dispatches from the new world of work

In Summary ...

I've been working on various forms of my Master Presentation, pretty much fulltime, for the last couple of weeks. A Post yesterday started a rather vigorous discussion about success "rules" that withstand the test of time. Virtually nothing—you, me, the corporation, the nation—withstands the test of time. And one of the principal reasons is hardening of the philosophical arteries—increasingly rigid interpretations of yesterday's "success" rules.

So I outright reject success "rules" or "eternal" principles. Nonetheless (whoops, here it comes), you gotta do something. What follows is as far as I will go. My first list has three items:

Cause (worthy of commitment)
Space (room for/encouragement for initiative-adventures)
Decency (respect, grace, integrity, humanity)

That is, find something useful that turns folks on, give them a lot of room to try their own interpretations thereof—and offer them the respect they deserve for participating in the game with commitment and determination.

I actually like my second list better, consisting of some four items:

Hire Great People (Resilient, Passionate)
Try a Lot of Stuff (S.A.V.-Screw Around Vigorously/R.F.A.—Ready. Fire. Aim.)
All "Wow" All the Time (Shoot for the moon—in every circumstance)
Enjoy It While It Lasts (And it ain't gonna last forever, so you might as well keep swinging)

I find I have a kindred spirit in Mayor Mike. The current (06.25.07) BusinessWeek extracts business lessons from Bloomberg's tenure at City Hall in New York. The article is first-rate, but this Blooombergism elicited a loud "Yeeeeeeeeeeessssss" from me:

"In business, you reward people for taking risks. When it doesn't work out, you promote them because they were willing to try new things. If people come back and tell me they skied all day and never fell down, I tell them to try a different mountain."

This perfectly complements a quote I've used in my presentations lifted from MB's book, Bloomberg by Bloomberg:

"We made mistakes, of course. Most of them were omissions we didn't think of when we initially wrote the software. We fixed them by doing it over and over, again and again. We do the same today. While our competitors are still sucking their thumbs trying to make the design perfect, we're already on prototype version #5. By the time our rivals are ready with wires and screws, we are on version #10. It gets back to planning versus acting: We act from day one; others plan how to plan—for months."

Amen. And: Amen.

For your amusement, I've included three—count 'em—versions of a presentation simply called, with tongue in cheek, "The 'Rules.'" There's a VERY short version, a SHORT version and a "standard" (longer) version.

Just keep throwin' that spaghetti against the wall, folks ...

Tom Peters posted this on 06/26/07.

Comments

TP has tought me that, for an independent consultant, "Hire Great People" translates into "Find Great Clients. Fire Lousy Clients".

Posted by Mike L at June 26, 2007 4:45 PM

"Excel at failure" is one of my 5 key pieces of creative kindling as I help organizations embrace a creative culture. Creativity and innovation is not about batting a 1.000 -- it is about swinging enough times with the right fundamentals to hit the ball well much of the time. My favorite failure quote is Thomas Edison -- â€œI have not failed. Iâ€™ve just found 10,000 ways that wonâ€™t work.â€

LaVonn

Posted by LaVonn Schlegel at June 26, 2007 7:26 PM

My dad would have liked that post, Tom. One of his rules to live by was that "life is the art of new and better mistakes." At 82 he was preaching sermons with titles like "No Stopping Allowed" about how people and organizations need to keep moving and growing.

Posted by Wally Bock at June 27, 2007 7:09 PM

Tom,
reading your rules about S.A.V. made me remember a quote by Eric Hoffer:
"We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys."

Looking up the quote I stumbled on another Hofferism a propos RESPECT:
"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength."

Posted by Kirk Samuels at June 28, 2007 10:50 AM

I mis-read your intro as, "I've been working on various forms of my Masters presentation..." Now there's a thought!

Posted by Mark JF at June 28, 2007 12:55 PM

Tom!

If we're constructing a Leitmotif, then I'm trying to get down to three words. Right now, my three are:

PLAY. LISTEN. CARE.

Of course, the fun thing about this exercise is finding the gaps.

Cheers

Adam
experiencedesign.de

Posted by Adam Lawrence at June 28, 2007 3:12 PM

I'm tired of being stuck. So I'm going to unstuck myself. Breaking the rules is the only rule from here on out.

Posted by kevin beck at June 28, 2007 6:42 PM

Bravo! Great stuff. I've started reading The Circle of Innovation and I'm just loving it. It's about time that business management becomes a creative and organic process.

Posted by Leanne at June 28, 2007 8:14 PM