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dispatches from the new world of work

The Ultimate Daily Crossword Puzzle

I love "obvious & important stuff"—that catches you flat-footed. Twenty+ years ago the matchless car dealer Carl Sewell introduced me to the "simple" idea of Lifetime Customer Value. There were none of today's lengthy research studies or least-squares data fitting on Customer Loyalty or any other unnecessary complications. Carl matter of factly said in conversation: "If we treat a guy well, he'll buy a half dozen or so cars from us over time and tell at least one friend. At $35,000 a pop that could easily add up to a half million bucks. I tell everyone from the reception desk to the service bay, that guy is a $500,000 bill walking in the store, ready to be won over, if we all work together to make him our best friend." No "Loyalty-based selling." No "experience marketing." No regression analyses. Just one guy and a friend nets a dozen sales, not one transaction, if we treat the fellow like next of kin. Love it!

Well, I'll offer another piece of "obvious" stolen advice. This one from Duke's Coach K [Krzyzewski], courtesy a recent interview for IBD/Investor's Business Daily. Here's his "obvious" remark: "Things don't stay the same. You have to understand that not only your business situation changes, but the people you're working with aren't the same day to day. Someone is sick. Someone is having a wedding. [You must] gauge the mood, the thinking level of the team that day."

That is, your 6-person project team or 7-person training department or 18-person housekeeping unit is a new puzzle every day. It's far beyond "treat everybody differently according to their skills," etc. It's that in a 220-day work year, we the leader-manager face 220 different teams! Every day is a new crossword puzzle! If you get off on doing the morning crossword every morning (metaphorically), you'll get off on confronting the day's Unique People Puzzle. I'd add that if such constant puzzle solving isn't your cup of tea, then leave the leading-managing to someone else! (Any of us with kids, or any primary-school classroom teacher, knows the full truth of this; the kid/s has/have 365 different personalities a year, calling for 365 different-distinct approaches. Mom seems to handle this a lot better than Dad—maybe that goes a long way toward explaining the accumulating evidence on women's often superior leadership skills.)

Thanks, Coach K!

(Incidentally, after reading this I called an acquaintance who was a well-known former pro football coach just for the hell of it; no surprise, he echoes coach K. "Right on, Tom. Every practice session, from the two-a-days at the beginning of summer camp until the Super Bowl, if you're lucky, has a more or less completely different character. You haven't got much time during a game week—you damn well better prepare for what you're going to face; each player, to use your words, is a different puzzle unto himself each day. Coach K is right—the on-the-road problem, the girlfriend problem, the free-tickets problem, the agent problem.")

(Related quote, courtesy Mary Pipher: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle."—Philo of Alexandria. I like this a lot; I've pinned it to my home-office corkboard. Soooooooo true!)

Tom Peters posted this on 11/14/06.

Comments

"He calls on more than five dozen "authorities" - among them Larry King, author Tom Peters, his father - to sing the book's praises in the first 11 pages."

Thomas - that high praise in yesterday's Money Section of USA Today - RE: "Speed of Trust" by Stephen Covey. You and Larry King - the ULTIMATE?

Posted by sean_puzzle at November 14, 2006 12:08 PM

Sometimes the obvious is overlooked because people work harder at looking smart than being effective.

Posted by Leonard Klaatu at November 14, 2006 1:16 PM

That every-day-presents-a-new-context challenge to most management teams is one area where competitive sports (baseball and soccer, especially because a lower need for regimentation/diktat) makes for a swell magnifying glass.

It's one of those small, easy to take on lessons that makes a massive difference in quotidian management practice, I think.

Posted by jeff angus at November 14, 2006 3:09 PM

Check our Tom's fab mention on Guy Kawasaki's comic strip.
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/11/my_trip_to_phoe.html

He's hip, He's happenin'!

Posted by Kimber at November 14, 2006 3:39 PM

As far as I am concerned, Carl Sewellâ€™s book â€œCustomers for Lifeâ€ is the bible for developing a service based business. Keep in mind this is coming from one of those IT guys who hang out in the dark shadows of the corporation. We have been able to transform our organization up the food chain from a product/technology group to a service delivery of value organization. His concept that service quality is a direct result from the systems you have in place is, as the beer commercial says, BRILLIANT.

Posted by RTodd at November 14, 2006 3:51 PM

Coach K, and every other highly successful coach of a great sports team, know they have to be ready to lead and manage daily changes, challenges, and concerns. It is no different for a business team. Sports analogies are popular because they often make understanding how to achieve in business much easier to explain to customers and employees.

Big-time team sports organizations are the premier authoritiies on team achievement. They provide the basic team achievement model-team leadership, talent, teamwork, training, team chemistry-that are required to become one of the best of the best.

Posted by Dave Sovde at November 14, 2006 6:09 PM

I think I'm tired of sports team analogies being used as examples of effective leadership and teamwork. They have little or no relevance to the real world 99.999% of us live and work in. Sports teams are of two types: very young people who are also some kind of student; or millionaires with tons of talent who are trying to make a lifetime's worth of cash in a few years. How do the lessons of collegiate or NBA coaches have any bearing on the workaday world of the rest of us? I prefer leadership lessons from long-term, in-the-trenches types.

Does the "crossword" idea Tom put forth have merit? Sure, but how does the overworked factory supervisor with 80 employees reporting to him do it? How about the poor Taco Bell store manager whose employees turn over every 90 days? Or don't these leaders matter?

Who is the "new world of work" for, really?

Posted by Mike at November 15, 2006 7:31 AM

Mike, read Marcus Buckingham.

Posted by tom peters at November 15, 2006 8:20 AM

Tom - we need more attractive slim women seducing their husbands and partners so that the ULTIMATE becomes reality ... simple as that in the Free World.

The 1967 San Francisco Summer of Love as template. There was no obesity epidemic, no AIDS, no massive consumer & other debt. "Summer of Love 2007" - the ULTIMATE solution - steal this IDEA.

"Summer of Trafalgar Square" across the pond as Trevoouur's programmmme might organissse.

Posted by sean_summer_of_love_2007 at November 15, 2006 9:07 AM

I understand Mike's view and sometimes the sporting analogies do get a bit tiring to some people. I have to be honest and hold my hand up - I use them all the time. My view is we have to look to â€˜other placesâ€™ than our own back yard so we do not close off our minds to other ways of doing things. Whether the team is of 80 people or 5 people their mood of the day - even of the hour - will change. What I read into Tomâ€™s posting is that we need to get to now all team members personally â€“ what makes them tick. Forgive me Mike for another sporting analogy. Sir Alex Ferguson recently celebrated 20 years as manager at Manchester United. I have been reading various tributes form players and what comes through time and again is their absolute amazement how Sir Alex seem to know every single player and ever member of staff at Old Trafford personally. I actually think what we are discussing here is leadership.

Posted by Trevor Gay at November 15, 2006 10:50 AM

Sean - Summer of love 2006 - Trafalgar Square? .... good idea but Lord Nelson would not approve methinks :-)

buy viagra without prescription overnight shipping Posted by Trevor Gay at November 15, 2006 10:54 AM

Trevor - Speaker Nancy Pelosi "rules" the world [via San Francisco] - Year of Love 2007 - All Are 40 Years More Youthful in '07 [HGH & Testosterone Thanks].

Posted by sean_love_2007 at November 15, 2006 11:08 AM

Interesting point Mike, seems like for every sports hero there are plenty who fail to meet expectations. Some fail considerably when they are taken out of their environment like Steve Spurrier and Lou Holtz. Not to be out done would be the Redskins returning Superbowl coach; Joe Gibbs. They are not bad coaches and most would argue they may be histories best, but they have not been able to repeat their prior success. Would Lord Nelson have been as effective in WWII? Would Lincoln survive and lead as effectively in Iraq? Could Jack Welch be as successful at AT&T? When will the Olympic Basketball team win a gold medal? Can the Ryder cup return to the United States one day? Maybe, the answer to leadership is all about timing, environment, situation, and our Monday mourning perspective.

Posted by RTodd at November 15, 2006 11:11 AM

Any chance of giving some thought to the content of the Post?

Posted by tom peters at November 15, 2006 11:11 AM

Tom - as explained in my earlier comment, my thought about the â€˜content of the postâ€™ is that we are talking here about leadership. The best leaders Iâ€™ve worked for inspire me to personally sign up to their vision. If the leader doesn't achieve that for me then I remain an individual doing my job with intrinsic motivation and though he/she may - on paper - be my â€˜bossâ€™ will certainly NOT be my â€˜leader.â€™

viagra 50mg dosage online Posted by Trevor Gay at November 15, 2006 12:16 PM

Mike,

As a "long-term, in-the-trenches" frontline leader who has managed factory workers and a Taco Bell, I believe the factory supervisor and the Taco Bell manager deal with a challenging leadership and management crossword puzzle every day.

Team sports, at any level, provides them with examples of the value of teamwork, fair play, and top performance. By the time most of us are teenagers we have been on a sports team, attended a summer camp, or learned somewhere why the acronym for "team"-Together Everyone Achieves More-is accurate. For a frontline team LeaderManager, the lessons of team sports are often simply reminders of what workers already know to be true.

I think "the new world of work" has made many leaders looking for solutions, systems, studies, etc. that de-humanize the workplace. Sports analogies are simple and refreshing when compared to the corporate speak that many endure more than understand.

Posted by Dave Sovde at November 15, 2006 2:39 PM

Here's Gandhi's take on Customer Relationship Management, said more than 60 years back...

A Customer is the most important visitor on our premises.

He is not dependent on us.
We are dependent on him.

He is not an interruption on our work.
He is the purpose of it.

He is not an outsider on our business.
He is a part of it. wholesale viagra

We are not doing him a favour by serving him.
He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so!

Jay, from Bangalore

Posted by Jayakumar Hariharan at November 15, 2006 9:13 PM

Hi Tom:

Coach K's comments should be obvious to anyone who has ever been in a leadership position. Effective leadership has a certain fluidity to it...Much has been written on leadership style, but the most often overlooked aspect of leadership is that its application should always be contextual.

Static leadership is a very dangerous practice. What works well in one environment may be a total disaster in another...Bottom line: there is no "right" or "wrong" leadership style, as all leadership sytles can work well if applied appropriately. It is just a matter of knowing when, where and why to apply the appropriate style to specific situation to achieve the desired outcome.

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Posted by Mike Myatt at November 15, 2006 10:36 PM