs desperately seeking "blue oceans."
RW: Most of us don't spend much or any of our day making grand plans. Never have. Never will.

Guru focus: Thinking "outside the box," of course.
RW focus: Most of us obsess on "doing," pretty much inside the box. (There are enough damn problems in the box—pissed off customers of long standing, etc.)

Guru focus: Complex "systemic change."
RW: Most of us believe in and spend our time doing on-the-cheap, rapid experimentation, picking off the "low-hanging fruit," muddling our way through to big change.

Guru focus: Imposing words-phrase such as "business models," "scalable," "strategic talent management," "customer-retention management," and "knowledge-management paradigm."
RW: Most of us try to use everyday language such as "the way we make a buck" (instead of "business model"), "let's grow this sucker" (not "Is it scalable?"), "hire good people and treat 'em well and give 'em a chance to shine and thank 'em for the stuff they do" (rather than "strategic talent management"), "bust our ass to keep our customers happy to keep 'em coming back" (instead of "customer-retention management"), and "share the stuff you learn with everybody ASAP, don't hoard it" (rather than "executing a knowledge-management paradigm").

Guru focus: Best data base + sexiest algorithms win in our customer-centric enterprise.
RW: Most of us spend our time on "trivial" acts of relationship building with customers, suppliers, leaders in our community, etc.

Guru focus: The relentless pursuit of "synergies."
RW: Most of us focus, focus, focus in order to stand a chance of succeeding in the marketplace. (Those astounding German "Mittlestand" companies again, or Larry Janesky, the dry-basement guy.)

Guru focus: Marketing sleight of hand!
RW focus: Sales! Sales! Sales!

Guru focus: Put the customer first!
RW focus: Put the front-line employee and the front-line manager co-first! (In order to maximize the odds of repeat business.)

Guru focus: Acquisitions and mergers aimed at expanding our "reach" and "market penetration" and "market share" amidst a zero-sum game, thus reducing risk courtesy a "diverse" portfolio and smothering ("killing") the competition.
RW: Play from our strengths, work like hell to enhance those strengths, and survive-thrive via "organic" growth and executing very, very well.

Guru focus: Totally "new rules for a new game," dramatic new "management tools" that "change everything."
RW: Most of us are learning new things, but nothing that's particularly "revolutionary" as we labor mightily (fulltime) "just" to "get stuff done," improve relationships, find good folks and keep 'em by showing appreciation and respect, and providing opportunities to get ahead.

Guru focus: Hiring PhD mathematicians to design obscure algorithms that allow the creation of the likes of "risk free" derivatives and, hence, stunning "competitive advantage."
RW: For most of us, snappy execution of the "timeless" "basics" is Job #1. (And Job #2. And Job #3.)

Guru focus: A fetish for the diabolically clever.
RW: Most of us know that "relentless" pounding and pounding and pounding, and then pounding some more, on those Golden Basics wins.

Guru focus: Built to last.
RW: Most of us muddle through, trying to make it to the end of the week while keeping our customers content.

Guru focus: Disruptive Innovation is #1.
RW: We "invent" everyday "tools," such as Xeroxed (paper) checklists, aimed at preventing "line infections" and thus saving thousands-of-lives-per-year of ICU patients, in the U.S. (In a similar vein, as it were, the British observers estimate that over ten thousand lives per year could be saved in hospitals by providing most patients with compression socks that help prevent deep-vein thrombosis.) (Call it "un-disruptive innovation," with inordinate power?!)

Guru focus: Describe "new age" mortgage bankers, loaded with "intellectual capital" and "integrated systems" who "package" loans as soon as possible and sell them to financial service institutions who create and sell derivatives based on the packaged mortgages—which are in turn re-packaged as super-derivatives.
RW: As, say, a young mortgage-lending officer in a town of 18,000, whose Dad runs a local car dealership, take Mary and John to lunch to get a grasp of who they are before lending them $450,000; and after the loan, call or drop by every, say, three or six months to see how things are going—even if all payments have been on time.

Guru focus: "Changing demographics," "the new Gen X world," as many discrete market segments as there are customers.
RW (I wish): Our primary customers [85% of the time] are women—find the right team [lotsa women in senior management] and go for it. We also, to make a buck, have gotta aim more at boomers or near-boomers, and "geezers" [who collectively have all the dough], and less on callow, so-called "trendsetter" youth.

There's my thirty—and I plead "guilty-as charged" to many-most of them!

Future Shape of Quality

Tom Peters believes that the term "excellence" requires wholesale redefinition, if the word is to be applicable to businesses in the future. "Perhaps, excellent firms don't believe in excellence—only in constant improvement and constant change," says Tom. "That is, excellent firms of tomorrow will cherish impermanence—and thrive on chaos." This is a long way from the "7S" model set out in Tom's seminal book, In Search of Excellence.

To my mind, the words excellence and quality have always had similar connotations. So, one might reasonably assume that what's true for future excellence might also be true for future quality, and vice versa? Apparently not, it would seem! I have been working recently with one of the UK's most prestigious authorities on Quality. I suspect their "body of knowledge" on the subject of quality would rival that of most similar bodies around the world. However, when you get past all the contemporary language, their principal focus is still the application of retrospective static models of quality, which are supervised and certified by third-party process-conformance checking. It seems that a quality company can still market concrete life jackets providing they are all made the same way, all carry a stern danger-to-health warning, and the company has a clear complaints procedure!

Reading again through the string of interesting comments on Mike Neiss's recent "Hard Work Matters" blog and the debate about how Future Shape of the Winner compares with the Malcolm Baldrige quality award system has made we wonder if there are any quality assessment methodologies out there that can calibrate the impermanence requirement of future excellent companies. Is there a quality assessment tool that can accommodate hot words like "cherish" and "thrive"?

Oh, Henry, That's So, So Yesterday!

Henry Ford gave us the production line!
America henceforth ruled the world!

So goes the conventional wisdom concerning our astounding industrial might. Well, there's not much doubt about either the "industrial might" or the power projected thereby ... but the Henry Ford contribution may be a bit specious.

I love Boston. SF. L.A. London. Paris.
But my favorite city is, no contest ... Venice.
(Where I spent Christmas 2007.)

"Wee" Venice was a world power for about 600 years, and more or less ruled the world for perhaps 300 or 400 of those years (e.g., it conquered and controlled Constantinople for centuries). Venice cobbled together the first "imperialist" empire. Its "core competencies" (translation: strengths, stuff it was good at) were trading skills and the projection thereof courtesy a peerless navy.

The source of the Venetian Navy's excellence?
Mass production!

The Arsenale was Venice's highly fortified shipyard. The base procedure for shipbuilding was straightforward labor specialization in a fully developed production line format.

The Arsenale's product?

The world's most powerful and best-armed warships.

Turned out at the rate of ... one plus per day!

1/Day!
1/Day!
1/Day!

I love water!
I love strong navies!
I love skilled traders!
I love Venice!

I love the repeated stories of lasting (centuries) world dominance emanating from astonishingly small places with absolutely no natural resources but an abiding commercial-trading instinct (e.g., Venice, Rotterdam-Amsterdam, Lisbon, London).

I love the fact that the "excellence" of such places was soundly and more or less exclusively based on superior "distributed-decentralized network management" (traders, bourses, mapmakers, navies, old-style "internets" with numerous hyperlinks) emanating from highly developed "intellectual capital" and an untrammeled, incredibly competitive-Darwinian "entrepreneurial instinct."

(Alas, the Arsenale is in a state of disrepair, so you'll have to settle for a generic picture of Venice taken at sunset on Christmas Eve.)

MVP 2007, Addenda, With Laurels

Back to crappy service: My hat is way, way, way off to the Dearly Beloved Empire State Legislators in Albany. I hadn't realized it, but earlier this year Albany passed the first "airline passengers bill of rights"—if we're stuck for three hours on a plane, the airline must provide food, water, clean toilets, and fresh air. The reason I know about the bill is that the NY Post (12.19) reports that the legislation is being challenged in federal court by that famous ally of the passenger, the Air Transport Association. The ATA insists that they dearly, dearly want to help distressed passengers out—but don't think the Legislators in Albany have the right to tell them what to do. As for me:

I hope the figs in the Empire State Legislators' figgy puddings are mouthwatering. And I hope the "figs" in the ATA leaders' figgy puddings are collected directly from my barnyard in Tinmouth, VT.

MVPs, 2007

For what it's worth, my heroes (& goats) of 2007

CEO: Carly Fiorina. HP, not IBM, became the first $100 billion infotech company this year. Primary reason? The highly contentious, and surprisingly successful, Compaq acquisition and integration. (And, God knows, I don't ordinarily cheer such acquisitions—though I did, in this case, from the start.) Tenacious champion? Carly Fiorina! HP is now seen as a "consumer powerhouse." Laughable idea a few years ago. Transformation agent: Ms Fiorina. HP is "cool" with scintillating designs. Laughable idea just a few years ago. Transformation agent? Carly. New and not so nerdy "culture." Architect? Carly Fiorina. (And said cultural transformation, frankly, makes Welch's work at GE and Gerstner's at IBM a cakewalk by comparison.)

Do I give Ms Fiorina uniformly high marks? No. Does her successor, Mark Hurd, get significant credit? Absolutely. But make no mistake, Mr Hurd is executing Ms Fiorina's bold strategy and working with her altered culture. Period.

CEO: Arnold Schwarzenegger. President Schwarzenegger has made a miracle in my beloved California Republic. Not only has he done "great stuff"—he's retrieved California's swagger and indomitable spirit. Go, Guvenator!

Company: Basement Systems Inc. Love it when there is a superstar performer in a mundane business. Founder-CEO Larry Janesky has built a $50 million ++, fast-growing enterprise in the biz of providing dry basements—that are free of nasty mold and available as another (big) room in one's home. (Also see Larry's bestselling Dry Basement Science.)

Company: Jim's Group of Australia. Ditto. (You can see my biases here.) Jim Penman has 2,500+ franchises worldwide, doin' the stuff that busy working families don't have time to do—such as walkin' and washin' the family dog! (Also see, downloadable at Jim's website, What Will They Franchise Next? The Story of Jim's Group.)

Companies: Germany's Mittelstand—middle-sized firms. These high-value-added, niche superstars make Germany the world's #1 exporter! (The hell with the Giants.)

Companies and People: Private firms, Millionaires next door. The "gurus" never talk about the private firms—that constitute over half the enormous U.S. economy, and outperform the Monsters in the process. Our "gurus" ("our" includes me!) likewise never talk about that ordinary fellow-CEO up the hill running a biz that does uncool things, dressing in uncool garb, going to Disneyworld on holiday—and sporting a bank account to die for.

Person: Muhammad Yunus. Okay, I'm late to the party, but I didn't do MVPs last year, when Mr Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize for inventing and executing the practice of micro-lending. More cheers still to the 94% women entrepreneur-borrowers (and payers back!).

Market: Me! Boomers. Geezers. By the tens upon tens of millions. Money at the ready. (Lots and lots of. And time to spend it.) And insanely underserved by one and almost all. Here's how I put it in my presentations: "We are the Aussies & Kiwis & Americans & Canadians. We are the Western Europeans & Japanese. We are the fastest growing, the biggest, the wealthiest, the boldest, the most (yes) ambitious, the most experimental & exploratory, the most different, the most indulgent, the most difficult & demanding, the most service & experience obsessed, the most vigorous, (the least vigorous,) the most health conscious, the most female, the most profoundly important commercial market in the history of the world—and we will be the Center of your universe for the next twenty-five years. We have arrived!"

Message: Wise up! Wake up! Get rich!

Goats: Bill Sharpe et other "quants." The super-sophisticated mathematically marvelous quants with their derivatives of derivatives of derivatives promised us the end of systemic economic risk. Whoops—they gave us sleepwalkers just the opposite. When a couple of folks in Podunk missed a mortgage payment, the skyscraper of cards imploded. Bill Sharpe was among the Nobel-winning economists who took us down this prickly primrose path. May the milk in their Christmas puddings be curdled.

Hero: Warren Buffett. Mr Basics wondered about the value of the dull & dreary underlying asset (Mo and Maureen of Podunk's capacity to pay down their "cutrate" mortgage), and warned us about the freaky financial instruments that sat atop such "assets." Chalk another one up for Mr Buffett.

Chief Imagineer: Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai. Just returned from Dubai. In my seminars I call its stunning development, on a desert flyspeck, the "single greatest act of human imagination in my lifetime." Congratulations to Sheikh Mohammed and his late father, Sheikh Maktoum.

Process & Simplicity: Checklists!! Complexifiers often rule—in part the byproduct of far too many "consultants" in the world, determined to demonstrate the fact that their IQs are higher than yours or mine. Enter Johns Hopkins' Dr Peter Pronovost. Dr P was appalled by the fact that 50% of folks in ICUs (90,000 at any point—in the U.S. alone) develop serious complications as a result of their stay in the ICU, per se. He also discovered that there were 179 steps, on average, required to sustain an ICU patient every day. His answer: Dr P "invented" the ... ta-da ... checklist! With the religious use of simple paper lists, prevalent ICU "line infection" errors at Hopkins dropped from 11% to zero—and stay-length was halved. (Results have been consistently replicated, from the likes of Hopkins to inner-city ERs.) "[Dr Pronovost] is focused on work that is not normally considered a significant contribution in academic medicine," Dr Atul Gawande, wrote in "The Checklist" (New Yorker, 1210.07). "As a result, few others are venturing to extend his achievements. Yet his work has already saved more lives than that of any laboratory scientist in the last decade." (I've attached a "Special Presentation" on this topic.)

Healthcare Providers: Planetree Alliance Members. The "Planetree Model" of "patient-centric" (ugly word, that) healthcare is the Real Deal. Asked to comment on the Planetree Alliance earlier this year, here's what I said:

"All sane persons agree that 'healthcare needs an overhaul.' And that's where the agreement stops. Healthcare issues are thorny, and system panaceas are about as likely as the sun rising in the West. But there is good news here and there—and great news courtesy the Planetree Model.

"In the midst of ceaseless gnashing of teeth over 'healthcare issues,' the patient and frontline staff often get lost in the shuffle. Enter Planetree. While oceanic systemic solutions remain out of reach, Planetree provides a remarkable demonstration of what healthcare—with the patient at the center—can be all about; and is all about, among Planetree Alliance members.

"I know this may sound ridiculous, but everything about the 'model' works. It is great for patients and their families—and is truly about humanity and healing and health and longterm wellness, not just a 'fix' for today's problem. It is great for staff—Planetree-Griffin is rightly near the top of the 'best places to work in America' list, year in and year out. And Planetree also works as a 'business model'—any effectiveness measure you can name is in the Green Zone at Griffin.

"For 25 years my 'gig' has been 'excellence.' Put simply, there is no better exemplar of customer-centered, employee-friendly excellence, in any industry, than Griffin-Planetree. The Planetree model works—and, in my extensive work in the health sector, I 'sell' it shamelessly, and pray that my clients are taking it all in."

(I meant it—every word.) (See "Special Presentation" attached.)

Healthcare Heroes: Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Dear God, what a history. As I said to the dean while visiting to make a presentation, "To make the alumni honor role, it seems, you must have saved a million lives or so"—and I'm not sure I was exaggerating. I'd add that the talk was my favorite of the year—I've never seen so many idealists under one roof! (Students, faculty, others.) By the by, hats waaaaaay off to Mike Bloomberg for his astounding support!)

Book: How She Does It: How Women Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Rules of Business Success, by Margaret Heffernan. America's 10 million++ women business owners and their impact on the economy remains our most under-reported business story. As Ms Heffernan puts it: "The growth and success of women-owned businesses is one of the most profound changes taking place in the business world today." Congrats to these gutsy heroes—by the million.

Book: Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams. We all can acquire literally millions of "business partners" with imaginative use of the Web. Collaboration on an almost infinite scale has arrived, for the wise.

Book, Instant Classic: The Black Swan: Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Black Swan told us about the likes of the sub-prime mess long before it happened. Most variation in outcomes (e.g., longterm profit or loss) is the product of a tiny handful of weird (outlier) events. NNT provides example after compelling example—and also illustrates the total impotence of traditional planning methods to cope with black swans.

That's it.

Pow-wow

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the second annual Author Pow-wow, hosted by 800-CEO-READ. This was an example of Tom's "Have Yous" list brought to life, vividly. 800-CEO-READ, a creative company that is serious about business books, decided it would be a good idea to bring together neophyte authors with the industry experts who can help them. A cynic (a.k.a. Jack Covert, albeit tongue in cheek) would say that they're tired of repeating themselves when speaking to individual authors, but it was obvious that their intention was to challenge their colleagues to seek excellence.

The invited experts weren't interested in stroking the authors' egos. Instead, seasoned professionals explained the ins and outs of business publishing and the speaking industry in ways that challenged common misperceptions. The presentations ranged from solid basics like revisiting core writing skills to the value of a good publicist and speaking agent to how to use the blogosphere to your advantage.

The message that rang loudest over the two days was the need for platform development—finding and honing ways to connect with one's audience. That seems like a fairly obvious branding message, but for people who have been focusing intently on written content, it requires serious gear-shifting to raise their heads from book writing and start marketing themselves. Most would-be authors think that if they can just land a good publishing deal, they can sit back and watch the royalties fill their bank accounts. That's very far from the truth. Publishers expect authors to not only submit a compelling manuscript but a public relations plan including an online presence (for more about this, see John Moore's post nicely excerpting Jeff Gomez's Print Is Dead).

It's clear that the folks at 8CR have an affection for mavericks. The event itself was held at the spectacularly inspiring Catalyst Ranch and the intensity with which people connected made clear how passionate we all are about sharing ideas. Have you planned an event that pushes your colleagues/employees/customers to the next level lately?

If you'd like to hear more about the event, check out the descriptions (numerous, but then, this was a conference about writing) from Kate, Barbara, Raj, Phil, Jose, Dan, Nick, David, Mike, Erika, and Kevin. For photos: Phil, Jose, 8CR.

Keep your eye out for these authors (and can you find the 5 Cool Friends?):
Erika Andersen
Greg Alexander
Jose Castillo
Kevin Eikenberry
Phil Gerbyshak
Joanne Gordon
Jackie Huba
Joe Heuer
Mike Kanazawa
Alexander Kjerulf
Steve Little
Ben McConnell
Pamela Miles
Robert Mintz
Jack Mitchell
Susan Quandt
David Meerman Scott
Michael Stallard
Dan Roam
John Rosen
Rajesh Setty
AnnaMaria Turano
Bill Welter
Steve Yastrow

The experts:
Ray Bard - Bard Press
Mark Bloomfield - Harvard Business School Press
Barbara Cave Henricks - Cave Henricks Communications
Mark Fortier - Fortier Public Relations
Nick Morgan - Public Words
Gerry Sindell - ThoughtLeaders Intl.
Les Tuerk - BrightSight Group
Dennis Welch - Cave Henricks Communications
Susan Williams - Jossey-Bass

Profound thanks to the remarkably talented team at 8CR for this experience!

For Ben Only

If it weren't for my stepson Ben, a devout Patriots fan (in the true meaning of "devout"), and Cathy and Erik, I would order a pox on the Pats—leading 42-10 at the end of three quarters, why the 14 additional points in Q4? (Patriots 56, Bills 10.)

For Baseball Fans Only (Maybe)

Doesn't get much better than this, extracted from the 29 October Forbes, "Thoughts On the Business of Life":

"I've come to the conclusion that the two most important things in life are good friends and a good bullpen."—Bob Lemon

(Lemon was a great pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, and subsequently a successful manager.)

My Hunch

While the Rockies and the Red Sox are battling in the World Series, halfway around the world the Airbus A380, courtesy Singapore Air, will make its first commercial flight.

Here's betting that when aviation history is written 25 years from now the Boeing Dreamliner will be more or less forgotten—and the A380 will get its own chapter.

I can hear the howls now—and I won't be around 25 years from now to pick up-pay off the debt, or if I am hanging in, unlike Peter Drucker, I damn well won't be prattling on about management.

In any event, hats off to recently maligned Airbus and the service fanatics at Singapore Air!

Exceptions to Every Rule

You can be assured that this Blog will not distract readers with movie reviews. Nonetheless, I must break the implicit rule and report that I cannot remember when I laughed as hard, often to the point of choking, as I did last night while watching Death at a Funeral. Part of the joy was that the entire audience was in near hysterics for all 90 minutes of the performance—and we doubtless spurred one another on.

'Nuff said.

Happy Days!
(For Me.)

Last week I wondered, in a Post, why one would want to work for any of BusinessWeek's best companies for college grads—or, rather, best VERRRY BIGGGGG companies. Musta been listenin' over at Dow Jones. (Just kidding.) Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal, in a special section on small business, headlined with "Top Small Workplaces 2007."

Hooray!

Included: Alaska Wildland Adventures. Gentle Giant Moving. Cowden Associates. (Accounting, definitely not "Big Four.") Guerra DeBerry Coody. (Advertising-PR.) Healthwise. (Health info provider.) NRG Systems (Wind-measuring equipment—from Hinesburg VT.) Phelps County Bank. Etc.

The WSJ sub-head: "What Makes a Great Workplace? Among other things: having employees who feel empowered and convinced they have a future at the company." (See tomorrow's Post.)

Thanks, WSJ—you made my day!
(And I'm thinking of applying for a job—Hinesburg isn't that far away, and I'm a bit of a windbag.)

Fed Up.
But ...
(My Own Fault.)

Yesterday I was doing an interview with a journalist from Flanders. At one point he asked me about something I guess he'd found at Wikipedia, a reference to an article titled "Tom Peters' True Confessions," relative to In Search of Excellence. The callout, repeated on the cover of the magazine, was "We faked the data." It's my own fault that such a line ended up in print—though I could live without the guy who concocted it.

A few years ago, as I was working with Fast Company co-founder Alan Webber on the article, we were talking about In Search of Excellence, and the selection of companies for the book. In Jim Collins' Good to Great, he claims he started with a list of the top 1,000 companies (or some such) and, applying some hurdles (see below, re "hurdles"), came up with his sample. I said to Alan that we'd not done such a purported "scientific" thing. Instead, we'd gone around to McKinsey colleagues, academics, corporate types we knew, and so on, and asked about companies they thought were doing exceptional stuff (e.g., one of our neighboring firms was HP, then a fresh-caught $1 billion company—we put them on the list because they had a lot of out-of-the-ordinary practices, especially by 1979's standards). Thus, we were "unscientific" by some measures (scientific by the standards of "exploratory research," which this was) in developing a list of candidate companies. However, after we had our roughly 100 "nominees" we subjected them to steep long-term financial hurdles described in the book, and we were forced to prune the list to the final 43. And that's the story of our methodology, take it or leave it. Since our goal, demanded by our client, Siemens, was to find "interesting" "good" companies to analyze, we thought this was as good a way to go as any other—though there were, of course, a hundred ways we could have gone.

At some later point, Alan and I, in a rambling discussion, got onto the topic of "lies, damn lies, and statistics"—statistics, weird as it is, are a major hobby of mine. That's when I said something like, "Of course we know all this [Jim's way or ours] is to some extent phony baloney. That is, if you try enough variations of plausible, tough long-term financial hurdles—e.g., 10 years or 20 as the baseline—you can significantly influence the outcome." And that, of course, is true, as any business analyst of any seniority knows—change an assumption by a dab here and a smidgen there, and a questionable project looks like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow—Defense acquisition projects being one glaring example. I suspect it was this latter discussion that may have influenced the headline writer.

So it goes, and thence it's my own damn fault. I unhesitatingly acknowledge that in the social sciences it's not too hard to reach varied results depending on the measures you decide to use. But that's a country mile from "We faked the data." So you can take that explanation, or leave it, but there it is.

Excellence!!!

Clay Buchholz! A no-hitter in his second start in the majors! The first rookie in Red Sox history to do it. The 21st rookie in major league baseball to do it. The third rookie since 1900 to throw a no-hitter in his first or second start. The 17th no-hitter ever by a Red Sox pitcher. The first since Derek Lowe's in 2002. And he's 23 years old. Wow!

This happened last night, September 1, 2007. You can read all about it at Boston.com. Congratulations, Clay!

P.S. We'd love it if all of you would post your congratulations to him in our comments.

The Big Train
Pulled Out Of The Station ...

One hundred years ago today, on 2 August 1907, Walter Johnson took the mound for the first of his 802 lifetime appearances for the Washington Senators baseball team. He lost that day, but went on to win 411 games with a fastball that may never have been equaled.

I grew up 30 miles from Washington, and saw my first major league game at Griffith Stadium in D.C., probably about 1949. Though some of my learned fellow baseball pals of that era were Christy Matthewson [NY Giants hall of fame pitcher] defenders, I was adamant that The Big Train, as he was called, was the best pitcher ever. In fact, I still am adamant.

So Happy 100, ghost of The Big Train.

(Why does this belong in this Blog? Because it's a gorgeous, hot summer day—and if you are not musing on Walter Johnson today, then in my book you've got a problem. And, since this is, in a sense, my "book" ...)

In Search of Excellence, Thoughts On, 25-year Perspective

[TP note: What follows, in shorthand-outline form was written by me to prep for an interview on a new book about the "halo effect"—which, as so many since 1982, takes aim at In Search of Excellence—which, of course, is immensely flattering 25 years later, when the book and I, by all rights, ought to be on the shelf gathering dust. Why did I take it so seriously? Simple, because it's interesting to think about "all this."]

*Book was impetus for:

    Excellence "Industry"
    Anti-Excellence "Industry"
    Multi-billion $$ "Management guru" INDUSTRY

*Don’t take yourself too seriously!!!!! (Read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled By Randomness—my bible.)
*MANAGEMENT IS NOT NOT NOT A "SCIENCE" (!!!!)
*TP to audiences: "If you followed In Search to a T you were obviously an idiot and deserved your sorry fate; it's simply meant to be 'helpful,' no more and no less. It's entirely up to you and your judgment as to how far to go, if anywhere." (Any idea/s taken to its/their extreme will get you in trouble—e.g., religious ones.)
*TP: "'Halo effect?' I WISH IT WERE TRUE!" (I.e, that "everyday" service industries treated their employees like Wegmans does.)
*Conjectures lead to refutations. (Duh.) (Popper, philosopher of science, Conjectures and Refutations) (Success stories vs failure stories; Freud/broken personalities vs. Maslow/healthy personalities)

*FYI, or, rather, for what it's worth, perhaps not much):

    Excellence Index: 1982-2002/Forbes.com
    [20th anniversary of Search]

    DJIA: $10,000 yields $85,500
    EI: $10,000 yields $140,050

    (Forbes/Excellence Index/Basket of 32 publicly traded stocks from In Search of Excellence)

    (Ever so many management book authors feel it's necessary to begin with "Most of the companies in In Search of Excellence failed." This is hardly "proof" that such an assertion is wrong, just "a little counter-evidence.")

* The "stuff" can't hurt (e.g., women, design, customers, people, MBWA, X-functional co-operation, soft is hard [numbers "soft," people-customer-execution orientation/obsession "hard"], EXCELLENCE per se as aspiration, action beats talk, screw-ups normal & necessary, flowers, "thank you," Enthusiasm, hire enthusiasts) "Tom, it [YPO seminar in '83] was a blinding flash of the obvious"—Manny Garcia, Burger King's #1 franchisee at the time)
(McKinsey "7-S model" [strategy, structure, staff, etc.] 8 "basics" of Search)

*Not RULES, but a little motivation/some "stuff" to get you (seminar attendee) going
*TP, 2007: "My principal goal is to remind you of stuff you already know, but which often gets lost in the course of taxing everyday affairs."

*CONTEXT! CONTEXT! CONTEXT! (1982's "Strategy obsession" vs our emphasis on Execution-"Organization"-"Organizational effectiveness")

*Didn't purport to be "Hard research." (Instead, "exploratory research"; i.e., taking a first look at an interesting notion)

*FYI:

Comment @ tompeters.com/June 2, 2007: "As an attendee of the CO-OP Financial Services Conference, I had the opportunity to see Tom's presentation on 6/1/07. For me, the man and the message were both truly inspiring. Tom helped remind me of why I decided to accept the CEO position at my credit union nearly seven years ago. His presentation also served as a much needed slap in the face by showing me how much I have unintentionally strayed from the original vision I was given. I have allowed the influences of generally well intended external forces to move me, and therefore my credit union, off track. As a result, we have become entirely too wrapped up with trying to be 'one of the big guys,' way too risk averse, afraid to fail and slow to act as a result of 'paralysis by analysis.' It's time to change all of that! Thanks very much and God bless!" (Posted by Wally Murray at June 3, 2007, 9:16 AM)

NOT MEANT TO IMPLY A "TYPICAL COMMENT," SIMPLY TO SUGGEST WHAT "THEY" CAN GET OUT OF "IT." (Will he follow up? God alone knows. And, sorry, not my problem—I live to stir things up; hey, one can only do so much, especially at 64 [64 = me, Harrison Ford, Paul McCartney—a little left in us old boys?])

[CM note: The article we link above is an excerpt from Knowledge@Wharton.]

Media Sighting

US News & World Report of 21 May 2007 has an article titled "The Best Business Books of All Time? Here Are the Choices of Our Panel of CEOs and Experts." Experts are the likes of Chris Anderson, editor of Wired and author of The Long Tail, who recommends Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, mentioned here a couple of times. An erstwhile CEO in the group is Carly Fiorina, who names Re-imagine! among her selection of best business books ever. Thank you, Carly!

It's How You Tell 'Em!

The UK's Guardian newspaper is in the middle of presenting a truly fabulous mini-series of the best speeches of the 20th Century. Here is the list of speeches, that are being presented daily from 21st April – 4th May:

Winston Churchill, We shall fight on the beaches, June 4, 1940
John F Kennedy, Ask not what your country can do for you, January 20, 1961
Nelson Mandela, An ideal for which I am prepared to die, April 20, 1964
Harold Macmillan, No going back, February 3, 1960
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, March 4, 1933
Nikita Khrushchev, The cult of the individual, February 25, 1956
Emmeline Pankhurst, Freedom or death, November 3, 1913
Martin Luther King, Jr., I have a dream, August 28, 1963
Charles de Gaulle, The flame of French resistance, June 1940
Margaret Thatcher, The lady's not for turning, October 10, 1980
Jawaharlal Nehru, A tryst with destiny, August 14, 1947
Virginia Woolf, A room of one's own, 1928
Aneurin Bevan, We have to act up to different standards, December 5, 1956
Earl Spencer, The most hunted person of a modern age, September 6, 1997
[Some have audio; others don't. And to date, the first seven are available; the rest are to come.—CM]

You can read transcripts, as well as listen to the actual speeches at www.guardian.co.uk/greatspeeches. I've just listened to the Winston Churchill speech, which took place shortly after the Dunkirk Landings—it really conjoured up the spirit of the moment in a chilling way.

What do you think of the list—which do you think is the finest of them all, and is there any one that you would have added to that list?

Excellence! Everywhere!

I am in a daze!

I received a gorgeous book, Crawl Space Science: What to Have Done ... And Why, by Larry Janesky. The book has sold 115, 000 copies! Larry runs Basement Systems Inc., of Seymour, CT. The book is graphically brilliant (he gives credit to Re-imagine!), easy to use, astoundingly informative—and I got it just as Susan and I were in the midst of discussing a new use for our moldy basement.

Professionally, there is simply nothing I love ... LOVE ... more than Excellence in "impossible" places!!!

(Recall my recent riff on Jim Penman's Jim's Group—2,600 franchisees in Australia, NZ, UK. Cleaning. Dog washing. Handyman. Fencing. Paving. Pool care. Etc. Etc.)

Why, why, why do the likes of me and Jim Collins and Ram Charan keep using, almost exclusively, large, publicly traded companies as exemplars? Laziness? (Exception, touted here before: Small Giants: Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead Of Big—by Bo Burlingham.)

Go, Larry!
Go, Jim!
Go, Bo!

[NB: Did I mention that Larry's business has grown like Topsy, with revenue now topping $50,000,000!]

Stunning & Stunned

Movie reviews are not within the scope of this Blog. Until now. The Lives of Others. To do more than mention the name would require thousands of words. I cannot commend it highly enough; now, not on DVD—must be seen on the Big Screen. (My only elucidation will be to say that it was "one of those very rare ones" where literally not one word was heard upon the end of the film—and almost everyone sat, in stunned silence, until the end of the credit roll.)

Three Reviews: Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9, Strategy + Business Magazine, and Sunday's Academy Awards

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Time: 4 minutes, 59 seconds

Links:
NaturallySpeaking 9
strategy + business
Academy Awards

MP3 File

Excellence, 25 and Still Counting!

About three days from now, if history is a teacher, coach Skip Kenney will chalk up his 26th (TWENTY-SIX!) consecutive Pac 10 swimming championship. When he won #14, legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden made the presentation—Kenney had broken coach Wooden's Pac 10 consecutive championship record. At 25 in a row, Kenney's feat stands alone in the annals of NCAA records—and the Pac 10 is as competitive-tough a playground (pool) as exists.

The current issue of Stanford's alumni magazine, which tells us that Ronald Reagan was in his first term when the streak started, features Kenney in an article titled "Master Stroke." It more or less begins this way: "The first thing you need to know about Skip Kenney, the 63-year-old coach of the Stanford men's swim team, is that he never swam competitively. Since he arrived at Stanford in 1979, Kenney has won seven NCAA titles, coached 100 different All-Americans, served on three Olympic staffs and won an astonishing 25 Pac-10 titles in a row. A generation-spanning community of swimmers and former swimmers would all 'lie down in traffic for him,' according to one, Adam Messner, class of 2001. But he has never swum a 3000 for time, never churned out 100 kicks on 90-second intervals, never spent so much as an hour with his face in the water, staring at the black line. 'I can't even imagine,' he says."

Kenney's secret, if you must call it that, is turning an individualistic sport into a team sport—no mean feat. Every team member is evaluated first and foremost, the article says, on his special contribution to the team.

Hats off to a performance and a process that defines Excellence—and as a Stanford alum, good luck this weekend!

All I Can Say Is ... WOW!

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Thoughts on the word WOW!
Time: 2 minutes, 25 seconds

MP3 File

Acceptable!

I gave two biggish tips on my trip to people who had not done anything for me. During a coffee stop at a boonies café-2 room motel (see picture above) in New Zealand, I took a toilet break. The restroom was literally spotless to the point of gleaming—and featured a nice bowl of fresh flowers to boot. As you can doubtless tell from the pic, it wasn't the Four Seasons. So on the way out (I'd purchased my coffee a few minutes earlier), I stopped at the register and dropped a $20 bill in the tip jar—and told the employee, "That's for the sparkling loo!"

On a ferry ride to Doubtful Sound (see pic below), I went to get coffee. The ferry-service clerk was making a latte for the guy in front of me. She put heart and soul into the effort, was incredibly careful, and made it all look like a performance art piece. He didn't tip her (tipping is uncommon in NZ), so when I got to the front of the line I gave her a $10 bill. "I only want a 'long black' [Long Black NZ = Black U.S./Short Black NZ = Espresso U.S.]," I said, "but here's a tip for the wonderful job you did on that guy's latte."

I love the "little" touches that not only "stand out," but also shout "I/We care." They are the essence of "selling" "experiences"—today's hot topic.

Consider: "We do no great things, only small things with great love."—Mother Teresa

Consider: "What would happen if we looked at a customer and saw the face of God in them? To most people it sounds like a lofty idea. But if you see the face of God in a flower, why wouldn't you see it in the face of a customer?"—Lance Secretan, founder of Manpower, Inc., and most recently author of One: The Art and Practice of Conscious Leadership

Excellence in Motion

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Thanks to Kevin at ipopmyphoto.com for the image.

Tom talks about "a gorgeous exhibition of Excellence" in the loading area at Ralphs supermarket in L.A.

Time: 6 minutes, 6 seconds.

MP3 File

A Matter of Opinion

I was sitting in an Emirates lounge in Dubai, and my eye caught and lingered on my more or less 7-year old rolly bag by Eagle Creek. Not a ding or a tear, still sleek, after probably a little more than 1.5 million brutal miles—I'm not kind to luggage. Go Eagle Creek—couldn't live without 'em! (And, no, I'm not trolling for freebies from Eagle Creek; I will not accept such goodies—which are occasionally proffered.)

While on the topic of traveling stuff I like, I'll plug a Richter 6.1 shift in my all-important preferences for international air travel. I'm logging about 150,000 air miles per year for international trips alone. (Current air voyage: Boston-Athens-Saudi Arabia-San Francisco-Boston.) And for 15 or 20 or even 30 years I've preferred, when possible, outside North America, British Air—and actually have enjoyed traversing Heathrow at 5AM or some such.

But that's changed in the last 6 months. I'm now squarely a Lufthansa and Frankfurt guy. Heathrow is a disaster, a mess, over-crowded, slowed to a turtle's pace due to security issues, etc., etc. By contrast—even during major construction—Frankfurt is clean (hey, these are Germans—offspring of my ancestors), easy as pie to navigate, orderly at the gate, relatively painless on the security dimension (adequately staffed—or just better), managed well enough so that you don't feel as if you're spending endless hours in a Tokyo subway station at peak commute time—and the airport staff attitude & responsiveness is unerringly helpful. As to the flight itself, from my perspective, LH tops BA in everything from on-time departures, crowd control, and cleanliness (the "German thing" again) to, perhaps surprising (again) ... food and attitude! The BA folks are not typically "having a bad day"—they're just not having a good day!

I'm still okay with BA. No, I'm actually not. "Please, please," I beg my travel guru, Nancy Paul, "by hook or by crook or come hell or high water, get me on Lufthansa—and if a 2-legger is necessary, send me via Frankfurt!

No more than one (surprised) guy's opinion.

(Photo above is Dubai airport—at 3AM.)

Commerce Bank!

Loved this Comment to our MVP/Companies post:

"Tom, bravo on your recognition of Commerce Bank—who I believe have single handedly revived retail banking. I've been banking with them for about 5 years and can't say enough good things about them. As Tom said, they are always open and call themselves America's Most Convenient Bank, a perfectly fitting slogan. I like them so much that I recommend them to almost everyone—I actually hold back my recommendation for a few people I know who are real pains in the ass because I like Commerce so much I want to spare them from having to deal with them.

"As a New Yorker I have seen the big players (like Wells Fargo) try to emulate them, but they fall short because at Commerce customer service is in their damn DNA, and while that can be imitated, it can't be cloned. Those of you who don't bank at Commerce owe them a thanks for re-imagining retail banking, which will benefit customers of all banks."

Posted by Adam at January 3, 2007 3:56 PM

MVP2006 (Companies)

On 4 December I made a Post about favorite ("excellent") companies. I want to finish that thought by offering my co-winners of the Most Valuable Companies Award 2006. They are three in number:

Dick Kovacevich, CEO of top performing Wells Fargo Bank, said a couple of years ago: "Analysts preferred cost cutting, as long as they could see two or three years of EPS growth. I preached revenue and the analysts' eyes would glaze over. Now revenue is 'in' because so many got caught, and earnings went to hell. They said, 'Oh my gosh, you need revenues to grow earnings over time.' Well, Duh!" Go Dick! I consider myself a died-in-the-wool "top line" guy-fanatic. Hence, my first of three winners for 2006 is a bank, albeit not Wells. Namely ... COMMERCE BANK.

They love deposits. They hate stupid rules (remind me to tell you about the Red "no stupid rules" button on every computer terminal). They want people to come into the branch rather than use the ATM or Web. They keep said branches open all the damn time (no exaggeration). They love individuals of modest net worth. They think that when you call them you should speak to a ... l-i-v-i-n-g h-u-m-a-n b-e-i-n-g. They love to give out dog biscuits and balloons—and think nothing of taking 8,000 employees to Radio City Music Hall to celebrate a good year.

They think "Wow!" is the coolest word ever (no wonder I love them!!), and that it belongs in banking. They like fun ... and I guess they don't like the Bank of America: "We defy conventional wisdom, operating more like the young bucks at Starbucks than the old farts at the Bank of America."—Vernon Hill, founder and CEO.

J.D. Power likes them ... for example, Commerce recently won a Power award for best customer service for a bank in New York City by placing 1st in 5 of 6 categories and 2nd in the sixth. They are incredibly profitable in hyper-tough East Coast retail banking markets and growing like Topsy.

Hill loves revenue growth ("Our whole story is growing revenue"). And he believes religiously in getting that revenue growth organically ("No great American retailer was ever created by doing acquisitions"); growth-by-acquisition, he insists, is invariably followed by a cost cutting mentality that turns the customer into a second class citizen.

Bingo ... on every score.

My paternal grandfather came to Baltimore in the 1870s and became a very successful contractor. Skipping a generation, I got a masters degree at Cornell in construction management. So it has always annoyed me that you never see a contractor on the "bests" lists. Hence, with the greatest pleasure, I name as my second winner ... JOHN LAING HOMES. (FYI ... there is no meaning to the order.)

The JLH story is in its own way a repeat of Commerce. CEO Larry Webb says: "We don't 'close units,' we build homes." No big deal, you say. Wrong! The focus by our second largest homebuilder is on the customer, the customer's family, the customer's community and values, and the customer's experience from way before start with JLH to way past finish—not exactly the norm in the "unit-building" world in which John Laing competes. JLH competes on/by design (again, no wonder I love them)—every division in the company, no exceptions, has won top design awards. Professional Builder named them "Builder of the Year" in 2003. And, like Commerce, J.D. Power awards for best customer service cover the walls. And get this: On their home turf, Orange County, CA, JLH is one of the "best places to work" according to the Orange County Register—imagine, I barely can, a builder as best place to work!

Maybe the John Laing story was summed up best in a September 2006 headline in BigBuilder: "Soft Skills, Hard Dollars" Yup, housing is in the tank at the moment—but I confidently predict that JLH will do better than its peers during the downturn and keep rollin' along.

I love Adelaide! I love a guy who can turn cuttin' grass and walkin' dogs into a 2,600-franchise, global business. Hence, I love Jim Penman. He's the founder and boss of my third MVP winner ... JIM's GROUP. It started with part-time grass cutting by a grad student—and has become a force. We're all busy as hell, with the 2-worker, 2-professional family virtually the norm. And what a need ("Blue ocean"?) Jim's Group fulfills. They do all the work you don't want to do/don't have time to do—from grass cutting and dog walking to home repairs and driveway care and you name it. Though Jim's has no J.D. Power awards (there are no JDP awards in Australia or New Zealand or the UK, where the group does its business)—the customer service standards would perhaps intimidate even the Four Seasons. Like Commerce and John Laing, Jim's Group lives the "people first" strategy-life with an abiding passion—not precisely the norm in the grass mowing industry! And franchisee relations would make most any franchisor drool.

There you have it! I love these three winners! My principal criteria were: "excellence so obvious you'd have to be an idiot not to 'get it'" and "excellence where you'd least expect it." And of course, I'm hardly sad that all three sagas are based on: revenue-rules-the-roost, people first, a passion for customers, Wow! ... and the relentless and avowed pursuit of excellence. (Oh, and they do indeed make a buck or three or four or six at the end of the day.)

In my 4 December post, I summarized the traits that marked not only these three champions, but my whole group of 20 or so:

*Focused on revenue, organic growth and "offense," not defense and cost containment.
*People-talent obsession.
*Provide mind-bending experiences. (Driven by design primacy.)
*Nuts about customers.
*Happy to use words like "Wow."
*Pretty close to the high end of the market.
*Ability to make silk purses filled with gold out of sows' ears.
*Execution!

Works for me!

(Attached you'll find a short PowerPoint on the winning trio and a few summary slides from the overall Excellence.2006 presentation.)

Excellence25

The biz book biz has gone bonkers since In Search of Excellence. (Hey, I've added 14 others to the pile.) On the other hand, the "Eight Basics" of Search have held up damn well (as have most of the companies—though "built to last," as you know by now, leaves me cold):

1. A Bias for Action. Call it "implementation." Call it "execution." It's the heart of both those key ideas. Too much talk, too little do. Problem-opportunity #1, 1982. Problem-opportunity #1, 2007. And a beast as one grows—and acquires.

2. Close to the Customer. Call it "loyalty" or "customer intimacy" or (God help us) "customer-centric organization." Though I'd move it down to #3 today (people #2), it's as fresh as ever and honored in the breach—again, particularly as giantism emerges. Come hell and/or high water, get close-as-hell to that customer, listen to that customer, and love up that customer for all you're worth.

3. Autonomy and Entrepreneurship. This was, more or less, our innovation piece. Let 1,000 flowers bloom—and then turn it over to Darwin. No autonomy, no accountability; no autonomy, no insane investment in new stuff.

4. Productivity Through People. Obvious—1982. Obvious—2007. But truly "people-obsessed companies" ("talent-obsessed" today) are still rare as can be—we keep trotting out GE's people development process for a reason—we can't think of anyone else among the giants.

5. Hands On, Value-Driven. MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around (circa 1982 and HP). MBWA today!! Absent then. Absent now. Run a place by values-first leadership? Then. Now. Rare.

6. Stick to the Knitting. Misunderstood in '82. We bought Richard Rumelt's (UCLA) act—and I still do. He called the winning approach "related diversification." It ain't about sticking with a pat hand, however "excellent" today—it is about hanging in with stuff you understand. Still a good idea—just ask the private equity boys (and girls), circa 2006.

7. Simple Form, Lean Staff. We pleaded for this in 1982, but we were not aggressive enough. And, of course, there were no Internet-run companies and no outsourcing. Still, the basic idea is fresh as a daisy—and rare as apple blossoms in January in Boston. (Whoops.)

8. Simultaneous Loose-Tight Properties. Confusing to some, gospel to a few (Bob Stone—the exec in charge of re-inventing government in the 90s, who accomplished a helluva lot more than most people realize). Idea: Stick with a few key values ... then let her rip! ("Change anything not 'below the waterline'" was the way W.L. Gore founder Bill Gore put it to us—and it's still working for his firm today. (Or I hope it is—I'm depending on GORE-TEX® when I go hiking in New Zealand at the end of this month.)

Of course there are a jillion ways to say any of these—but their simplicity was the trick. I could as easily give a speech covering these exact ideas with these exact words today as 25 years ago. For instance, when I recently learned that Starbucks founder Howard Schultz visits 25 stores per week and that former Goldman Sachs boss Hank Paulson used to call 70 clients right after New Year's just to "check in," I said—"MBWA then for the best, MBWA now for the best." (Hint: I will be giving some speeches this year with the so-called "eight basics" as my exact outline. Sure my increasingly noisy "women's stuff" will be fit into "close to the customer" and "productivity through people," but the basic outline will be familiar.)

Above picture: aftermath of New Year's—Boston Common, 1 January 2007 @ 7 a.m.

14 April 2006/ Novosibirsk/Siberia

"It came in a flash." "It arrived from the recesses of my mind." I hate language like that!

But it's more or less true.

I was in—yes—Siberia. For an all-day seminar. It was, simply, odd to be there. Orlando is not odd. Istanbul is not odd. Riyadh is not odd. Novosibirsk is odd. (Odd = Totally new experience.)

As I said recently, I didn't want to do "one more speech"—actually, I never do, but this time was different. And, as I sat in my hotel room, "excellence seeped into my consciousness" (well, it did) for the first time in years.

And there on my cover slide appeared:

EXCELLENCE.
ALWAYS.

And the ground shifted perceptibly. Every speech since (about 50 this year), though unique in its own fashion, has been titled: EXCELLENCE. ALWAYS.

It's been a blast. It is a very cool word:

Synonyms:

Purity.
Transcendence.
Virtue.
Elegance.
Majesty.

Antonyms:

Mediocrity.

And the imagery it conjures up: Old Ben Franklin in Paris. Nelson at Trafalgar. Newton being bonked by the apple. (Okay, that one's not true; neither is the cherry tree decapitation—but the images work anyway.) The Grand Canyon. Grey Meadow Farm/Tinmouth/VT. Hillary at the top of Mount Everest. (No, not Ms Clinton.) Callas in full voice. Churchill at the radio mike. An Apple II, circa 1981. An iPod, circa 2006.

And as Waterman and I said almost 25 years ago: In enterprise! In a career!

Excellence.
What a word.
What an Aspiration.

Welcome back. And thanks, my friends in Novosibirsk.

X06: More Later

Getting ready for tomorrow's seminar with John Laing Homes in Costa Mesa. These folks clearly set the standard for Excellence in home-building—though at the moment they have their hands full with the implosion of the housing market. Thinking about them got me thinking about Excellence in general, and a list I put together in 2004 of "companies-organizations I love." (And even a couple of people fitting that same description.) I pruned a few and added a few, and you'll see the result, "X.06," below. My "excellence criteria": "I know it when I see it." (Take it or leave it. Your choice.) (A couple of entries are in parentheses ( ); they screwed up—but there is still much to learn from their glory days.) (A few are "obvious," such as Starbucks & Apple—can't be helped; most, however, are other than the "usual suspects," which is part of the point of the exercise.) The first paragraph below is the list. The second is the list with dominant excellence attributes in parentheses. And paragraph three is an extracted set of success factors.

X.06/List: Whole Foods Market ... Starbucks ... Wegmans ... Commerce Bank ... Apple ... London Drugs ... Griffin Hospital/Planetree Alliance ... The Met School/Big Picture ... Carl Sewell ... Progressive Insurance ... Stanford women's sports ... Stanford D-School ... HSM ... Washington Speakers Bureau ... Build-A-Bear ... RE/MAX ... Donnelly's Weather Strip Service ... Jim's Group ... Cirque du Soleil ... U.S. Grant ... Horatio Nelson ... (Stew Leonard's) ... (DeMar Plumbing)

X.06/Success Factors: Whole Foods Markets (high-end, experience-design, demographic) ... Starbucks (people, experience) ... Wegmans (people) ... Commerce Bank (nuts about customers, WOW, people, execution) ... Apple (design-experience, breakthrough, "virus management," resilience, talent, "seriously cool") ... London Drugs (design-experience, people, "solutions") ... Griffin Hospital/Planetree Alliance (customer-centric, "whole person") ... The Met School/Big Picture (engagement, self-control) ... Carl Sewell (experience!) ... Progressive Insurance (speed, IT) ... Stanford women's sports (demographic, Blue Ocean) ... Stanford D-School (design-biz-engineering, Blue Ocean) ... HSM (execution, experience) ... WSB (integrity, broad view of customers, execution) ... Build-A-Bear (experience) ... RE/MAX (people/"create success stories") ... Donnelly's Weather Strip Service (high end, execution-reliability, simply the best) ... Jim's Group (imagination-Blue Ocean, demographic, customer-centric) ... Cirque du Soleil (talent, R&D, Imagination, resilience, design-experience, partnering) ... (U.S. Grant/execution, delegation, people, K.I.S.S., action-at-all-costs, win, bold ) ... (Horatio Nelson/execution, delegation, people, K.I.S.S., action-at-all-costs, win, bold) ... (Stew Leonard's/people, experience-design, Wow) ... (DeMar Plumbing/experience, people, Blue Ocean)

High end.
Experience.
Design.
Crazy for customers!
Crazy for Patients! ("Whole person").
Wow!
People first, second, third.
Breakthrough or bust.
"Seriously cool."
"Virus management."
Resilience.
Tippy-top talent.
"Solutions," not "just" "satisfaction."
Engagement.
Self-control. (Customer/Patient/Student control.)
Blue Ocean.
"Mundane stuff" made great.
Great demographic.
The best. Period.
Effective partnering.
K.I.S.S.
Play to win. (Offense > Defense.)
Bold!
Action! Always!
Integrity-as-strategy.

You could call this "success factors," "contributors to excellence" list a "laundry list" too general to be helpful. I agree to some extent. On the other hand, I think there is a commonality or three worthy of mention:

Focused on growth and revenue and "offense," not defense and cost containment.
People-talent.
Provide mind-bending experiences. (Driven by design primacy.)
Nuts about customers.
Happy to use words like "Wow."
Pretty close to the high end of the market.
(Ability to make silk purses filled with gold out of sows' ears: Wegmans-Whole Foods-Stew Leonard's and groceries; Jim's Group and dog-walking; Donnelly and weatherstrip installation; DeMar and plumbing.)

As to the "more later" in the title of the Post, 2007 is the 25th anniversary of In Search of Excellence—and my mind is very much pre-occupied with Excellence these days. ("Excellence": One Very Cool Word! Whoopee!)

In Search of Excellence at (Almost) 25 ... and Standing Tall

In Search of Excellence will be 25 next year—believe it or not. A few days ago a Web posting suggested that Bob Waterman and I had fudged the data in the book.

It's simply not true.

But if that perception is rumbling around in cyberspace, it's all my fault.

I did an interview on the book with my great pal Alan Webber, Fast Company founder, a couple of years ago. I made the wretched mistake, in casual conversation, of saying we'd "fiddled the data" for In Search of Excellence.

What I meant had nothing to do with "fudging," or "fiddling," but was a comment only on the differences between our methodology for company selection and that of Jim Collins in Good to Great. Jim apparently had no prior convictions about which companies he'd examine, and created his list by applying certain financial criteria to a huge company database—and sight unseen, a set of superb performers emerged. By that standard, Bob Waterman and I did it "backwards." We were enamored of the "excellence idea," wanted to write about it, and thence sought initial "excellent company" nominations based on McKinsey and academic and corporate experts' subjective evaluations; only after getting a "subjective" list of nominees did we apply the financial screens that caused any number—such as GE (this was pre-Welch)—to drop off the list. Thus, by fiddling I simply meant that we hadn't followed a pure model of starting from a big list and using only financial data to extract unforeseen winners.

(Fact is, any like process is about 90% subjective—e.g., if you use-juggle different data screens, different years, you will get wildly different results/lists.)

For what it's worth, Bob and I subjected our subjectively determined candidates to six tough financial hurdles (see In Search of Excellence, page 22 et seq.), three representing growth, three representing absolute financial returns. Growth measures: compound asset growth; compound equity growth; average ratio of market value to book value. The "absolute" measures were: average return on total capital; average return on equity; average return on sales. We did our research in 1980, and arbitrarily used data covering 1961–1980. To qualify, a company had to have been in the top half on at least four of the six measures for the full 20-year period. Most handily exceeded this standard, but 19 of our original 62 company nominees dropped out, and we concentrated our research on the remaining 43.

Far more interesting, I think, is that given our subjective nomination process, we ended up examining companies that, in 1980, virtually no one had looked at. Absurd as it may seem, these "stealth" "cool" companies, circa 1980, included: Emerson Electric, Texas Instruments, Hewlett-Packard (then a $1-billion firm), Frito-Lay/PepsiCo, Johnson & Johnson, 3M, Caterpillar, Marriott, McDonald's, Intel, Disney, Delta Airlines, and, yes, little Wal*Mart.

While I'm on the topic of In Search of Excellence and retrospective perceptions thereof, I'll deal with the second "charge" against the book; namely, that several of "our" companies "failed." (For some wholly unknown reason, some people say "most of" "our" companies failed????) To be sure, the likes of Wang and Atari and Kmart are today embarrassments. Nonetheless, the overall performance of "our" firms has been little short of stunning. In 2002, on the 20th anniversary of the book, forbes.com held our publicly traded companies up to a high-amp searchlight:

One remarkable fact about In Search of Excellence remains: Its list of companies have held up quite well over time. The book, which our panel of experts recently voted the most influential business title in the last 20 years, focuses on 43 "excellent" companies. The list contains just a few arguably embarrassing picks, Atari and Wang Labs being the most prominent. But overall, the companies Peters and Waterman called excellent have easily outperformed the market averages any way you slice it.

In Search of Excellence didn't name the biggest companies and ride with winners: In 1982, when the book was published, just three of the 43 companies ranked among the top 25 by sales on The Forbes 500s. And just 22 of the 32 public companies were among the 500 largest. Those 22 ranked, on average, 125th on The Forbes 500s by sales.

Over the years, the companies grew. By 2002, 24 of the firms were among the largest 500 public companies, with an average Forbes 500s sales rank of 99.

The authors picked big companies considered "innovative and excellent" in a variety of industries that had shown strong growth and profitability between 1961 and 1980. The book doesn't purport to be an investment guide, but investing in these excellent companies woul