Comments

Great idea. Unfortunately, I can bet $20 that I can count on my fingers the number of companies who adopt this idea by the end of 2007.

Posted by Mike at January 8, 2007 7:32 AM

Mike, fingers of one hand ... after a lawn mower accident!

Posted by tom peters at January 8, 2007 8:26 AM

I am proud to say I am a Board Director for a voluntary organisation concerned with providing services for people with Learning Disability. I have just returned home from a meeting in the office with the new service manager. Some of the office walls have wallpaper hanging and the place desperately needs a lick of paint. The front door is not at all welcoming and a very impersonal intercom system to announce one’s arrival is the way to gain entry. The offices themselves are cramped and probably do not meet health and safety requirements. It is not quite a dump but aesthetically let’s just say it is not in the same league as Buckingham Place.

BUT/AND

The place ‘feels’ great.

The parents of the children who receive the service and the children themselves believe this organisation is the best thing sliced bread. The staff are loved (not an exaggeration) by clients and their parents and the standards of the service is excellent as recorded in all methods of customer feedback.

Saving money on paint gets my vote every time.

I suspect if the office looked and felt as ‘clinical’ and ‘smart’ as an operating theatre with not a speck of dust then the organisation would immediately about 99.9% of its credibility with the parents and the children who receive the service.

Posted by Trevor Gay at January 8, 2007 9:05 AM

Apologies ... shouLd read 'would immediately LOSE about 99.9% of its credibility ....'

Posted by Trevor Gay at January 8, 2007 9:41 AM

great idea. if (a huge IF) as jim collins has suggested, you have the RIGHT people on the bus.

-ski

Posted by SKI at January 8, 2007 9:46 AM

And I hire lawn care - 300mph blades NOT. USA Today 1st thing for me @ convenience store most mornings - lucky to have found a friendly smart clerk-manager - makes it wonderful.

Posted by sean_anti_lawn at January 8, 2007 9:59 AM

Tom you have hit my personal crusade here. Intangible Vs Tangible.

Until management comes to grips with the intangible it will never develop the full potential of organisations.

A lot of measurements are what is easy to measure not what should be measured.

Posted by PaulH at January 8, 2007 12:20 PM

Tom,
What does the people budget cover?
Pay?
Health care?
Pensions?
Training?
More supervisors?
Uniforms?
More staff per dollar of revenue?
?

John

Posted by ShakespearesFool at January 8, 2007 3:08 PM

Related: The Edifice Clue
http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2003_12_01_photoncourier_archive.html#107128883798059323

Posted by david foster at January 8, 2007 3:51 PM

There are very few budgets (corporate or household, capital or otherwise) that can't use some trimming. Sometimes the trims are obvious.(I worked for one hosting provider that "in the day" was considering hand-crafted copper ceilings in its data center customer briefing areas until we were able to prevail on them not to "invest" in anything that increased our costs without increasing the value provided to customers.) Sometmes they're not so obvious.

But sometimes a fresh coat of paint is good for morale. I worked at Wang when it was going down, and it made a bad situations worse when they unscrewed half the lightbulbs and stopped picking up the trash every night. God knows a cleaner environment wasn't going to save the place, but I believe the deterioration of the physical plant accelerated the company's death spiral.

Also,having worked for 25 years in tech companies large and small - and this may be because I was generally not in the upper echelon of management, but a rung or two below - I seldom (ever?) saw holistic budget-cutting decisions made. It always looked like "across the boards," or "off with their heads" (in which people and/or a vulnerable organization or two were earmarked, to everyone else's relief). I rarely got the sense that when it came to the crunch, those deciding what cuts needed to be made ever looked at the organization as a whole, what we needed to do in service of our strategy, what shifts we could make (e.g., 10% capital budget cut, half of which would be allocated to people "things"). Maybe this is why so many of the places I worked aren't around any more!

Posted by Maureen Rogers at January 8, 2007 4:28 PM

Tom

The instance you cite is being played out around the globe everyday as lots of people make what I believe are poor choices in their personal and professional life. Easy for me to say eh? And yeah, what I think is irrelevant anyway - right?

At work, at home, and on their commute in between - it seems to me that far too many people care more about their "look" rather than their "feel".

They take care of their "look" primarily through "tangibles" - the shop, house, car, cell phone, etc.... A "really cool budget" might have you spending $US 500.000.00 on renovations in the shop, equal spend on "tidying up" the house, one fifth spend on a decent looking car (or an all too big off-road vehicle), as much as you can possibly spend on a blackberry hand held device, etc.

Meanwhile they often largely ignore their "feel" as they continue to make do with poor staff in the shop, a bad atmosphere of stress and tension at home, a car that is not in tune with their newly developed "environmental" concerns for global warming or whatever, and the noise they create in a public place when first their ring tone sets off and then they proceed in an all too loud a way to conduct what should be a very private conversation, etc.

I am sounding, like I am, too judgemental but I sense that many people today have their priorities screwed up at home and at work. viagra sales australia

Those who care about the look often careless about the feel. Some careless about both. But give me a person who cares "only" about the feel over one who cares "only" about the look any day. They are much more fun to be with (usually more creative, innovative, risk taking, wise, expansive, etc) because they are less concerned about what other people think about them (their particular look) AND more concerned about what other people "think and feel".

cheap generic viagra 100mg Bye the way I believe the "feel" of your new banner is all wrong for Tom Peters!

Cheers
Richard.

Posted by Richard Lipscombe at January 8, 2007 6:00 PM

1. Please - speaking of "banners" & Richard's rant - put the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue as banner - very designeresque

2. Agree on the "feel" issue - and mainly see it as a futuristic planning and programming issue - and target of optimal investment

3. In other words one must take their game constantly higher - to me one must assess carefully & remedy & continually learn

4. An example - recent windstorm here blew off 10 feet of loose rain gutter - should have fixed the loose part earlier - target optimal investment ...

Posted by sean_gameon at January 9, 2007 9:02 AM

Tom and sean_gameon

"Do one thing every day that scares you" - Eleanor Roosevelt.

Now there is a banner for all of us to aspire to in 2007..

Problem is it is no good "just talking about it" you have "do something about it".....

Then Sean it is Game On!!!

Cheers
Richard.

Posted by Richard Lipscombe at January 9, 2007 6:09 PM

Yes Tom Yes!

We manage on pretty much the following formula:

- Offices 2/10
- Website 3/10
- Friendliness of team 11/10

Comment of the week (from a client) ... "Mark - that lady who answered your phone - is she really a part-time secretary? She was really professional, polite and helpful on the phone".

Well - yeah! She's a part-time secretary because she wants to work part-time, not because she can't find a "real job".

Posted by Mark Harrison at January 10, 2007 2:04 PM wholesale viagra