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dispatches from the new world of work

Stuff ...

Was sidetracked by a minor medical issue for a few days. With time to spare, I seem to have been cutting and clipping and scribbling at a record pace. Herewith, some "stuff" ...

LOVE IT! Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica are about equally accurate when it comes to science articles, John Paczkowski says in an article in Good Morning Silicon Valley. "A study published in the journal Nature Wednesday [12.14] found that in a random sample of 42 science entries, the collaborative encyclopedia averaged four inaccuracies to Britannica's three. 'Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopedia,' reported Nature. 'But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.'"

BOYS #1! Boys handily/overwhelmingly beat out girls: Learning disorders. Dropout rates. Violence. Stuttering. Obesity. Gambling. School suspensions. Suicides. D's and F's. Etc. Etc. This starts early, and gets worse with the passage of time. Number of girls in college easily trumps men in college and is becoming more imbalanced by the day—add in the graduation rates and the gap becomes positively yawning. We older boys may currently hold a huge lead in CEO chairs filled in huge companies, but there is a growing and probably appropriate concern about the decline of boys. Solution? One increasingly offered is separate education—boys and girls simply learn in dramatically different ways.

THE BEST EVER! Best (!!) article I've ever read on giving speeches-presentations was in fact about singing. New York Times, Sunday December 11: "Take Off Your Emotional Clothes and Sing," about a master class in singing by Barbara Cook. "Put your life into what you do." "Your own humanity is your pathway to artistry." Beware "stilted speech." Students "hide inside technique." Conclusion: "The lesson Ms Cook came to teach was that artists achieve their peak when they learn to stop proving themselves and simply, to borrow the Shakespearean phrase, let it be. It's their humanity we respond to in the end, their ability to strip away the self-consciousness that locks us inside ourselves, and reveal the stuff that really boils in our souls." TP conclusion: "Stilted speech" that hides our humanity is arguably leaders' Sin #1. As Ms Cook's seminars suggest, this is a learned attribute.

JUST TWO! One review of Jack and Suzy Welch's Winning makes the apparently outrageous claim that there are but two key differentiators that set GE "culture" apart from the herd. First, the separation of financial forecasting and performance measurement. Performance measurement based, as it usually is, on budgeting leads to an epidemic of gaming the system. GE's performance measurement is divorced from budgeting—and instead reflects how you do relative to your past performance and relative to competitors' performance; i.e., it's about how you actually do in the context of what happened in the real world, not as compared to a gamed-abstract plan developed last year. The second (TP: Huge!!) differentiator is putting HR on a par with finance and marketing—i.e., it's the people, stupid! It ain't quite that simple, but I must say I mostly agree with this "just two differentiators" assessment.

PPP. About 15 years ago 3M launched a program called Pollution Prevention Pays. (I did a TV show for PBS on the topic titled "Go Green, Get Rich.") In the 12 December issue, BusinessWeek ("The Race Against Climate Change") anointed the Best in Breed relative to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. These superstars hardly suffered from their good environmental citizenship. DuPont took first, with a 72% reduction in noxious greenhouse emissions (11 million tons) ... and saved $2 BILLION in the process! BP down 16% (13 million tons), with an accompanying savings of $650 million. Bayer made a 63% cut which spurred productivity and allowed the company to avoid $851 million in investments. Etc. Message/s: Pollution Prevention Pays! Go Green, Get Rich!

THEY DON'T WORK. The odd couple: Carl Icahn and Steve Case. Both want to bust up Time Warner. I talked to a whoo-whoo "captain of industry" who intensely dislikes Icahn—but nonetheless thinks TW's performance is pitiful, and that breakup is the best answer. Yes! Yes! I am an avowed enemy of monster mergers, such as TW and AOL. Why? THEY DON'T WORK. Here's GE CEO Jeff Immelt on the same topic back in July: "Almost every personal friend I have in the world works on Wall Street. You can buy and sell the same company six times and everybody makes money, but I'm not sure we're actually innovating. ... Our challenge is to take nanotechnology into the future, to do personalized medicine ..." Jeff is re-shaping Jack's GE as the home to jaw-dropping innovation on a scale perhaps never seen before.

HERB SIMON GOT THERE FIRST. In a recent Fortune article Geoffrey Colvin says that if there had been a Nobel Prize in management, Peter Drucker would have "won it every year." How silly. A "management guru" did in fact pocket the economics Nobel in 1978 ... Herb Simon of Carnegie Mellon (defining book: Administrative Behavior); I had the privilege of interviewing him for In Search of Excellence. Other worthies besides Simon (and Drucker) would include rigorous academics such as Doug MacGregor (a shoo-in), Warren Bennis (also a shoo-in), Alfred Chandler (shoo-in), James March, Karl Weick, Henry Mintzberg (shoo-in—may get the economics prize someday), Graham Allison, Richard Neustadt, and Michael Porter (also an economics candidate). But, mostly, thank God there is no "Management Nobel." Make no mistake: Management is an art ... not a science. (Frankly, it's not all that clear to many, even those in the field, that economics is a "science.")

LOSE $769 BILLION, GET RICH! Is CEO pay too high? I addressed that issue recently. The topic is endlessly debatable. There are equity issues, market value issues, etc. But maybe the market will finally "just say no." Consider this 15 December headline in USA Today: "Pension Funds Pin Target on CEO Pay." Factoid: Sixty of the worst performing companies in the Russell 3000 (which captures 99% of stock market value) lost $769 BILLION in market value over the last five years ... and paid their top five execs $12 billion over the same period.

GIVE ME THE DUMB ONES! Got a pre-pub copy of Napoleon on Project Management by Jerry Manas. Here are NB's "six winning principles" per Manas: Exactitude (sweat the details). Speed. Flexibility. Simplicity. Character. Moral Force. Pretty good list, eh? FYI, two Napoleonic quotes I fancied. Simplicity: "The art of war does not require complicated maneuvers; the simplest are the best, and common sense is fundamental. From which one might wonder how it is generals make blunders; it is because they try to be clever." (Jack Welch would agree. I'm not so sure about the Harvard Business School.) Character: "A military leader must possess as much character as intellect. Men who have a great deal of intelligence and little character are the least suited. ... It is preferable to have much character and little intellect." (Jeff Skilling at Enron?)

A START. I want to do a list on the "twenty dumbest business practices." I'll give you my 11 starting propositions, scribbled out so far: Men as CEOs of consumer goods companies! CFOs promoted to CEO. Mergers of Decrepit Monsters! Strategic plans in excess of three pages. Big offices for bosses. Focus groups. Hiring lots of MBAs. HR boss not a member of the Board of Directors. CIO not a member of the Board of Directors. Corporate staffs in excess of 50 people. Anything other than Unbridled Enthusiasm at the top of the hiring or promoting criteria list for any + every job. More later.

ALL THERE IS. Damn it! I keep forgetting this! Leaving it out of presentations! Namely, a PP slide that simply reads : You = Your Calendar. THIS IS MY #1 BELIEF ABOUT MANAGEMENT. Or: "You can't bullshit your calendar." Or: "Your calendar knows ... do you?" All we have is our time. The way we distribute it is our "strategic plan," our "vision," our "values." Period. So how'd you spend your precious time today? Tell me, and I'll tell you what you actually care about—it's simple and unerring.

Tom Peters posted this on 12/16/05.

Comments

RE: Britannica vs Wikipedia

Great article - and the part that made me laugh out loud was this line:

Encyclopedia Britannica officials declined to comment on the findings because they haven't seen the data.

I think it's hilarious, and really illustrates the genuine strength of Wikipedia. Even on an issue that DIRECTLY affects Britannica (i.e. the comparable quality of it's prime competitor), the "Britannica officials" haven't figured out how to review the data in a timely mannerâ€¦ while the Wikipedia founder (there are no "Wikipedia Officials," of course!) is all over it!

Just for chuckles, check out the "Why Try Britannica Online" page, where Britannica officials try to make the case for giving them $70/year. Reasons include:

More Comprehensive - over 120,000 articles! (but Wikipedia has 687,619!)
Trustworth Results (see afore mentioned Nature journal)
Less time searching (as if Wikipedia is hard to search?)
Help for students (um, this is unique?)

Looks to me like the Britannica Officials are making buggy whips...

Posted by Dan at December 16, 2005 11:29 AM

Yeah tom, your calender knows all about you !!

I find my most important tool of the day is the my calender (and reminder). Without it, I just cant operate effectivly and also collobrate seamlessly - lookinto my calendar for a free slot and send out a meeting marker if you want to met kinda practice.. its become an SOP for me !! :)-

Posted by /pd at December 16, 2005 11:36 AM

Dumbest Business Practice Number 12: Even remotely suggesting classroom leadership teaching produces leaders. Number 13 Not allowing front line staff to control their entire budget. Number 14 Having a customer care department that doesn't answer e mails.

Posted by Trevor Gay at December 16, 2005 11:46 AM

Tom said, "So how'd you spend your precious time today? Tell me, and I'll tell you what you actually care aboutâ€”it's simple and unerring."

It's so simple and true that it nearly makes me physically ill. One might (correctly) assume I'm in the wrong job.

Then comes the real challenge: On a train moving swiftly in the "I don't care" direction, do you jump off altogether? Do you try to slow the train down and work to alter it's course? Is it (or how is it) possible to jump from a fast-moving "I don't care train" to a fast-moving "unbridled enthusiasm" one, and keep some of the forward momentum?

Posted by Daniel at December 16, 2005 11:48 AM

Number 15: Blaming the customers/clients (to their faces) when things go wrong.

Posted by Mike Linacre at December 16, 2005 12:12 PM

Dumbest Business Practice Number 16: Being a Lemming when it comes to marketing - "Well that's the way all my competitors do their marketing."

Posted by James Shewmaker at December 16, 2005 12:55 PM

Dumbest Business Practice Number 17: Slavishly following "industry benchmarking." Sure way to mediocrity and innovation killer.

Dumbest Busines Practice 18: Basing future budget on past results. Innovation killer

Posted by Mary Schmidt at December 16, 2005 1:52 PM

Why do I hate focus groups so much if everyone else in the organization thinks they are so great? Especially the Marketing/PR folks. They spend all that time finding people for the group, conducting the group, then slicing and dicing the results to prove their point. May be because most I watched, or was in, lead the group to a conclusion and if something does come from the group, it is ignored unless it relates to the original purpose of the group. What can I suggest as an alternative?
Thanks. I feel much better now.

Posted by mike c at December 16, 2005 3:24 PM

Dumbest business practice # 19: multinational companies that export staffers to run things out in the rest of the world on the basis of, "We'll operate like this because it's the way we do it in (insert name of home territory here)."

Posted by Mark JF at December 16, 2005 3:37 PM

Regarding Napoleon on management, Google for "John Boyd".

Posted by Jason Yip at December 16, 2005 5:41 PM

Well Mr. Peters, you may have had more time on your hands than was beneficial.

(1) Management and leadership principles are being pinned down in scientific terms although successful implementation is rare, but that does not make it exclusively an art. (See "Leadership That Gets Results" by Daniel Goleman, March-April 2000 Harvard Business Review)

(2) Women only CEO's at consumer goods companies. Give me a break! Lafly is one good example of one who isn't and his recent merger with Gillette is an example of a 'big' merger that was good. If you want small so bad look at the umpteen teeny nations that came out of the Soviet Unions break up. The loosely held confederation with excellent management is a great formula that GE, Berkshire Hathaway, and the United States use. The problem is not size it is who it is (up and down the ranks) that are doing the implementation.

(3) The continuous either/or's you have put forth over the years are too simplistic but given the density of the audience that should be listening perhaps this is the only way to get somebodyâ€™s attention.

Posted by Steve at December 17, 2005 10:17 PM

buy generic viagra online in australia Tom,

Love the "Herb Simon got there first" and "Eleven dumbest business practices" post....am dyin to see the balance 9! I agree with u on "Make no mistake: Management is an art ... not a science." You could take a look at my blog "Art & Science of Management" by clicking on my name tag and let me know ur comments. Hope you like it.

Posted by K.Sriram at December 18, 2005 8:55 PM

Another common mistake (in my own biased view...): Big "family businesses", in which the company has grown to huge proportions, but "top management" still means "brothers, sisters and cousins"...

Posted by GonÃ§alo at December 19, 2005 8:02 AM

have added 9 dumb practices on my blog... :-)

regards
Gautam

Posted by Gautam at December 19, 2005 8:38 AM

Thanks for mentioning Herb Simon. He was one of the defining characters at CMU -- both for his research and his character. One reason he is not remembered as quickly as Drucker is the interisciplinary nature of his body of work, which include psychology, economics and philosophy in addition to management. Google his biogrpahy and see what I mean.

Posted by Justin Sullivan at December 19, 2005 12:43 PM

Your account of the "Management Noble" Prize is very beautiful, Tom. An inspired post. I agree. Management is rather an art than a technique.

Posted by Felix Gerena at December 19, 2005 6:06 PM

Tom, like the comment on intelligence w/out integrity--and the one about CEO's faltering when they seek to be "too clever". Good stuff...

Posted by Steve Dragoo at December 19, 2005 6:22 PM

Sir, with all due respect, I disagree.
THE Dumbest Business Practice: Ever: Treating your employees with disrespect!

Posted by Mohit at December 20, 2005 5:57 AM

Steve Dragoo: Yup, the "too clever" losses is my favorite of the lot. Thanks, Mr Bonaparte.

Posted by tom peters at December 21, 2005 10:37 AM

Justin, "yes!" to Simon's interdisciplinary genius. If ever someone merited the term "polymath" ....

Posted by tom peters at December 21, 2005 10:39 AM