Comments

I live near Frankenmuth. Bronner's has the ultimate 2000 year old mission statement to guide its success.

Posted by Mitten Head at December 22, 2009 4:42 PM

Speaking of the Financial Times, it has named Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, "Person of the Year." Here is noted bank analyst Christopher Whalen' response in a letter to the paper after canceling his subscription:

"Mr. Blankfein and his colleagues at Goldman Sachs, in my view, have done more to damage the reputations of global financial professionals than any other organization in 2009, yet you applaud them. Not only is your suggestion ridiculous and repugnant, but it illustrates to me the fact that the FT is part of the problem in global finance, not as one would hope and expect, part of the solution."

I could not agree more. It is indeed "ridiculous and repugnant." I shall discontinue my subscription also in complete agreement that the Financial Times is a part of the problem in global finance, not as one would hope and expect, part of the solution." Goldman Sachs is currently being investigated by the federal government for dubious trading practices.

This choice says a lot about the malaise in the financial global markets. It also seems to say a lot about politics in such cases and the FT obvious desire to pull wool over the eyes of sane people everywhere. The paper writes that the investment bank "not only navigated the 2008 global financial crisis better than others on Wall Street but is set to make record profits, and pay up to $23BN in bonuses to its 31,700 staff."

With this kind of choice and writing, the Financial Times could not go out of business fast enough.

Posted by Judith Ellis at December 26, 2009 1:01 AM

Tom seems determined to have the US become a second rate power.
The companies covered in "Small Giants" include a deli, a record company, a beer company and a company that makes those things that go 'beep-beep' when a truck backs up.
The 'Retail Superstars' covers nothing but retail stores.
Somehow this is going to transform our economy - if it does, it will make it look exactly like it did from 2001-2008.
Meanwhile, China has just turned on the worlds fastest train route.
We make great sandwiches, beer and back up alarms - the Chinese put in place the worlds fastest commuter train.

Posted by zorro at December 27, 2009 1:39 PM

Great perspective, Zorro. While I think diversity is important, I clearly see the significance of your point. I read the story about the Chinese rail and thought the same thing. By the way, where are the products of these retail stores coming from? Who's manufacturing them? Afghanistan was the topic for one of the segments on C-Span this morning. The analysts were saying that one of the biggest problems there is economic. Afghanistan produces nothing but poppy. As I listened, I thought of the importance of manufacturing for others while we continue to sell its insignificance for us. Globalization sucks! I think the sooner we realize this and course correct the better we will be. With regards to the deficit and those holding our treasury bonds and, in essence, dictating policy to a certain extent, we obviously did not consider this when we sold out the American people claiming the glories of globalization.

Posted by Judith Ellis at December 27, 2009 4:38 PM

Hi Tom,

Great post. I would also like to recommend a personal favorite book of mine for entrepreneurs and anyone else hoping to start something new. It is Career Renegade by Jonathan Fields. It's a cross between a philosophical business text and a workbook, jammed with great stuff for anybody interested in striking out on their own. Check it out!
tom
ps. nope I'm not getting paid for this!

Posted by Tom Berarducci at December 28, 2009 11:47 AM

I've had the Rules of Thumbs book for weeks. I'm even more motivated to read it now.

"Too Much Cost, Not Enough Value"
"Too Much Speculation, Not Enough Investment"
"Too Much Complexity, Not Enough Simplicity"
"Too Much Counting, Not Enough Trust"
"Too Much Business Conduct, Not Enough Professional Conduct"
"Too Much Salesmanship, Not Enough Stewardship"
"Too Much Focus on Things, Not Enough Focus on Commitment"
"Too Many Twenty-first Century Values, Not Enough Eighteenth-Century Values"
"Too Much 'Success,' Not Enough Character"

Timeless advice regardless of technological changes.

Posted by Poker Businessman at December 28, 2009 1:31 PM

Tom (and others) talk about how much more productive people are when they are treated well.
Tell that to the people who make the guts of Iphones, Ipods,
etc.
People who work in the factories that make the actual things people put in their purses and pockets have to move away from their families to get their job and have to pay to get considered for the job they finally land.
Ignoring this is not what humanitarians do.
How is this actually a 'great post' when it ignores half of what is actually going on?
Another word for 'half truths' is propaganda.
In our culture, propaganda has been privatized. And the worst part about it is people literally buy it.

Posted by zorro at December 29, 2009 9:11 PM

TP,

Would love your thoughts on this from James Howard Kunstler (Rolling Stone, The Long Emergency). My reaction reminded me of the anger you wrote of in the introduction to ReImagine.

Happy New Year from a long time reader who hasn't visited lately.

Michael

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Archives2009/KunstlerAnalysis2010.html

Posted by michael at December 29, 2009 10:34 PM

Zorro, presume you are talking about Chinese factories????? Fact is, people streamed to the cities voluntarily because rural Chinese life was so much worse. Moreover, when I go to China I talk about the same worker stuff I talk about elsewhere. China's longterm prospects, of which they are totally aware, are pinned on moving up the value-added ladder, just as we did. Alas, skipping steps is tough--most North American and European and Japanese workers live pretty decent lives these days, which was not true 100 years ago. For the life of me, I can't figure out what you want here.

Posted by tom peters at December 30, 2009 9:05 AM

I too have depended upon Liars Poker for its insight into the banking industry for my analysis. It does help explain a lot of the culture unlaying the recent financial debacle.

Posted by Stephen Garner at January 1, 2010 6:23 PM

People who work in Chinese factories are not being managed along the lines you talk about - yet they make the actual products you praise so much (how can this possibly be -:) .A month or so ago I posted an article that describes the conditions these people work under. 'Skipping steps' is nothing more than a way to save money, making these workers cheaper and putting Americans out of work. I just don't get the blindness when it comes to American factory workers.
For example, in one of the posts above, you've mentioned a book about DARPA - one of the things DARPA is putting money into and getting results is self-driven automobiles. Will the consumer version of DARPA's research be pioneered by Americans or the Japanese and South Koreans or the Chinese? We msut not forget the automobiles are still the most complex products built on an assembly line.
You promote this brave new world of everyone being a free agent - how can this work for truly industrial companies - - a few years ago, you were a big promoter of deregulation and that went over board. I see the same thing happening with the over emphasis on the 'creative economy' or 'innovation' etc. There just needs to be a balance. The 'creative economy' is great for people who want to devote their lives to their job. At one time in our history, work was what people did so they could raise a family - that was at the core of employment. This of course can be limiting to many people. But your philosophy takes us in the other direction completely - and there are a great many people who look at work in a different way from you - and these people will always make up a big chunk of the population. I'm actually talking diversity here. You seem to want everyone to be some sort of artist - but who says this 21th century 'beatnik' kind of life is for everyone. In many ways, you are forcing people to accept your values and you rationalize it by pointing to trends - trends that in many ways serve only the well to do.

Posted by zorro at January 2, 2010 2:52 PM

Well, Zorro, I have to wonder if you actually read Retail Superstars, or Small Giants, for that matter. George Whalin made absolutely no claim that the companies he was writing about were going to "transform the economy," nor did I make any such claim about the Small Giants. That wasn't the point of either book, and that mentality has nothing to do with why Tom liked them. My point was that bigness and greatness have nothing to do with one another. George's point was that the greatest retailers (judged by the standards of their industry, which are the only ones that matter) are actually the independents. You may think that such companies are unimportant, but the U.S. economy would collapse without them. Are you aware, for example, that 50% of the US workforce works in companies with 20 to 500 employees? That's where all the innovation is coming from as well. Why? Because big companies are bad at it. That's why they buy small innovative businesses. That segment of the economy is essentially America's R&D lab. Among other things, they are coming up the innovations that are going to utterly transform the world of manufacturing in the next 10 years and deprive China's of its cheap labor advantage--because the labor component will become far less important than the ability to develop effective business systems and management, which is an area in which the Chinese stink. And where do you think the major manufacturing industries of today--the innovations that have created our world--have come from? Did you miss the 1980s and 1990s? I do worry about the future of that kind of entrepreneurship in this country, but the big threat comes not from China and India, but from our own protectionists, big unions, and government over-regulation. (See Sarbanes-Oxley, and then ask yourself why there were no IPOs in 2008, and how that stymied the development of the manufacturing powerhouses you apparently believe are important to our future.) As for the Retail Superstars and the Small Giants, they have a different role to play that is every bit as important as "making things." (And BTW, the back-up alarm/emergency light company you deride makes a lot of things, and is the world leader in what it makes.) Those companies are the heart and soul, not just of our economy, but of our society. They are community leaders in thousands of cities and towns around the United States. Their practices shape the communities we live in, the values we live by, and the quality of the lives we lead. Yes, they are anathema to big labor, because they aren't unionized. That's why big labor is pushing card check. Then again, their working standards and efficiency far exceed that of the unionized giants, whose lunches they regularly eat.

Posted by BoBurlingham at January 3, 2010 2:30 AM

The New York Times writes about our "heavy lifting" in Afghanistan while China "picks the fruit." The article, "China Willing to Spend Big on Afghan Commerce", is a must read, I think. Below is a section of the article:

China Metallurgical Group, often called M.C.C., will build a 400-megawatt generating plant to power both the copper mine and blackout-prone Kabul. M.C.C. will dig a new coal mine to feed the plant’s generators. It will build a smelter to refine copper ore, and a railroad to carry coal to the power plant and copper back to China. If the terms of its contract are to be believed, M.C.C. will also build schools, roads, even mosques for the Afghans.

The sweeping agreement has some experts rubbing their eyes in disbelief. 'It’s almost as if the Chinese promised too much,' said one international expert who, like some others interviewed, refused to be identified for fear of alienating the Afghans or the Chinese.

But even if elements of the agreement fall through, the Chinese have already positioned themselves as generous, eager partners of the Afghan government and long-term players in the country’s future. All without firing a shot.

Nurzaman Stanikzai was a mujahedeen in the 1980s, using American-supplied arms to help drive the Red Army from his homeland. Today he is a contractor for M.C.C., building the Aynak mine’s electric fence, blast wall, workers’ dormitories and a road to Kabul.

The Chinese are much wiser. When we went to talk to the local people, they wore civilian clothing, and they were very friendly,' he said recently during a long chat in his Kabul apartment. 'The Americans — not as good. When they come there, they have their uniforms, their rifles and such, and they are not as friendly.

American troops do not, in a narrow sense, protect the Chinese. The United States Army stations about 2,000 troops in Logar Province, where Aynak is located. But an Army spokesman said they generally patrolled well south of the mine area and had not provided direct security for Chinese investors or mine workers.

The Afghan National Police, which does protect the mine, was largely built and trained with American money. The 1,500 guards the police have posted in and around Aynak are special recruits not drawn from the main force, according to Maj. Gen. Sayed Kamal, who heads the National Police.

But the conclusion is inescapable: American troops have helped make Afghanistan safe for Chinese investment. And there is no sense that either government objects to that reality. As diplomats and soldiers alike stress, the war in Afghanistan was never motivated by commercial prospects. Had an American company won Aynak, some Afghans noted wryly, critics inevitably would have accused the United States of waging war to seize the country’s mineral wealth. Moreover, if China succeeds in developing Aynak and generating revenue for the Kabul government, that helps achieve an American goal...

Do read the whole article. (It's above.) Wouldn't you like to be a country holding billions of the United States T-Bills, betting that we will always be the cowboys of the world, while jobs are moved abroad and cheap products are dumped in the US as those who hold our debt build their infrastructure and economy as we bankrupt ours? These guys are in it for the long haul. We seem to be playing deadly war games. How is China building their infrastructure with such multi-national quasi government companies? With the United States deficit spending!!! It seems that China doesn't need an international army; they have the United States to do that in Afghanistan. After all, they are holding our debt that we handsomely pay to build their economy.

Globalization sucks!!! When we sold America down the tubes through legislation trumpeted by the right and left, we seemed not to have looked beyond the obvious shareholder value which really wasn't shareholder value at all, but value for top tier executives. Did General Electric, for example, whose stock has plummeted over the last decade, create value for shareholders or executives? They sure didn't create a lot of value for the American worker. How about General Motors with its continued expansion in China?

Both companies, GE through AIG, have benefited from billions of bailout funds supplied by American taxpayers, but both of their investments are heavily in China. China bought Hummer. I suspect that they will be supplying the vehicles for the wars America fight next while continually building their economy through our deficit spending. It was commented here a few months back that if we restricted our deficit spending that this would bring on WW III. I guess we didn't think this globalization thing through far enough. But we must begin to think now.

Posted by Judith Ellis at January 3, 2010 8:00 AM