Comments

Tom, Tom, Tom, you're writing a weblog. Why are you making me download a PowerPoint presentation? :-) If nothing else, why not just post the outline of the talk? Actually, given your level of passion and enthusiasm, I find it astonishing that you're still using PowerPoint slides at all...

One excellent reason to post your outline, by the way, is because posting it means that if someone happened to Google for, say, "Horizontal Double Dummy" that they'd find your weblog entry, probably as one of the top two or three matches. For example, Google "Circuit City proprietary thinking" and you'll find my own analysis piece as the #1 match.

Much better than a link to a .PPT file!

Posted by Dave Taylor at January 26, 2005 8:53 PM

Wow! That's a keeper...

With all due respect to Dave, that rant is well suited for PowerPoint:)

Posted by Jim Logan at January 26, 2005 9:41 PM

Tom, your slides are awesome! I fell in love with them after your partnered Lovemark presentation a while ago. I also love how we see eye-to-eye on MBAs. I'll never want to work for a company that puts more value on a valueless degree. Thanks for constantly posting them.

Posted by Devin Reams at January 27, 2005 12:24 AM

Tom,

I thought you would appreciate this line from South Carolina's Gov. Mark Sanford's State of the State Address: http://www.scgovernor.com/interior.asp?sitecontentid=7&newsid=470

Richard Florida recently wrote a book called The Creative Class and its premise was that new wealth creation in the 21st century will not come from production, given the relatively inexpensive nature of production from the Far East and third-world countries, instead it will come from the creative process of redesign, marketing and actual invention of a product. This group, which he calls the creative class, is mobile and will gravitate toward areas that have a high-quality lifestyle, which is obviously comprised of many things

Posted by Stephen at January 27, 2005 1:09 AM

On the topic of Tom and Powerpoint slides...Tom you preach design, yet your use of Powerpoint is very "no frills" and a wee bit lacking in the design department - isn't this a contradiction?

Posted by Brett at January 27, 2005 3:25 AM

Hey Dave, cut me some slack. I posted the outline a couple of days ago--this is meant to be simply some more grist for the mill. As to PPTs in general, they are still the Bread & Butter of my "for profit" seminars.

Posted by tom peters at January 27, 2005 6:41 AM

Brett, you're right. But there is a method to the madness. These PPTs are for my Presentations; I'm the "frill"! That is I am a very animated speaker, and I want my PPTs to be unadorned "takeaway" points. Make sense? Shout if it doesn't!

Posted by tom peters at January 27, 2005 6:44 AM

FYI, as I write this morning it's Minus 17F here in West Tinmouth VT!

Posted by tom peters at January 27, 2005 6:46 AM

Stephen, I'm a Richard Florida "addict." He's got a new book coming which I endorsed. He and Dan Pink are my Hero-Gurus.

Posted by tom peters at January 27, 2005 6:48 AM

I have to disagree with you Brett. Tom's slides are in a design league of their own. They're cool because they're anti-design. They're not iPod slick, but they're superbly designed for the job-in-hand. For a man who claims he doesn't have an artistic bone in his body, Tom’s provocative Powerpoints are like visual (and cerebral) Viagra for the commercially impotent (assuming they're male, of course, which, I understand, they normally are).

Posted by Matt at January 27, 2005 7:04 AM

Brilliant Tom - love it - greetings from over the pond - not quite so cold here in England - but miserable and raining

Your slides reminds me of one of my favorite quotes - very politcally incorrect of course but what the hell.

"This man is robbing a village somewhere of an idiot"

Keep rattling the cage

Trevor
http://simplicityitk.blogspot.com/

Posted by Trevor at January 27, 2005 7:22 AM

Brilliant Thomas. This makes my day. CHINA! DID YOU SEE IN TODAY'S PAPER THAT CHINA IS JAPAN'S #1 TRADE PARTNER NOW [used to be USA] - and what does that mean? Thanks.

Plus on the CEO deal - they need to be examined and microscoped at every opportunity - I mean the Kofi Annan/Franklin Raines/Yassar Arafat leadership [perverse business model] is all STEAL YOU BLIND WHILE WE PARTY in Manhattan and Paris, baby.

Posted by John at January 27, 2005 8:27 AM

I had the great pleasure of spending 2 hours talking to Peter Job (who you mention on slide 22) on a very delayed train on my third week at Reuters. That conversation I still remember as one of the most memorable, informative moments of my career.

Peter wasn't your typical fashionable CEO. He believed that it wasn't his role to define strategy - that was done by putting great people near the clients and letting them respond. Of course too many in the City and press believe in the all-controlling 'hero' CEO. Peter certainly wasn't one of those.

What I remember most from the conversation was what he described as his 'biggest challenge as a CEO' - killing projects. He believed that if not done correctly they would just go underground, and therefore out of his control. Let strategies develop from the client-face, prune those to ensure resources go to the strong was his approach. It resulted in an organisation where there was a huge organisation energy, which the staff all believed in and felt deeply proud of.

The new CEO would seem to be exactly the sort your slides address. You know you're in trouble when their newly-senior HR managers describe the previous culture as 'too paternalistic' (see http://www.personneltoday.co.uk/Articles/2004/08/24/25252/Reinventing+Reuters.htm) and bins organisational trust overnight.

I would add a number 20 to your points though. That is the belief that a large organisational restructure (every 12 months?) is going to sort the problems out. Whilst restructures can occasionally work most of the time they serve to break down teams, cause disorientation and force people to 'tread water' whilst the change happens. If your customers don't really want your products no number of reorganisations is going to change that.

Posted by Andrew Marritt at January 27, 2005 8:56 AM

Interesting comments on the slide style, keep in mind who TP’s audience is; Senior Management. Ok, I’ll try to keep my cynical jokes to a minimum. Tom speaks to movements, market shifts and changes in our business environment (Women, Brands, Experiences, Outsourcing, Automation, etc.). Would these topics work well at the worker bee level or technology conference? Yes as a keynote but not necessarily as an informative session. In my experience, these sessions provide the lowest levels of details, step-by-step processes, and “Best Practices”. Something like: Give me steps 1, 2, 3 in order to create an experience. Tell me a, b, c on how to outsource my call center. Guidelines, frameworks, processes, and the like are what people want at this level. Senior Management, CIO, or CEO? We wouldn’t want to overwhelm them with the details now would we? Plus, TP can get 300 slides into a 300k file which is a major accomplishment.

Posted by RTodd at January 27, 2005 9:08 AM

I think the issue is that the slides are out of context on a blog. They probably have massive impact in a presentation.

I love this stuff. One of the things I have been thinking about is what it takes to become successful and who defines that success and the lack of variety at the top (or at least in the top guy's radar range)

I came across a training course recently that had the following statement "we analysed loads of companies and this is the attributes of the most successful people - high achievers......"

Who defined successful - the people who made it to the top. Were they highly task focused achievers - you bet.

Who do they promote - highly task focused achievers of course. Definition of a successful person = highly task focused achievers.

Therefore what do we want to train our people to be - Highly task focused achievers. Talk about self fore-filling prophesy!

I wanted to scream at that point "where are your thinkers, your dreamers, the people who say that's crap to your face, the people who get bored in nano second when faced with a task list and objectives (I am one of them)

Scary

Posted by PaulH at January 27, 2005 9:38 AM

Thomas - the timing on this "rant" is beautiful and perfect. People are NOW so aware of the LOUSY PERFORMANCE AND GREED OF CEO'S - most are like Mr. Zero Credibility DAN RATHER - they don't get it and shall remain DINO-FOSSILS.

Posted by Brad at January 27, 2005 10:01 AM

Right on Paul, I was just lamenting over lunch how our middle management layer resembles the new e-commerce style of management: “Sticks and Bricks”. Beat the dreamers over the head with sticks and toss bricks at those that color outside the line. By definition, management is about control, herding, and keeping the division marching in a straight line to the beat of the corporate drum. Last week, I was reprimanded for the length of my development plan. Management says length = busy work; I said length = passion, commitment, and dedication to ones craft. Yes, may I have another brick please.

Posted by RTodd at January 27, 2005 10:06 AM

Thanks again Tom. I just gave a presentation from your "Everything you wanted to know about Strategy" paper to our Healthcare Executive Leadership Team. Created some excellent dialogue, maybe some of them even "get it". There is a lot of similarity in that paper and this power point. I appreciate your willingness to share this stuff with us. I USE IT! Quite honestly, our oganization can't afford you!

Oh yes, Even though I present, I always give you the credit when I use your stuff.

Thanks again!

Posted by Dave Holland at January 27, 2005 6:28 PM

Question:
Who's to blame for the emergence of the "Idiot CEO?"

Educational Institutions?
Boards of Directors?
Shareholders?
Consumers?
God?

Posted by Dustin at January 27, 2005 6:42 PM

You are turning the CEO position into a process when she is a human being. Your insights are right, but you're forgetting that her role is to inspire a group of multi-dimensional family members, demonstrate healthy empathetic bonds so that they can then go create them with customers and consumers, invite key stakeholders into the family and see the qualities in a person not hire them because they mimic senior management well.

My suggestion is to add more emotional human terms to your list of 19. We're all smart, everyone you talk to is smart, what we're not doing is connecting our feelings to our actions. If only we spent as much time creating a family, a home, building trust, ... there is your lovemark.

Posted by Wendy at January 27, 2005 9:29 PM

- I like the slides.
- CEOs are a creation of the system. Just as we got rid of the "Capitalists", we know have to get rid of "the management class" of the free-market economy. Time to Re-Imagine and truly make the client King... sorry, QUEEN!... of the system.

Posted by Steve Robert at January 27, 2005 10:59 PM

Tom - Sometimes a system "creates" an idiot CEO because the performance measures that are used to gauge relative success are not aligned with what is needed by the organization to break out and excel. If a CEO is measured by short term performance criteria such as earnings per share and their compensation packages and incentives reinforce this aspect then how can one expect them to act contrary to normal convention? CEOs often receive entirely too much focus for blame and far too much credit for success. Boards, directors, and employees all have a part of the responsibility for long term success. I would agree that it is largely the CEOs responsibility to focus overall effort but the real product or service from a 5 or 50,000 person company doesn't come from one person. I ,for one, am not willing to cede total responsibility for the long term success of my career and my company to any CEO. If I don't raise hell, question why we are applying an industrial model in an information era, or suggest and implement WOW! projects then I haven't really earned the right to bitch and moan about what my CEO is doing wrong. A CEO leading a mass of lemmings is not the sole cause for their demise. Everyone of them can stop short of the cliff or change direction. I think you should consider reframing the title of your rant to "Why CEOs are idiots and why their companies often mold/encourage them to be/remain idiots!"

Posted by walter "not a lemming" white at January 28, 2005 12:20 PM