Dispatches from the New World of Work

Commonplace?

Susan just severed a relationship with a professional working on a project with her. The person was creative and personable. But time and again failed to deliver the goods—actually hard goods in this case. Whether accounting or plumbing or design work, I'd wager that 75% of firings of professionals comes from follow-through, not the cleverness of the work. (Give me your guess on the percentage. Please.)

(In this case the professional was indeed personable, a key trait. But on the EQ side, the person in question lost by arguing every point with Susan rather than acknowledging responsibility.)

Gill MA & Success Tip #1

I've argued that as tough times loom (or are here, as they surely are as last week's statistics demonstrated), reviving a focus on the basics almost tops the "to do" list. Aiming mostly at the basics, we've been offering our own To Do list—145 Success Tips to date. Which brings me to Gill MA.

I usually fly to the Great City of Wherever from Logan Airport. The trip from Tinmouth VT to Boston passes through Gill MA. It's exactly halfway—hence the perfect place for a pit stop. With choices aplenty, I am nonetheless firm in my habit of stopping at the Wagon Wheel Restaurant. It's, in fact, a smallish coffee shop-diner. The food, including the fresh muffins that are about a foot away as you enter (typically at dawn's early light, in my case), is boffo. The attitude is boffo, too. But make no mistake, my custom is well and truly earned, a half dozen times a month, by the restroom!

It's clean-to-sparkling. (Come to think of it, despite the invariably crowded shop, I have never seen the tiniest scrap of paper on the bathroom floor.) Fresh flowers are the norm. And best of all, there is a great multi-generational collection of family (the owner's family, as I recall) pictures that cover all the walls; I invariably spend an extra minute examining one or another, smiling at a group photo from a local company dinner, or some such, circa 1930 I'd guess.

Well, the likes of Gill's finest won pride of place on our success tip list. Namely, the #1 spot went to "clean and neat," with an emphasis on restrooms. To me, a clean, and attractive and even imaginative loo is the best "I care" sign in a retail shop or professional office—and it goes double when it comes to employee restrooms!

Recession is upon us, and odds are it'll linger. Step #1: Mind the restrooms! The basics are more important than ever, and I can't think of a better place to start. (Or a better person than the owner or manager to be in charge.)

Corporate-Unit Values: "Required" Addition Thereto

I like, and value, the word "decency"—a lot. (E.g., my rave reviews of Steve Harrison's The Manager's Book of Decencies: How Small Gestures Build Great Companies.) I like the word "respect"—a lot.

But I'm stuck on-hooked on-wedded to-wild about another word these (perilous) days: thoughtfulness. I am enamored with the idea of living and then adding to our formal or informal vision & values statement: "We are thoughtful in all we do." I'm so taken with the idea that I suggest that "thoughtfulness" joins the likes of "people," "customers," "product," "profit," "action," "excellence" on the "10 Great Business Words list"—or some such.

Times are perilous.
Competition is brutal.
Hustle is essential.
Cost-cutting is imperative.

All true!
But how, in the process of getting from here to difficult there in concert with our many constituents-stakeholders with whom we hope to do business over the long haul, do we "live in the world"?
Who are we?
How are we?
What are we as a human institution?
Who am I (boss, follower)?
What do I leave in my wake?

It's character in a way, to be sure. (Another stunningly important word.) But, in a sense, thoughtfulness is even more encompassing than character. It is transactional—applies to literally every internal and external transaction—as well as something that resides deep within.

I like the idea of showing up for work in a place that cherishes thoughtfulness.
I like the idea of doing business with a service provider known for its thoughtfulness.
I like being a vendor to an outfit that's thoughtful.
All this is X10 in troubled times.

Thoughtful is not "soft."
No.
No.
No.

No.
No.
No.

In fact, I'd contend that "dogmatic thoughtfulness" (now there's a term) improves growth and profitability and longterm enterprise solidity in a pretty damn direct, high impact, ultimately measurable cause-and-effect way.

Thoughtfulness is key to customer retention.
Thoughtfulness is key to employee recruitment and satisfaction.
Thoughtfulness is key to brand perception.
Thoughtfulness is key to your ability to look in the mirror—and tell your kids about your job.
"Thoughtfulness is free."
Thoughtfulness is key to speeding things up—it reduces friction.
Thoughtfulness is key to transparency and even cost containment—it abets rather than stifles truth-telling.

So think about thoughtfulness, about adding "thoughtfulness in all we do" to your unit's values statement. But do so only after you and your team have figured out exactly what thoughtfulness means in a variety of contexts. And do so only after you have made a demonstrated personal and organizational commitment to thoughtfulness. Thence, you must be unabashedly devoted to keeping each other honest in the practice of dogmatic thoughtfulness—with, alas, adverse consequences, eventually severe, for those who fail to take this essential attribute aboard.

Starting time?
Not "today"—but "now."
That is, thoughtfulness is an especially potent "tool" in crazy-disruptive-scary times.

Kudos to TPWS

Trolling the Web recently, we found praise for one of our favorite parts of the tompeters.com network, tpwireservice.com (TPWS). You should visit it now if you've never seen it. Every day, the TPWS editor, Shelley Dolley, scours the Web for news related to the subjects dear to Tom: Excellence, Talent, Design, Books, Implementation, Branding, Marketing to Women and Boomers (known as Trend$), etc. And she collects them into one place for easy access by Tom fans, aspiring entrepreneurs, Brand Yous, and the like. And, she does a wonderful job! We're glad to see that others feel the same. Thanks to Steve Matthews at the Vancouver Law Librarian Blog for noticing TPWS and reminding us what great work Shelley does.

Excellence!
Period!

Like it or not, my favorite definition of "quality" or "excellence," like the famous quote about "pornography," has always been, "I'll know it when I see it."

Well, I know it when I see it.

I am not a gaga Bruce Springsteen fan. Or I wasn't at 8:45 p.m. this past Saturday, as a monster thunder storm attacked Gillette Stadium (Foxboro MA) and delayed the start of The Boss's live concert—soggy and bedraggled, those of us on the field were herded (perfect word choice) off to escape our temporary metal floor while the lightning fired away as though Zeus was really pissed at Bruce. I was in turned pissed at my Bruce-besotted wife for dragging me 200 miles (actually, 173) from my VT farm and beloved Kubota to suffer through all this so I could watch a FOF/fellow old fart (okay, he's "only" 58) prance around as though he still thought he was 28.

Well, the storm abated, The Boss showed up—and I, one of Earth's newest Bruce Groupies by midnight, was mesmerized by the most amazing piece of performance art of any sort I've ever seen (65.8 years) or ever expect to see. Three+ hours, non-flagging energy, no intermission at all—he ran to a little table and threw ice water on himself a couple of times without breaking stride. If ever there was a time when the word "excellence" was not hyperbole, this was it.

The repertoire was great, but so what. The passion & energy & performance [P.E.P., "pep"—God help me] per se was the point, the whole point, and nothing but the point.

I really don't want to Blog this—I want to savor it forever & ever! To hell with Cirque du Soleil—or IBM in the early 1980s! I never want to use the word "Excellence" with a cap "E" again other than in ref to Bruce. Gillette.0802.2008.

Bruce was amazing!
The E Street Band was amazing!
The IMAG direction was amazing!
Sitting in Row #19 was amazing!

From a review by W. Zachary Malinowski in the Sunday Providence [RI] Journal:

"Last night, the hardest working man in rock-n-roll came to Gillette Stadium for
something like his 95th*-concert since last fall's release of Magic, his latest
CD. The tour kicked off in October in Hartford and has taken the band across the
United States and Canada and twice to Europe. ...

"There's an old adage among diehard fans of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street
Band that goes something like this: there are two types of people in the world,
those who love The Boss and those who have never seen him perform live. ...

"Sure, at age 58, Springsteen has slowed down, but not as much as the rest of us.
He still races around and slides across the stage. He pours his heart and soul
into each performance as if he's trying to convince each ticket holder that this
is an event that he is going to make you remember the rest of your life. If you
didn't like the last song, well, he's going to play the next one even HARDER!
In a time of mortgage foreclosures, layoffs, and $4-per-gallon gas prices,
Springsteen makes sure that each of the 60,000-plus fans in football stadiums
is getting their money's worth. ..."

*TP: Holy shit! ("Everybody" says I have high energy—forget it!)

For what little it's worth, I've added a trio of Tom-pics, from my set of 225, to this Post, and one to the next.

Dear God, I'm Tired

I performed a brutal brush cutting-landscaping chore this morning in 90-degree heat. I truly pushed my ancient body to the limit and beyond.

But I got it done.
Or did I?

As I packed up my tools, I took a final look at what I'd done. Fine and dandy, but it was still a tiny-tiny-bit ragged here and there. Problem was, in the literal sense I didn't have an ounce of energy left. "F%^# it, I'll get it later" I said to myself and turned on the engine of my 4-wheel-drive Kubota.

I sat there a minute, dripping with sweat, and then I turned off the engine. With every muscle screaming in agony (I do not exaggerate—or so it feels), I got out of the Kubota, gathered a couple of tools, and spent the next 20 minutes doing that final touch on the job—and then just a little more, and a little more.

While the vignette is unmistakably self-serving, it is also one of those "reminders of the obvious" worth reminding you of. Namely, one cannot overestimate, in, say, our project work "the last two-percenter." That person who, at 2 a.m. takes one final look at the presentation to the Board tomorrow, and discovers that two key numbers are transposed on the footnote on Slide 47—and then looks "one last time" when she returns at 5:45 a.m. The carpenter who, finished, adds one final touch that alters the character of the cabinet he's spent two weeks building, and then hauls the piece back to his shop for a significant (to him) revision. Etc.

Sometimes we call the last two-percenter a "pain in the ass." True, but no one is of greater importance to the success of what we do. Funny thing, I felt less tired and achy after my "last two percent" drill than when I started it.

OMG, A Positive Airline Story!

Never thought I'd be caught saying something nice about an airline, but here goes. Was scheduled to fly United from SF to Macau, via Taipei. Was indulging myself with a 1st class seat. But transfer process in Taipei smelled nightmarish.

Looking around for alternatives I found EVA Airways. (My travel agent-Goddess had booked it as a very second "safety choice." (My contracts require a backup.) I don't pretend to be omniscient, but I'm a little leery of airlines I've never heard of after several million miles and several million years of flying. At the EVA website, though, I had the opportunity to go to a neutral site for customer comments—while a couple were minor complaints, the vast majority were very positive. Given the comments and the fact that the connecting process in Taipei appeared to be painless—we booked EVA about eight hours before I was to leave.

Enough of the build-up. Bottom line, top line, middle line: A fantastic experience. Flew business class—$7,500 (no bull) less than United. Everyone, as in everyone, had great attitudes. Check-in painless and positive. Lounges great in SF and Taipei. Transfer in Taipei very easy. And on and on. All together, a rare A+ experience.

(Guess what airline I'm flying back to Boston?)

(FYI fellow ignoramuses: EVA was launched in 1989 with a $3 billion aircraft order. It is a sister of the much older, Taipei-based Evergreen Marine Corporation, the 4th largest containership outfit in the world. I'm slightly embarrassed that Evergreen Marine is a competitor to my hosts at ZIM!)

Excellence Always

To wrap up our series of eight videos, we've chosen, of course, the topic of excellence. In this video (3 minutes, 44 seconds) filmed by Skillsoft, Tom asks, "If not excellence, what?" What else should you be doing with your time, your life? He agrees with Thomas Watson, Sr., the talented early leader of IBM, that you should make a personal commitment never again to do anything that is not excellent.

Excellence Always from Tom Peters on Vimeo.

[To get a transcript of Tom's message, you can download a PDF file here.]

I'll Miss You! (I Already Do.)

There is a little bistro, Chez Vanille, about 100 yards from my Boston house where you'll find me a couple of days every couple of weeks. The coffee is good to great (and 100 times better than my own), the croissants pure delight.

And they open at 6 a.m. No small thing for an early riser.

But that's not the point of this post. Rather, it is to say a few words about a woman I love but whose name I don't know. And the tragedy of her leaving me for good.

Of course I ought to know her name—but I don't. (Nor she mine.)

But here's what I do know:

(1) She comes (came) in about 4 a.m. to get things ready.
(2) She appears to be very efficient at what she does-did.
(3) She lights up my life, rain or snow or sleet or hail, gloomy or sunny, at 90°F and -5°F.

She is definitely not "chirpy." (I'd guess she's 45, an age by which chirpiness is highly suspect, by my lights.) It's just that we always exchange a few pleasant sentences, she seems to enjoy what she does, and she brings along a good (good, not great) attitude day in and day out.

I emphasize "good but not great" because, at 6 a.m., I'm not looking for "Let's go out and kick ass, guys." I'm looking for solid and engaged and sociable-friendly and gettin' the job done with everyday pleasure.

Her solidness and spirit were just the tonic I needed—as much as the caffeine. And she provided it again and again and then again.

She's gone now, and I miss her terribly (this was my first morning without her), and I didn't know her name. That's not all bad either, in a funny way. It's not that "Mary's gone—alas." It's that this person whose name I don't know who in a solid-quiet way launched my days on a sound (not giddy) basis is not in situ anymore.

As always (alas!), I also have an ulterior motive in telling this story. It is to remind us that business ("life," too, of course) rises or falls on the nature and character of what the great SAS boss, Jan Carlzon, called "moments of truth"—those fleeting moments of true human contact that define our enterprise's excellence—or lack thereof.

Thus our goal, perhaps primary goal, in every flavor of business of every size, is to "MTMOT"—Manage To Moments Of Truth. Every decision about hiring, firing, supervision, training, systems development is to be designed for and brought immediately and directly to bear on the "production" of Moments Of Truth. My beloved friend from Chez Vanille is poster woman for the possible impact if one gets it "right."

So that's my professional message. As to my personal one, what higher tribute to any person than to say that day in and day out they brought a little sunlight into others' (mine—one other!) lives via the most fleeting moments of contact. I repeat, not cheeriness, chirpiness, or blinding light—just a dab of predictable friendly interaction that invariably pushed the (my) day in the right direction—or at least kept it from heading down the wrong road.

Back to business. Look for, desperately pursue, settle for nothing less than such folks—they are surely not a dime, or even a dollar, a dozen. But they are there and if you will take the trouble to seek them out and then show your occasional appreciation for what they do, Excellence, I predict, will be within your grasp. (And quite possibly a bushel of profit to go along with it.)

When I think of the sorts of interactions I describe above, two quotes come to mind:

"Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart."—Henry Clay, American statesman

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle."—Philo of Alexandria

If we could truly appreciate those two sentiments, and incorporate them into, as businesspeople, our enterprises' DNA, I think it would make a world of difference—and be the ultimate "blue ocean."

Happy weekend!

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.)

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

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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

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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 Bla