Comments

Great stuff, Tom. Two quick things:

1. I call what you're advocating the "Havlicek Principle" after John Havlicek, the Celtics Hall of Famer. He was out on the court ALL the time (still among the top all-time in minutes played) and he KEPT MOVING, on offense and defense, ALL THE TIME. This meant he was effective even against bigger or faster opponents -- he harried and worried them to death on both ends of the court.

2. If you haven't already, do yourself a favor and read Michael Lewis's NYT profile of Texas Tech coach Mike Leach: http://tinyurl.com/yops5g

(Crazy great-minds-think-alike note: when I blogged about that article 24 months ago . . . I put it in the context of OODA! Here's THAT link, in case you're really curious: http://tewalkerjr.com/blog/?p=151 )

Posted by Tim Walker at January 4, 2008 2:44 PM

smile...some things are predictable. (like the Lions firing more coaches and granting yet another reprieve to the losingest general manager in NFL history). For all these years of association with tp and his company, I can always count on a burst of energy around January 1st. I would say it is something in the vermont water, but it precedes that. thanks for another call to action...happy new year...mtn

Posted by Mike Neiss at January 4, 2008 5:10 PM

If there is a "secret" to success, I'd say this is it-- especially in the internet age.

I'm sure you are correct about the effect of constant action on the competition, but there is an equally powerful effect on the company/individual who follows this approach.

By constantly acting, reassessing, then acting again... in the fastest possible cycles... the individual-company creates an intensely fast learning curve. Better than forcing the competition to react, you force yourself to get better, smarter, and more interesting-- fast!

I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that this was virtually my one and only strategy to "success". I started my micro-company a year ago-- absolutely clueless. Being clueless, my mantra became "try as much stuff as possible, as fast as possible... and gather as much feedback as possible. Then repeat as often as possible."

Not exactly profound business thinking-- but damn effective nonetheless.

Posted by AJ Hoge at January 4, 2008 10:54 PM

Tim, love the "Havlicek principle"! I did read Lewis' great piece on Leach, and I think I blogged it too.

(I also think I'll resurrect a term I concocted a few years ago and dropped; namely "metabolic management." My meaning was that the boss is responsible, especially in the "walk the talk" sense, for setting and managing and instilling the tempo of the enterprise--which I see as a deep cultural-genetic trait. My idea was to make this great notion of tempo an explicit part of the bosses' job. One thing neither of us probably does enough re this topic is to make it clear that OODA-tempo is very different from raw speed. The constant battle between wide receivers and safetys in football is one of the most illustrative cases.)

Most important, love your blog--have asked Cathy Guru to link it to ours.

Posted by tom peters at January 5, 2008 8:19 AM

AJ Hoge: "Embarrassed," are you nuts? It is in my (old!!) book too about the only thing one needs to know for sure--and I'm not in the least bit embarrassed by that. (To learn one thing "for sure" in 65 years is no small thing.) And the great news is that it is a "sustainable" competitive advantage because most never figure out that this is really all one needs to know!!!

Cheers and happy 2008 OODA-ing your way to success! tom

Posted by tom peters at January 5, 2008 8:26 AM

Great comment AJ - hope you are well by the way :-)

In the corporate world I used to work in an environment where strategic planning was considered the Holy Grail. After more than three years now of independence and self employment I realise what total crap that is.

My business planning is one month ahead and if I am doing well a three month plan. You are so right AJ – it is all about trying loads of things and some will come off. I make hundreds of contacts - ‘tries’ - every month and a very small proportion materialise into work. Some ‘tries’ never go beyond initial contact and seem to be dead. Then out of the blue ‘tries’ I made months before re-emerge and something will happen. Then someone will take me on having had no previous contact with me. Then a client who used me regularly will not use me for a while. There is just no logic – it is a crazy unpredictable world in business and I love it. Strategic Planning? – Bah humbug!! – No such thing.

All I have in my own business 'strategic planning' (Ha Ha) is a whole lot of ‘tries’ and if I gave up on the ‘tries’ I guess I would ‘retire’ back to the boring corporate existence – But that will not happen until Hell Freezes Over to quote The Eagles :-)

There are ALWAYS new opportunities to 'try' and from those 'tries' will emerge a freshness and new directions for me to travel.

Keep on trying.

Posted by Trevor Gay at January 5, 2008 8:44 AM

Thanks for the kind words about the blog, Tom. I like what you say about tempo versus speed. Your wideout / safety analogy is apt; I also think of Larry Bird, who had fast hands but little else in the way of speed -- yet constantly demonstrated superior tempo.

Re metabolism in managers: given the basics of treating people decently, knowing how to read a spreadsheet, etc., the great separator I've noticed between effective and ineffective managers is that the good ones get comfortable with taking action quickly, i.e. understanding that negative feedback doesn't equate to some big, bad "failure". The bad ones don't develop that level of comfort, so they're always pondering decisions that should have been made last month.

Posted by Tim Walker at January 5, 2008 10:37 AM

"...give the green light to a slew of half-baked prototype tests, say "yes" to damn near any proposal that crosses your desk."

When I was the CMO of a software engineering firm during the dot com era, my boss would find a way to work, "If it's a good idea, it's worth doing poorly," into conversation at least once a day. When I got over the annoyance of it, I realized he was on to something.

We don't drive innovation through planning. It only comes in the doing.

Thanks for the gentle reminder in this new year.

Posted by DaveH at January 5, 2008 12:24 PM

"If it's a good idea, it's worth doing poorly,"

Dave, you could take it a step further: If it's a good idea, it WILL be done poorly. If it's novel enough to be interesting, then the first 5 (10, 20?) tests will be messy-equivocal as hell: if it works right the first (2nd, 3rd) time then it was not, by definition, an interesting idea. Agree?

happy 08!

Posted by tom peters at January 5, 2008 1:16 PM

"We don't drive innovation through planning. It only comes in the doing."

Hope this one's on a plaque over your desk!!!!!!!

Posted by tom peters at January 5, 2008 1:18 PM

Once I struck out on my own, I found it very easy to make decisions and take action. Without some bozo ("manager") lurking over me, I became amazingly decisive and action-oriented.

But recently I've discovered a new challenge-- I've got a couple of people in my company now and suddenly I'm the bozo! For the first couple of months, my partners were indecisive and clearly worried about making mistakes. We make English lessons for non-native speakers-- and my partners were making painfully slow progress on new lessons.

I constantly said, "Don't worry! Just try stuff! I don't care if you screw up!"... but this had little effect.

After fretting and sweating about this for months, I finally decided that the very idea of a "manager" was the problem.

So we're trying something new. Each teacher will own the lesson sets they create. In fact, they will own their own little business. They will create their own lesson sets, their own web pages, and their own marketing campaign for that set of lessons. I provide mentoring, training, referrals, and funding when appropriate.

To encourage a unified brand, we all agree to certain values, principles, and methods. Each individual is tied to every other through a web of referral incentives, commissions, training, communication, values, and personal contact.

All of which is a complicated way of saying that we've totally removed the concept of "boss"-- and lo and behold, everyone is suddenly a super-charged decision maker!

The best way to implement an action-biased OODA culture is to get rid of the bozos. And if you are the bozo-- find a way to get rid of yourself (or at least your bozo role).

Posted by AJ Hoge at January 5, 2008 4:58 PM

I believe, people who made it BIG (in their chosen field) didn’t have a clue about what they were doing BUT they knew how they were going to be if they did things that mattered most & were passionate about. As Karl Wallenda put it “Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting.”

Posted by Sriram at January 7, 2008 2:26 AM

Tom,
This is one of my great pet peeves in the corporate world. Having spent most of my career there (including my current parallel lives in both the small design firm business as well as working for "the man") I have always been baffled by the number of "successful" executives who will take no action until something has been studied, analyzed and researched to the point of commoditization before allowing anyone to take any action or do any real, productive work.

About ten years ago I was working for one of the largest companies in the world and was frustrated by the layer upon layer of bureaucracy that essentially kept anything from moving faster than at a glacial pace (this is the place where the CEO once said that new products were not launched, they escaped). I got so frustrated that I started doing anything I could to try and get things through the system even little things were victories. Funny thing was, that it seemed to work and after a couple of months I had a colleague look me straight in the eye and say "How come it seems like you're the only one around here who ever gets anything done?" I simply told her that I got tired of waiting for others to make decisions.

Posted by Andrew Hayden at January 7, 2008 1:19 PM

Tom,

I do agree it WILL be done poorly (probably more so if it's planned.)

There are a few of us who thrive the messiness of innovation. I would rather plow through and a year from now say, "look what we accomplished." Even if it takes multiple bites at the apple. That's a much more exciting way to work.

I'm heading out to make plaques for resale now. ;)

Posted by DaveH at January 8, 2008 11:21 PM