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dispatches from the new world of work

Notes From the Road

In Campinas, a suburb of São Paulo Brazil. Will speak soon. 5 pm as I write. Audio/Visual at 6:15 pm. All important. Always. Bad A/V, bad speech. Period. Crews are good, bad, indifferent (just like anything else). Crossing my fingers for good. Arriving a little early, because I have some special requests (fonts, etc); maybe tough to deal with in Portuguese. Good news: I've got a full-time interpreter for these two days. Better news: He gives me lots of space; some try to justify their fees by checking to see if things are okay ... about every five minutes, or so it feels. I NEED SPACE. ALWAYS. (Am also lonely as hell when 6K miles from home. Go figure. Life is contradictions, as someone/s wise probably said 3,000 years ago.)

Speech from 8:20 pm to 10:20 pm. Welcome to: Latin time!! (Wow, does it—the timing—feel odd.) Ah, the little matter of the speech. Planned on a "tailored generic." Then—it always happens—I boarded the first leg, Boston to Miami, flight, and I decided to do something ... Completely Different. (Or at least a bit different.) Used to do a 1-hour L50 (Leadership50) speech to much acclaim—always. (No kidding.) Haven't fixed it in two years. Spent whole BOS-MIA flight on it, and part of MIA-GRU/São Paulo as well. (Plus half of today. Damn. So much for minimum prep time.)

Finished a great spy novel, At Risk by Stella Rimington, former head (first woman head) of Britain's MI5. (FYI: James Bond was an MI6 guy.) Then I needed sleep. Most of my friends take sleeping pills; I don't; I'm so damned afraid of being groggy for a day. But this time I did try 2 Bayer PMs, or whatever they're called. Worked brilliantly. (Also in BOS bought a $14.95 neck pillow—also worked brilliantly. (Oh, the things still to learn at 62+ after 3 million miles of flying.)

Screw-up at airport re pickup. When that happens in Brazil, with a 1.5 hour ride ahead, and taxis not exactly reliable, it's a nightmare. Abbey talked me down, after I woke her up pre-dawn on a Sunday. (Thanks!!!!) And lo and behold, I found the blessed ride. My cell phone not working in GRU, which added to the pain—had to go to one of those airport phone company places where you queue up for a booth.

Hotel just fine+. (My standards are insanely high—mostly thanks to the 4Seasons.) My big three were in place: windows that open, easy DSL connection, one-hour pressing. (And hyper-clean sheets/bathroom. I guess that makes four.) Didn't need the pressing, because I stopped being so cheap, and recently bought a very good suit or two, which shake out brilliantly. (Hurray.)

As I said, today mostly devoted to presentation prep—I also turned tonight's speech into a Special Presentation, which "we" (Cathy) are posting. My breaks were walks. And more walks. Ended up doing three Power Walk segments and logging about 7 or 8 miles, pretty good for walking. Have a 112-day streak going, which is pretty good. (Going to Australia soon, and an entire day evaporates thx to International Dateline—does that count as a streak buster?) São Paulo is a little tough, security-wise, but Campinas looked pretty good to me, so I went on my Merry Way. Did notice that every hotel had barbed wire on an outer wall. Hmmm. Also hotel security was, I think, keeping a bit of an eye on me—and at one point offered me a ride. As I said, hmmm.

Hey, gotta go to that A/V check.

NB: My Mom would have been 96 today; on my mind constantly.

NB2: I know "all this" should be old hat by now, but I'm still struck by the fact that I was presenting in Dubai this time last week!

Tom Peters posted this on 09/26/05.

Comments

Hey man, sounds like a tough gig! But euhm, you know what they say; keep up the good work! Knock 'em dead...

Posted by Rik at September 26, 2005 5:19 PM

Sounds exciting! Good luck, and don't exhaust yourself.

Posted by Robert Steers at September 26, 2005 6:23 PM

Sounds familiar. Same routine, but on the economy class level. I'm logging a lot of flight and road miles around the midwest, North Carolina (a beautiful country), Kentucky (another), and northern Mexico (interesting and harshly beautiful). Have to do my own AV checks and sometimes lug my own equipment. But God do I love it! It's the passion for the people that gets me to get up and do, sometimes back-to-back sessions. And also the sheer NEED for me to do what I do.

And I have taken Dr. Tom up on his word and "lifted" a few slides from his deck. I always use the 26 minute China slide right after my title, and does it ever get their attention! (My audiences are allways manufacturing people--shop floor employees through senior management.)

And it certainly does get lonely. Nice to have an understanding spouse who deals expertly with the estate while I'm away. I have certainly been blessed.

Posted by Mike at September 26, 2005 7:43 PM

TOM: "All important. Always. Bad A/V, bad speech. Period."

STEVE: No, not true, Tom! If it's bad AV you just BE TOM and USE IT to your advantage and OVERPOWER IT and RE_IMAGINE the speech with NO A.V. and just one crazy, passionate man who won't be STOPPED by bad A.V.

Posted by steve chandler at September 26, 2005 8:13 PM

"Used to do a 1-hour L50 (Leadership50) speech to much acclaimâ€”always"

I'm sure you've explained elsewhere (and probably endlessly) why you're not interested in politics, but imagine for a moment that your audience was the good folks in the USofA desperate for someone to lead them out of the political quagmire they find themselves in (and I mean the quagmire on both sides of the aisle). What would your 1 hour primetime network television presidential candidate slide show look like?

With kindest regards,
-- Frank Leahy

Posted by Frank Leahy at September 26, 2005 10:38 PM

I like this post from the road. Thanks for taking me along!

Posted by Marianne Powers at September 26, 2005 11:24 PM

Good to see you doing plenty of walking Tom - excercise is good for the mind :-) ... Your Mom IS 96 and she is still walking with you.

Posted by Trevor at September 27, 2005 12:30 AM

Humming like the donkey in Shrek ---

"Back on the road again..." ??

This post was really good - thanks Tom, for sharing your live experience with us!

Posted by Arun Sadhashivan at September 27, 2005 4:38 AM

Thanks for the insight into a bit of your life on the road... makes me yearn to board a plane- to anywhere.

On a tangent... have you seen this speech by Paul Graham http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html

Its full of great stuff.. but this particularly struck a cord with me:

"The third big lesson we can learn from open source and blogging is that ideas can bubble up from the bottom, instead of flowing down from the top. Open source and blogging both work bottom-up: people make what they want, and the best stuff prevails.

Does this sound familiar? It's the principle of a market economy. Ironically, though open source and blogs are done for free, those worlds resemble market economies, while most companies, for all their talk about the value of free markets, are run internally like communist states....

So what will business look like when it has assimilated the lessons of open source and blogging? I think the big obstacle preventing us from seeing the future of business is the assumption that people working for you have to be employees."

Posted by AJ Hoge at September 27, 2005 5:55 AM

Well, I guess the 'pros' won the 'cons'. I attended your presentation and I was completely thrilled. Gotta say I got a little freaked out when you said, every once in a while, "I can't believe I flew 6,000 miles to say this." I can't believe I waited 22 years of my life to hear what you had to say. So painfully simple and obvious, and yet we have to hear it from somebody else because we're too busy to figure that out ourselves.

Anyway, I just wanted to apologize (in the name of all brazilians - how pretentious) for anything that might have gone wrong. And thank you for a lifetime for a lecture that shook me off and made me THINK. viagra for men canada

P.S.: And also thank you for speaking so clearly. I really didn't want to put on those dreadful translation phones.

Posted by Simone Carmona at September 27, 2005 6:43 AM

Hi Tom!

It would be just GREAT if we could have your slides in Portuguese too, is that possible? I'm fluent in English but I would love to show it to co-workers here in Brazil.

Unfortunately I couldn't make it to Campinas, I'll have to wait for another time - or maybe go to Dubai ;-) overnight viagra delivery without prescription

Thanks for all the great material on the site.

Posted by Paulo Santos at September 27, 2005 6:49 AM

Cathy - please let me know how to print the new slides' links - I'm just getting a screen presentation?

Dr. Tom - appreciate the routine perfectionist detail you have [which lately I aspire to for some reason - each and every action may as well be impeccable] - like a Tom Brady style of execution and excellence [last 12 passes complete] - go Patriots - congrats on the [Steelers] last second win to you native New Englanders!

Posted by Sean at September 27, 2005 8:35 AM

any volunteers out there to translate slides into Portugese?

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Posted by Erik Hansen at September 27, 2005 9:40 AM

Sean,
I use the most basic software so that there's one of us working on it who experiences tp.com through IE. I have XP Professional. How the links work for me is this:
When I click, the file downloads, and it opens in a browser window. Then I can do File/Save as, and save the file as a PPT on my computer. After it's been saved, the file works like any other PPT, and I can print at will.

Alternately, if I right-click when the file is open in the browser window, Print is one of the options.

On an older machine with Windows 98, the link downloads the file directly into the PowerPoint program, so that printing is possible.

Hope this answers your question.

Posted by cathy at September 27, 2005 9:54 AM

AJ Hoge. Nice Comment--Amen!

Simone: Thanks for the nice feedback. As to my 6,000-mile comments, I meant that I'd flown 6K miles to insult you with the obvious; was surely not a criticism! All has gone well except a couple of little things that are my fault. My support team, including last night's translators, have ben great. Am in Belo Horizonte, just took a long walk in the park, and will try to speak clearly again tonight--not so easy for us Anglo Saxons whose bedtimes are earlier than the speech's starting time!

Sean, Remember the dress for success debate? "Perfectionism," which I'm philisophically opposed to, is, I feel, if one is trying to push what's perceived to be a radical agenda.

Posted by tom peters at September 27, 2005 10:06 AM

Thanks Cathy - the IE thing that changed it seems is now I need to file the posts before printing.

Dr. T - you've inspired me to buy 20 books from various sources including the new Oprah one and the Trump "billionaire thinking" one and "You the owners manual" - hmmm ... how did "make love like a porn star" by Jenna get in there - so much fun so little time - also working with a chiropractor bi-weekly to "perfect" posture - alignment - energy flow now that I'm "25 and holding"!

Posted by Sean at September 28, 2005 8:40 AM