The "Mexican Food" Phenomenon

All of us lucky enough to have hung out in Mexico (or the likes of SF's Mission District) know that what we Americans call "Mexican food" ... ain't. Well, I'm in Dubai right now—and can report that what we call "hommous" ... ain't either! True Middle Eastern Hommous and Arabic Mezzeh are delights of the first order; Shaw's hommous (New England-style Hommous? Oxymoron?) ... and I've no doubt they mean well ... comes from another planet, if not galaxy.

Hats (Way) Off!

Just read that Michael Jordan's brother, Command Sergeant Major James Jordan, has extended his enlistment, so he can go with his unit for a full tour in Iraq. Wow! When you smell the crap that happened with the NBA in Detroit last week, one desperately misses MJ; seems as though Excellence runs in the family!

The Nelson Baker's Dozen

Another book about Horatio Nelson? I've read 10, and assumed I didn't need another. But as I wiled away the time in Heathrow, I thumbed through a new one, Andrew Lambert's Nelson: Britannia's God of War. It looked fabulous; and, incidentally, I was to give a speech on Leadership in Dubai 48 hours hence. So I made the purchase, devoured the book during the subsequent 6-hour flight ... and extracted 13 Lessons. Herewith, in summary-shorthand form (directly from a Slide) ...

1. Simple-clear scheme ("Plan") (Not wildly imaginative) (Patton: "A good plan executed with vigor right now tops a 'perfect' plan executed next week.")
2. Soaring/Bold/Clear/Unequivocal/ Worthy/Noble/ Inspiring "Goal"/"Mission"/"Purpose"/"Quest"
3. "Conversation": Engagement of All Leaders
4. Leeway for Leaders: Select the Best/Dip Deep/Initiative demanded/Accountability swift/Micromanagement absent
5. Led by "Love" (per Lambert), not "Authority" (Totally identify-bond with Sailors!)
6. Instinct/Seize the Moment/"Impetuosity" (Boyd's "OODA Loops": React more quickly than opponent, destroy his "world view")
7. Vigor! (Ben Zander: leader as "Dispenser of Enthusiasm")
8. Peerless Basic Skills/Mastery of Craft (Seamanship)
9. Workaholic! ("Duty" first, second, and third)
10. Lead by Confident & Determined & Continuous & Visible Example (In Harm's Way) (Gandhi: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world"/Giuliani: Show up!)
11. Genius ("Transform the world to conform to their ideas") (Gandhi, PM Lee-Singapore), not Greatness ("Make the most of their world")
12. Luck! (Right place, right era; survived near-mortal wounds) ("Lucky Eagle" vs "Bold Eagle")
13. Others' principal shortcoming: "Admirals more frightened of losing than anxious to win"

I think that's as good a list of Leadership Traits as you're likely to find. Comments?

Note: Tom was at Heathrow when he bought the book. You have to go to amazon.co.uk to get it.

100 Ways to Succeed #32:

Mimic Lord Nelson!

Another book about Horatio Nelson? I've read 10, and assumed I didn't need another. But as I wiled away the time in Heathrow, I thumbed through a new one, Andrew Lambert's Nelson: Britannia's God of War. It looked fabulous, and, incidentally, I was to give a speech on Leadership in Dubai 48 hours hence. So I made the purchase, devoured the book during the subsequent 6-hour flight ... extracted 13 Lessons ... and devised this Success Tip #32: Mimic Lord Nelson.

Of course it's far easier said than done! Still, aim high! Try to compass as many of the Nelsonian Traits as possible!* (*Maybe you'll have your own Square—as in Trafalgar—some day!)

1. Simple scheme.
2. Noble purpose!
3. Engage others.
4. Find great talent, let it soar!
5. Lead by Love!
6. Trust your gut, not the focus group: Seize the Moment!
7. Vigor!
8. Master your craft.
9. Work harder than the next person.
10. Show the way, walk the talk, exude confidence! Start a Passion Epidemic!
11. Change the rules: Create your own game!
12. Shake off the pain, get back up off the ground, the timing may well be right tomorrow!
13. By hook or by crook, quash your fear of failure, savor your quirkiness, and participate fully in the fray!

Make Good Cars!

In the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Alex Beam reviews Roger Lowenstein's Origins of the Great Crash. Lowenstein at one point refers to the management classic, My Years With General Motors, by legendary GM Chairman Alfred Sloan. "There is no mention of GM's share price in his decision-making," he writes. "In contrast," Beam notes, "Jeffrey Skilling ... based every decision on its effect on Enron's share price."

I guess Mr Sloan was worried about making great cars! (Alas, an idea that eluded several of his successors! Life is tough!)

Brickbats!

My flashlight sucks! I carry a flashlight on my trips. (Remember, Mr Pack-heavy.) Left my trusty _________ (don't remember brand) at home. Picked up a Garrity in Boston before I left. Arrived in Dubai. Batteries dead. Problem: CRAPPY DESIGN! It's nice enough looking, but the sliding on-off switch can be jostled into the "on" position while passively nestled in a duffel bag. Boo!

Trash sucks! I actually love Heathrow (sometimes, as of late, I damn near live there—shades of Terminal), and despite ever-longer security lines, I think BAA (British Airports Authority) does a decent job in tough circumstances of running the joint. But I noticed (it shouted at me) as I boarded my plane for Dubai that the jetway was ... filthy. Not "filthy," but ... FILTHY. DIRTY. FOUL. DISGUSTING. A stunning amount of garbage, etc. Sure, it's BA/British Air that maintains the Rolls Royce engines that will propel me skyward ... but paddling through Filth on the way into the plane is not a confidence builder! Boo!

Microsoft ... ! I avoid the "sucks" here not out of fear of Microsoft, but because I may be wrong. In my hotel room in Dubai, I can't get into AOL via high-speed access. Hence, I'm using MSN Internet Explorer. But when I access AOL via MSN, there are a hundred easy, normal things I can't do when I'm on AOL directly. Could be AOL's fault. (They're 100 miles from faultless.) On the other hand, believer in conspiracy theories that I am, I tentatively point the finger (#3?) at the Beast of Redmond for making sure my life is complicated because I normally "default" to AOL. Boo ... somebody!

14S, 65R ... Hike!

When the next U.S. Congress convenes, there will be 14 women in the Senate, 65 in the House. Not good enough, but up from 2 in the Senate, 21 in the House in 1980. The Senate also will have 1 African-American, 2 Hispanics, and 2 Asian-Americans ... up from 0, 0, and 2 in 1980. The House will seat 40 African-Americans, 23 Hispanics, and 5 Asian-Americans ... up from 17, 7, and 3.

Could be better. Could be worse. But glacial though it doubtless seems to many, that's a pretty sizeable shift in a quarter of a century. All you LBJ-bashing, aging hippies ... put a flower on the old boy's grave for the Civil Rights Act, etc. The grand total will be 152 minorities in '05 (out of 535 total), up from 52 in '80.

Event Slides: Dubai

Tom's in Dubai at the International Leadership Summit, and the weather is 72°F/22°C and sunny. Nice. Get the slides here for the general session, and here for the workshop. You can also see a short video here.

Why Marketing Programs Fail

What makes marketing programs succeed—or fail? I have my ideas ... but I want to hear yours.

I'm starting research for a project, and I'd love to hear your comments, ideas, anecdotes and war stories. Be sure to fill out the form on the attached link, and, if you'd like, share your thoughts with everyone on the comments attached to this post.

Thanks!

Oh, So Sweet

Some prose is so glorious as to be breathtaking. Such is the case with Mark Helprin's new collection of short stories, The Pacific and Other Stories. The leader, "Il Colore Ritrovato," left me literally breathless; I've never before underlined fiction ... but some passages were so sweet! (Helprin's A Soldier of the Great War is on my all-time, Top5 fiction list.)

Not So Sweet! Incoming! Duck!

Op-ed leader in the European Wall Street Journal, 24 November: "A Dollar Warning: A country can't devalue its way to prosperity." The slide of the dollar (and Greenspan's acknowledgement that it ought to keep on sliding), the no-end-in-sight budget deficit, the trade deficit, the unfunded entitlements conundrum (disaster-in-waiting?), and the foreign brain drain (see below) add up to a flashing yellow light—at least—on the U.S. mid-term economic horizon. Why does John Snow not look like the sort to take the lead in dealing with all this? I am no macro-economist, but my "antsy" feelings are starting to drive me nuts. No problem? It doesn't feel that way.

Brain Drain Becomes Gusher

"The foreign visa crisis, left unattended, is going to have deep and lasting effects on American security and competitiveness." —Fareed Zakaria/Newsweek/11.29.04/ commenting on an unlikely entry for SecState Designate C. Rice's agenda

"The dirty secret about our scientific edge is that it's largely produced by foreigners and immigrants. We don't do science." —FZ

Strong language. And accurate, as best I can judge. (See my associated blog on Richard Florida's recent work.)

Collins & Peters ... Together at Last!

"Not a single company [we studied] that qualified as having made a sustained transformation ignited its leap with a big acquisition or merger. Moreover, comparison companies—those that failed to make a leap or, if they did, failed to sustain it—often tried to make themselves great with a big acquisition or merger. They failed to grasp the simple truth that while you can buy your way to growth, you cannot buy your way to greatness." —Jim Collins/Time/11.29.04/on Sears-Kmart

Amen.

Thank You, Allan Sloan!

Newsweek columnist Sloan informs us (11.29) that the technical name for the tax-avoiding structure of the Kmart-Sears deal is ... Horizontal Double Dummy. In the immortal words of Dave Barry, I'm not making this up.

Enough?

Short, to-the-point management books have their place. Biz folks are busy. Ponderous writing is a drag, no matter how brilliant the underlying research. Focusing on one or two powerful ideas is sensible. Stories (parables) are a superb way to absorb an important idea.

Still ...

Transiting Heathrow on the way to the UAE. Pause at the bizbook section at a W.H. Smith. Here, in part, the bestsellers lineup: #1. Animals Inc.: A Business Parable for the Twenty-first Century. #2. Eat That Frog. #3. Who Moved My Cheese? ... #14. The Way of the Rat.

I live on a Farm.
I am an animal lover.
But, ye gads ...
Maybe we're reaching saturation?

On the other hand, I did learn a lot from the termites on a safari trip with family to Zimbabwe a couple of years ago. Hmmm. Maybe I'll ring up my British publisher when I fly back through on Wednesday ...

The Way of the Termite?
Who Moved My Grain of Sand?
Eat That Elephant Dung: A Termite's View of Sears & Kmart?

Tip of the Hat!

Kudos to Pointe South Mountain Resort/Scottsdale. Found, on a card atop my bed, during a recent stay: "You're Invited to Help Arizona Conserve Water. ... In an effort to further Arizona's water conservation program, we will be changing your bed linen every third day. ..." (There is, of course, an opt-out option—I wonder how many choose it, thereby making a conscious decision to Waste Away!)

Only 1 in 20 hotels I visit does this.* Too bad ...
(*There's so much "easy stuff" that can be done. Some add towels to sheets on the "Don't Wash" list; a handful put a paper-recycling basket in each room; etc.)

100 Ways to Succeed #31:

Better World, Better Business!

Most acts of conservation save money rather than cost more. (Just ask 3M about its 3Ps: Pollution Prevention Pays.) See the above on hotel water conservation in Arizona.

Conservation is everybody's business. The Great News: Conservation is not only everybody's business, it's good business ... helping the world, helping the bottom line, making you a more attractive place to work, and scoring community citizenship points all at once. Some deal!

So, become a Conservation Champion ... and Bolster the Bottom Line along the way!

Quote of the Day

"Managers are the dinosaurs of our modern organizational ecology. The Age of Management is finally coming to a close. The need for overseers, surrogate parents, scolds, monitors, functionaries, disciplinarians, bureaucrats, and lone implementers is over, while the need for visionaries, leaders, coordinators, coaches, mentors, facilitators, and conflict resolvers is steadily increasing, pressing itself upon us. ... Nearly unnoticed, a far-reaching organizational transformation has already begun, based on the idea that management as a system fails to open the heart or free the spirit. This revolution is attempting to turn inflexible, autocratic, static, coercive bureaucracies into agile, evolving, democratic, collaborative, self-managing webs of association."—The End of Management, Kenneth Cloke & Joan Goldsmith

Gets my vote!

Another Day, Another Headline (or Two)

"The man who may yet wield most influence over the dollar is not George Bush, nor even Alan Greenspan. His name is Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China. His importance is a measure of the shifting balance of global economic power from West to East."—Headline, The Business (UK), 28/29 November

"Chinese and Indian giants go head to head in search for oil."—Headline, The Business (UK), 28/29 November (TP: I thought oil was all about BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell? And you?)

(Or Three)

"Dr Stephen Minger is a top stem cell researcher and heads a team of scientists at King's College London's new Wolfson Center. He is familiar with high-tech labs and machines with million-pound price tags, but what he saw in Beijing and Shanghai left him picking his jaw up off the floor. 'I came back blown away by the whole thing,' he says. 'It was mind-boggling.'" —FTmagazine/11.27/"How Did That Happen?"

How did that happen?

Same Day, Another Headline

"Kraft sell-offs on the menu as Wal-Mart bites."—Headline, The Business (UK), 28/29 November

The startling story begins: "KRAFT, America's largest food company, built its empire by devouring smaller firms, but it is now selling some of its properties because of the demands of the world's biggest retailer. Wal*Mart has become so powerful that it can tell its suppliers which brands to own and which to sell, based on which goods are selling in its thousands of shops across the U.S."

Considering these four headlines/stories, maybe I wasn't far off, in a recent presentation, when I used a subtitle that read: "How the Two 'Bs'—Bentonville & Beijing—Became the Co-capitals of the Economic World."

Faith Recommends Tom

Faith Popcorn, guru of trends (and one of our Cool Friends), was featured in the Wall Street Journal, November 22nd, with her list of must-reads for a "grasp of business trends." And, yes, Tom made the list. Along with Robert Reich's The Future of Success, Michael Silverstein and Neil Fiske's Trading Up, William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, among others, Tom's Pursuit of Wow! is one of the books that Faith suggests will help you learn more about "the trends shaping and being shaped by business."

An unusual entry on the list, new to me, is The Future of the Past, by Alexander Stille. Faith's description says, "What do the dying traditions of canoe-making and oral poetry on an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea have to do with anticipating the future trajectory of our culture?" That intrigues me, how about you?

Go to WSJ.com for the full text. Subscription may be required.

Most Beautiful Words

If you don't subscribe to "A word a day" from wordsmith.org, you don't know what you're missing! Every day provides an interesting word, organized into weekly themes.

The monthly newsletter adds some extra features. The latest issue told of a survey of 42,000 non-native speakers of English in which they voted for what they thought were the most beautiful words in English, with the top 10 being mother, passion, smile, love, eternity, fantastic, destiny, freedom, liberty, and tranquility. Peekaboo and pumpkin weren't far behind. Another article described an issue that is really just the tip of the iceberg—the linguistic consequences of global warming. The article shows how Arctic peoples don't have the words for the new species they are seeing as polar ice thaws and wildlife can live farther north.

Yesterday's word: Profluent, an adjective meaning "flowing smoothly."

Happy Thanksgiving!

Probably won't blog tomorrow, what with 20 family members—and 8 dogs—arriving today and T.Day at Grey Meadow Farm in VT. Much as I love London, especially decked out for Christmas, it'll be fantastic to get Home after three weeks on the road. Though I must say that I do appreciate the genuine hospitality and graciousness I'm met with all around the world ... and of course throughout the U.S.A. I fully acknowledge cultural differences, at home as well as far away; on the other hand, I've long observed that people react pretty much the same way everywhere if you are curious, courteous, attentive and fully engaged.

That last little bit reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from Harvard prof Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot's marvelous book Respect:

"It was much later that I realized Dad's secret. He gained respect by giving it. He talked and listened to a fourth-grade kid in Spring Valley who shined shoes the same way he talked and listened to a bishop or a college president. He was seriously interested in who you were and what you had to say."

A great Thanksgiving message, eh?

100 Ways to Succeed #29:

Get The Story!

Everybody has a story! It's your job-opportunity ... consultant, boss, project-peer ... to get it!

In her remarkable book Respect, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot wrote: "It was much later that I realized Dad's secret. He gained respect by giving it. He talked and listened to a fourth-grade kid in Spring Valley who shined shoes the same way he talked and listened to a bishop or a college president. He was seriously interested in who you were and what you had to say."

Likewise, in London I was driven around by a fellow who sometimes drives Richard Branson. Branson is famous, among other things, for his hundreds (literally) of notebooks in which he meticulously records what he hears from Virgin clients, and damn near anyone else he buttonholes. This driver confirmed Sir R's habit, and said a trip with RB is non-stop conversation about the world as seen through the driver's eyes. "He bloody well interviewed me, for 90 minutes, non-stop," this chap said with clear admiration, "as we crawled to town from Gatwick." There was nothing or no one beneath RB's abiding, compulsive interest. As we chatted, the driver (himself a Richard) allowed as how "the whole bit made me feel as though I had something important to say."

Message/s:

The Driver/Richard II did have something to say!
(Axiom: EVERYBODY HAS A STORY, DESPERATE TO ESCAPE!)

The Driver/Richard II is important!
(Axiom: CONNECT!)

Richard I /Branson doubtless learned a thing or seven, duly recorded.
(Axiom: JUST ASK!)

Richard I/Branson made a friend-informant-confidant for life!
(Axiom: GET A STORY, MAKE A FRIEND.)

Richard II/driver will pass on the story of Richard I/Branson to 100, if not 1,000 people ... and thus willfully extend the brand-enhancing mythology surrounding Richard I/Branson.
(Axiom: CONNECT, JUST ASK, GET A STORY, MAKE A FRIEND, CREATE A "BUZZ-GENERATOR.")

All because Sir Richard was determined to ... Connect & Get the Story!

So ... Get the Story!
(And, if you're wise and of a mind, take pages from RB and record it as well. Someday, you may be on notebook #600—about RB's tally, I'm told—and counting you Billions.)

Weird Stats I: Did They Say Kerry?

This from the Economist (11.20): "One of the best statistics of the campaign is that people worth $1 million-$10 million supported Mr Bush by a 63-37% margin, whereas those worth more than $10 million favored Mr Kerry 59-41%."

Go figure!

Weird Stats II: Did He Say 50 Trillion?

"For people currently alive, we have $50 trillion to $65 trillion in unfunded liabilities."—former New Hampshire Senator Warren Rudman (R), quoted in Fortune on promised Social Security and Medicaid benefits to current and future retirees.

Move Over, Toyota ...

Headline in the Financial Times that I found hanging on my London hotel room door this morning:

"Birmingham Hails an Unlikely Savior: MG Rover [Britain's last mass car producer], struggling to survive, is being offered a lifeline by a Chinese company [Shanghai Auto] that desires the carmaker's design assets and the right to build Rover brand cars."

The Chinese are ... movin' out! Loaded with a trillion bucks or so of accumulated loose change (while we stagger under the weight of an equally enormous deficit), they are breaking their isolated geographic bonds, ripping opening their wallets, and skipping steps in the process of completing the competitiveness puzzle by accumulating intellectual capita and branding skill and muscle.

Hint: This is not a small story!

Dateline: Chiang Rai, Thailand

This from the International Herald Tribune (11.19):

"For Many Asians, China Is Cultural Magnet ... CHIANG RAI, THAILAND. In pagoda-style buildings donated by the Chinese government to the university here, Long Seaxiong, 19, stays up nights to master the intricacies of Mandarin. The sacrifice is worth it, he says, and the choice of studying Chinese was an easy one over perfecting his faltering English. China, not America, is the future, he insists, speaking for many of his generation in Asia."

Hint: This is not a small story!

100 Ways to Succeed #30:

Get China On Your Mind!

Read up on China.
Read books.
Troll the Web.
Talk to people about China.
Initiate a China Study Group.
Ponder China.
Visit China.
Make China "meditation" part of your day's ritual.

This applies whatever you're about. This is not a "call to action" so much as a "call to awareness." Ignorance about China (India) (Asia) is ... simply ... NOT ACCEPTABLE.

Hint (per me):

China is not a "problem."
China is not a "threat."
China may not be an "opportunity."
China is a Reality ... a Part of Our Lives. (Period.)

Act accordingly.

My First Horse. (Oh, and Thanks!)

When I bought my first horse, upon coming to Vermont in 1984, I named him Frequent Flyer. The horse is long gone to greener pastures, but the name lives on. I speak today in London. Here are my stats for the last month-and-a-half: 21 speeches-seminars, 46 days, 7 countries, 45,000 miles.

And Blogging all the way! Thanks for your Comments! This Blogsite is my on-the-road family!

Samsung ... By Design!

Samsung has become about the first non-Japanese Asian company to create a stop-you-in-tracks-global-brand, according to me and premier Asia-hand KIenichi Ohmae. Near or at the top of the "causes" list: DESIGN!

Consider this cover headline in BusinessWeek (11.29):

"SAMSUNG DESIGN: THE KOREAN GIANT MAKES SOME OF THE COOLEST GADGETS ON EARTH. NOW IT'S REINVENTING ITSELF TO GET EVEN COOLER."

In 1993, Samsung's boss was wandering in LA, and became annoyed that Sony products were always in the front of the store, while his, equally well engineered, were tossed about in the back. Hence, an epiphany that launched the remaking of Samsung.

Today, the Korean giant boasts a design staff of 470 (120 added in the last 12 months), a design budget jumping 20% to 30% a year, and Design Centers in LA, SF, London and Tokyo. In 2004, Samsung won 5 IDEA awards (Industrial Design Excellence Awards), making it the 1st Asian company to take the annual top spot traditionally reserved for U.S. and European firms.

As at firms like Sony, Samsung has now reached the point that the designers dictate to the engineers, not vice versa!

Design!
Yes!

Samsung Rules ... By Design!

Annie ... Say It Ain't So!

"Ask Annie" is my favorite stop in Fortune. Not this week! "Ask Annie" reports on a recent survey that finds only 20% of 1,500 companies "see individual drive as a desirable trait."

Could it be true?
Are bosses truly the idiots Scott Adams/Dilbert claims?

Go, Mike!

About 100 years ago (1970, actually) I met Mike Ray, a Stanford marketing professor trained by my Stanford mentor, the late Eugene Webb. Mike was a quantitative nut, as was my mentor. (And, truth be told, as was I.) Mike shifted gears, looked beyond the numbers, and invented the first course devoted exclusively to Creativity at the Stanford B.School. Mike's latest book has just appeared: The Highest Goal.

The highest goal? Per MR: "Make your life itself a creative work of art."

Prof Ray offers us another life-changer from GB Shaw (Man and Superman): "This is the true joy of Life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one ... the being a Force of Nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."

Contrast these Ray-isms (Shaw-isms) with the wretched "Ask Annie" Blog above. Ye gads!

(I'm really taken, chuckling and weeping at once, by Shaw's "selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making [us] happy"—ain't it true of all of us from time to time?!)

Excellence Is Not Enough

EXCELLENCE IS NOT ENOUGH! So declared the Father of In Search of Excellence to the staff (Talent!) of a superb professional services firm recently. At an "off site," leaders had been working on clarifying values. After some serious deliberations, they'd landed on Integrity-Quality-Excellence, and presented me their findings.

And I said (suggested!) ... No.

Of course I support Integrity-Quality-Excellence! And, moreover, the three often go A.W.O.L. And .. I think they ought to be on this Firm's list, perhaps at the top.

But ...

But all three Goals-Values-Aspirations are ... Static!

This outfit climbed to the top of an insanely competitive heap by Daring to Be Different. And my simple (and constant) observation is that leaders ... Get Conservative. Fast. Hence I argued that Goal #1 for my newfound friends was to ... Stay Obstreperous!

We ended up with the following, two sets of words, both important. The First Set are static, even imitative:

Static/Imitative

Integrity.
Quality.
Excellence.
Continuous Improvement.
Superior Service. (Exceeds Expectations.)
Completely Satisfactory Transaction.
Smooth Evolution.
Market Share.

The Second Set are dynamic, underscoring differences:

Dynamic/Different

Dramatic Difference!
Disruptive!
Insanely Great!
Life-(Industry-)changing Experience!
Game-changing!
WOW!
Surprise!
Delight!
Ridiculously Fun!
Market Creation!

My point: I think a hearty dose of both is the RX for surviving, attracting and keeping Stellar Talent, and continuing to Rock the World.

So, assuming you/your unit or firm has a "value statement," or some such, does it underscore "break-the-mold" as well as "build-an-excellent-mold"?

Excellence is not enough!

Event Slides: eCSW

eCustomerServiceWorld hosts Tom in London. Get the slides here.

Special Thanksgiving Treats

I've been Polishing & Polishing & Polishing a couple of summary presentations ... the "REI250" & the "REI500". They are my low-cal, low-carb, high-protein Thanksgiving presents to you.

International Shipping Update

The WOW!Store now offers international shipping via the United States Postal Service. If your shipping address is somewhere other than the U.S. or Canada, you'll have USPS options. Thanks again to those of you who brought this to our attention. We appreciate your patience and hope you'll try again.

Event Slides: TAU

Tom was in Tel Aviv yesterday and he made two appearances. Elbit was a private meeting. Tel Aviv University is posted in a Long and Short version.

Media Sightings

We've added a new page. Look at the menu to the left, and you'll see a new item: Media Sightings, under Tom's World. This is actually the new blog-rendition of a page we used to have. And take a look! Tom appears in an article titled "Rock Stars of Business" from the 1 November issue of AmericanWay, the in-flight magazine of American Airlines. After reading it, one of our colleagues called Tom the Mick Jagger of Business. I don't know if I'd go that far, but ...

Branding Thought: Consistency Is Not Enough

When talking to me about their branding issues, people frequently mention the need for "consistency."

When it comes to branding, think less about consistency and more about how complementary different customer experiences are. This aims much higher.

Take a hotel experience for example. You don't expect the hotel's ad, website and front desk clerk to all say the same thing. It matters much less if they are consistent with each other than it matters that they complement each other, reinforcing each others' messages to create an interesting story.

This is what great Brand Harmony is all about: Experiences that blend to create something rich, interesting and compelling.

Tom in WSJ

The quote: "If you think they'll be able to take on Wal*Mart, I've got a nice bridge."

The topic, obviously: "Can Sears and Kmart Take On a Goliath named Wal*Mart?"

It seems the subject of the merger came up at the World Business Forum in Chicago on November 17th, and a Wall Street Journal reporter was there to catch Tom shaking his head at the deal and "professing to see little logic behind a merger of losers."

[You can read the whole article at WSJ.com for a month free of charge.]

The Emperor's New TSA Uniform

At this very moment, tens of thousands of people are patiently inching through airport security lines at a snail's pace. Few are complaining, because we look at it as an important piece of homeland defense. "Hey, we're all in this 9-11 thing together."

OK. Of course. We all want safe air travel. We all want to keep terrorists from committing violent acts. But let's not be afraid to call it what it is: The current process of screening passengers at U.S. airports is a joke. It's not protecting us from very much. Did you ever notice that your likelihood of being pulled out of line for a special check has more to do with the TSA staff/passenger ratio than if you're likely to be carrying a bomb? I swear that I only get pulled out of line if they're not very busy. Don't you think a terrorist could figure this system out?

You may have guessed: I just went through an inane complete search of all my belongings, just by the luck of the draw as I went through security in Phoenix. With 2 guys busy analyzing my toothpaste and making sure my iPod Mini wasn't really WMD Mini, all I could think was that Senator Proxmire would be having lots of fun with this if he were still exposing stupid government waste.

2005 Excellence 100

Executive Excellence Publishing has named their 2005 Excellence 100, and we are pleased to say that Tom is among the 100 (#5, in fact). The list-makers explain that those who make the list "possess a rare combination of both substance and presentation style, inspiring action and real world performance, while working tirelessly towards implementing change." You can view the list here, or go to www.eep.com, and click on the headline "The 2005 Excellence 100 is Out!"

Event Slides: BAI

The BAI Retail Delivery Conference & Expo was held in Las Vegas, and Tom was there. See the slides here.

Dance of the Dinosaurs!

Was in Chicago yesterday, speaking to several thousand execs. Boom. Sears-Kmart! Or: THUD! I was asked to comment: "I can't. My Mom taught me to be polite in other people's houses. Let me just say, hypothetically, that I consider mergers between Dinosaurs, aiming to deal with hot competition ... from, say, small Southeastern states ... to be the height of stupidity. Sure, the new Kmart CEO is a shrewd ... maybe even genius ... financial Engineer ... and he'll make a killing. No prob. But will true value be created? Will the American Economy be better off? Will Lee Scott [Wal*Mart CEO] lose sleep in Bentonville? I think Lee will think he mistakenly tuned into Comedy Central!"

Sad footnote: I said to a very prominent exec, "I can't believe we had no inkling of this at all, that there were no leaks." He responded: "You're right. We didn't. Maybe nobody really cares." Whoops!

Speaking of Dinosaurs ...

I've long thought that Big Pharma was in deep doggy doo-doo. (Long before Vioxx-Bextra-Nexium.) Their inability to find blockbusters, for whatever reasons and despite gargantuan R&D appetites, has been near the top of my watch-worry list. On the other hand, I've long defended their profitability as the necessary price of drug discovery. Until now.

Or, rather, until I dove into Dr Marcia Angell's The Truth About the Drug Companies. (It is an exposé, but she's no Michael Moore. Dr Angell was longtime Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, and one of Time's 25 "most influential people in America.) I will not précis the book here, but simply point out one troublesome passage on industry innovativeness which body-slammed me: "In the five years 1998 through 2002, 415 new drugs were approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), of which only 14 percent were truly innovative. A further 9 percent were old drugs that had been changed in some way that made them, in the FDA's view, significant improvements. And the remaining 77 percent? Incredibly, they were all me-too drugs—classified by the agency as being no better than drugs already on the market to treat the same condition. Some of these had different chemical compositions from the originals; most did not. But none were considered improvements." Whoops!

Vegas

I'm no great fan of Las Vegas, where I am now. (It's a long way from Vermont ... let's put it that way.) But what's not to love about a City where, as you walk through the airport, you see huge ads for no less than three different Cirque du Soleil shows!

Whoops! Quoting Myself!

Always a little scary when one quotes oneself! But here was a Comment on a Post about New Slides (TechLearn, NYC, Monday) that led me to respond. And my response succinctly captures how I feel about Biz Life/Life Life. The correspondent said some nice things about my exchange with a handful of Chief Learning Officers from joints like IBM and HP. And I said: "Naomi, thanks! I had a great time yesterday, especially the CLO gig. I just love the issues we are all wrestling with! How cool that everything is screwed up—in a state of flux! What an opportunity to play with truly new forms of organizing, learning, connecting, growing, creating new careers and new forms of value!"

Indeed: HOW COOL!

Key words:

All screwed up!
State of flux!
Wrestle with!
Play with!

New forms of ...

Organizing!
Learning!
Connecting!
Growing!
Creating new careers!
Creating new forms of value!

Yes: HOW COOL!

Wish I'd Been There (or ... Event Slides)

Wow! HSM collected a great group for its World Business Forum 2004 in Chicago: Madeleine Albright, Phil Kotler, Clayton Christensen, and others, along with the ones Tom mentioned: Jack Welch, Rudy Giuliani, Larry Bossidy, Gary Hamel. Of course, Tom's slides are posted, in both a presentation version and a long, web-only version. I guess that will have to do for those of us not lucky enough to have been there.

Excellence Is Where You Find It

Will be speaking in Chicago/McCormick Place, to thousands of managers, along with the usual suspects ... Welch, Giuliani, Bossidy, Hamel, et al. But I may have inadvertently tripped over the pick-of-the-litter of management-leadership ideas while browsing the fabulous Borders across from the Sears Tower.

Brad Gilbert is a former World #4 pro tennis player, now a coach (Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, among others). His book, I've Got Your Back: Coaching Top Performers from Center Court to Corner Offices, is a gem. Here's how it starts: "Show me a coach (or a boss) who doesn't listen—really listen—and I'll show you a loser. Show me a coach (or a boss) who domineers and demeans, who manages through fear, and I'll show you an accident waiting to happen. Show me a coach or boss who doesn't think it's just as important to empower the lowliest scrub on the team as it is to cater to the star, and I'll show you a real short timer." One nice (charming, really) thing about the book is that Gilbert learned about 100% of his coaching lessons the hard way, from error and trial—and he freely shares his learning process with us.

100 Ways to Succeed #27:

OUT-STUDY THE BASTIDS!

Tennis coach Brad Gilbert was once the #4 ranked pro in the world. He was not a natural. His breakthrough, after a very spotty career about to tank, came when he acknowledged to himself that he wasn't a natural. His response could have been to turn in his racquet. Instead it was to hit the books. Or, rather, write one.

Gilbert was the guy, who when the other guys went for a beer after a match, hung around watching more matches, talking tennis with anyone and everyone ... and writing it all down. He began his black book, and took notes on everything, especially other players he'd faced, or might face. The result: that eventual #4 ranking, and then a superb coaching career, working with the likes of Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick.

No surprise, one of Gilbert's coaching secrets is continuing his own studies, as well as converting his players into Students (sometimes no mean feat with those "naturals"). Coach Gilbert acknowledges that there may well be a few, like John McEnroe, who can get away without hitting the books ... but for us mortals that's scant consolation.

Needless to say, all this translates one-for-one, to the World of Work you and I participate in. I loved the line from New York Times columnist Tom Friedman: "When I was growing up, my parents used to say to me: 'Finish your dinner—people in China are starving.' I, by contrast, find myself wanting to say to my daughters: 'Finish your homework—people in China and India are starving for your job.'" Age 12, 22, or 62 ... tennis or finance or engineering ... this "simple" lesson bears repeating.

100 Ways to Succeed #28:

REMARKABLE POINT OF VIEW/R.POV8!

I suppose I've said this before, but I'm willing to suffer the charge of repetition. I've just finished seminars with 500 law partners, then a couple of hundred investment bankers. The people I addressed are what I call "scary smart." And they've missed some kids' soccer games ... that is, 12-hour days are the norm. But "talent" and outrageously hard work are not enough! Why? Because there are a lot of talented people around who work long days.

So what's the secret-differentiator? Marketing guru Seth Godin said, "If you can't state your position in eight words, you don't have a position." I choose to interpret this not as a "marketing tip," but as a profound statement. I spent my two seminars hammering on "Remarkable Point Of View" ... or R.POV. Or, stealing from Seth, R.POV8 ... a Remarkable Point Of View ... captured in 8 words or less.

Seth, however, must make room for Jerry Garcia: "You do not merely want to be the best of the best. You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do." And for founder Tom Chappell, of Tom's of Maine: "Success means never letting the competition define you. Instead you have to define yourself based on a point of view you care deeply about."

The problem: Developing, maintaining, and refreshing a R.POV is excruciatingly difficult. I'll leave that to later; right now my point is simply to insist that smarts and hard work, even effective hard work, is not enough. The query that must never be far from your consciousness: IS WHAT I'M UP TO REMARKABLY DIFFERENT, AND CAN IT BE CAPTURED IN SIMPLE, COMPELLING LANGUAGE?

What we're talking about here may explain in part John Kerry's loss. A few weeks before the election, a Washington Post analyst, Kenneth Baer, penned: "To win this race, Kerry needs to stop focusing on Election Day and start thinking about his would-be presidency's last day. What does he want his legacy to be? When sixth-graders in the year 2108 read about the Kerry presidency, what does he want the one or two sentences that accompany his photo to say?"

Presumably those two sentences would have maxed out at eight words!

Hey, Steve, I Agree!

Upon arriving at O'Hare, I hadn't gone more than 100 yards before I came across another of those Accenture ads featuring Tiger Woods. I agree with my fellow blogger at this site, Steve Yastrow, who recently openly wondered about the efficacy of those ads. I freely admit I'm not a golfer, and maybe that explains it. But the whole series seems downright silly to me, especially in the midst of Tiger's slump. If I had a couple of billion dollars burning a hole in my pocket (for an IS/IT contract), I'm far from convinced that these ads would separate my money from me.

What am I missing?

The Tom Peters Company Re-imagines Itself!

Boston, Massachusetts & Cincinnati, Ohio — November 15, 2004: Tom Peters, management's "guru of gurus" and best-selling author of In Search of Excellence and, most recently, Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age, has announced the reorganization of The Tom Peters Company to more effectively serve the corporate market for enterprise transformation services and leadership development.

This re-invention results in the formation of two new entities. One, The Tom Peters Company, chaired by Peters, is devoted exclusively to implementing Tom's ideas about dramatic enterprise reformation. The other, Bluepoint Leadership Development, will focus on the development of outstanding organization leaders through education, training, and coaching. The re-organized Tom Peters Company, now headquartered in Boston, will retain its name (and its website, tompeters.com) and will operate principally as a transformational consulting firm, initially utilizing Peters' established service offerings—such as WowProjects, Brand You, and Brand Inside/Professional Service Firm transformations—as the basis for fundamental enterprise realignment necessary to master the chaotic times. Bluepoint Leadership Development is positioned to accelerate leadership development for corporate leaders, primarily at the mid- to executive-level. Based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and led by Chairman Boyd Clarke, Bluepoint will maintain account responsibility for the former Tom Peters Company's leadership-products clients.

Clarke, coauthor of The Leader's Voice, stated: "This is a real opportunity for us to reinvent ourselves as well. We've enjoyed our association with Tom and his ideas and obviously his ideas will continue to live on in our organization. And given that both organizations are fundamentally about helping make change happen in the workplace, I think we'll find opportunities to collaborate on some projects. Along with my colleagues Ron Crossland, Vice Chair of Bluepoint, and Gregg Thompson, President, we are ready to devote all our time and energy to leadership development. That's what really turns us on."

Peters' intent for the re-established Tom Peters Company is to build a beacon company of what he calls "like-minded radicals"—who focus on "partnering with nervy Clients as they face squarely up to the enormity and pace of changes required by the emergent technologies, intensified competition, and a truly global marketplace." Those changes, Peters adds, "require nothing less than wholesale re-imagining of the basic tenets of 'organizing,' the idea of what makes an effective 'corporate culture' in a fundamentally unstable environment—and re-conception of the traditional bases for adding value to every product and service offering." He adds, "Our goal is simple to state. We aim for exceedingly rapid, high-impact, high-visibility efforts undertaken with like-minded Clients who will not settle for halfway solutions. These are not 'halfway' times!"

As a notably vocal advocate for more widespread female leadership in American business, Peters also announced the appointment of Juli Ann Reynolds as the new CEO/President of Tom Peters Company. Reynolds fashioned a high-impact track record as a Senior Partner of Russell Reynolds, the global executive search firm; she is also a former president of the Boston Club, a senior executive women's club in Boston. Reynolds commented on her appointment, "My recent work has been all about placing leaders and executives, but to now have the chance to help transform organizations using Tom's brand and Tom's ideas is exhilarating."

About Tom Peters Company
Tom Peters Company is re-imagining Tom Peters' products and organizational services to directly align with Peters' unparalleled three-decade track record of intellectual leadership in business and management. This will be the first time that the Company is fully and unconditionally dedicated to Tom Peters' vision of passion, leadership, open communication, branding, the spirit of brand you, creative destruction, women-in-leadership, the enormous women- boomer market opportunity, design-driven enterprise, creativity-based education, "radical" approaches to technology exploitation, and work that unfailingly startles Clients with its bold departures from "business as usual." The value proposition: execution of a total, unabashedly "radical" transformation process that positions companies to retain the most exciting talent to achieve their top- (and bottom-) line revenue objectives and exercise game-changing leadership in their chosen markets, small or large. Juli Ann Reynolds will be the Chief Executive Officer and will re-establish the company in Boston; www.tompeters.com will remain as the re-organized company's website and will include announcements about the revamped organization. For more information: www.tompeters.com/tpc. Tel: 617.242.5522.

About Bluepoint Leadership Development
Bluepoint Leadership Development (www.bluepointleadership.com. Tel: 513.683.4702) is a dedicated leadership development organization that specializes in accelerating leadership development through organizational consulting, leadership educational experiences, and executive coaching.

Event Slides: TechLearn

TechLearn Conference & Expo in New York City is the latest Tom event. See the slides here.

Event Slides: FBR

Tom speaks to Friedman Billings Ramsey in Boca Raton. You can download the slides here.

Brand Harmony Quiz

I've received many interesting comments from people who have taken my Brand Harmony Quiz, which I posted here a while back and included in a recent newsletter.

Main observation: Most people think they aren't doing a very good job of creating Brand Harmony. One group of 16 CEOs who meet together regularly took the quiz and sent me the results—the average score of 40 fell into the "Time for a brand transplant" category.

Take two minutes, take the quiz. Post your score with comments!

The Royal Air Force Markets a Line of Motion Sickness Pills

Why do I find this weird? The British Army recently announced that they are involved in the production of a new running shoe that carries the army's crossed swords logo and "embodies the Army's values and standards," whatever that means.

One of the army's lieutenant colonels admitted that that a commercial flop could tarnish the armed forces' image. No worries, I guess, since the army said that they would "proceed with caution and take any evasive action necessary to avoid being labelled a "fashion" company." Will they really? Proceed with caution? How? Evasive action? Huh?

Early Verdict

In a few weeks we'll have logged a half-decade of '00s. Hence my "Biz Book of the Half-Decade Award." The envelope please ...

The Gold: Kevin Roberts, CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi. Lovemarks! Just bloody Brilliant!

Early Verdict II

Microsoft's challenger (beta.search.msn.com) to Google looks pretty good. Design is gloriously clean.

Midnight Oil

Prior to today's presentation, and, in fact, in the middle of the night, the PSF25+ morphed into the PSF33 ... available as a PowerPoint Special Presentation. (A new section on Client Excellence was added.)

Event Slides: Morgan Lewis

Tom speaks to Morgan Lewis LLP in Scottsdale, AZ. Get the slides here.

Zen Greetings! (And apologies.)

I think I finally & truly know why I have Big Problems with the notion of "built to last." It's fine with me if things last ... if they remain ... EXCELLENT ...THE COOLEST-OF-THE-COOL. If not, what the hell is the point, any point, of "lasting" per se?

This emerged during a Press Conference in São Paulo. I was asked about the value of "in perpetuity," and I in turn launched a Rant. Here's the gist, mercifully edited:

"I've 'lasted' quite a while; my landmark book, In Search of Excellence, arrived 22 years ago. That's cool. But it misses the point ... Utterly Misses the Point. I live for one ... AND ONLY ONE ... thing. THE MOMENT. I have worked my buns off at my craft for 3 decades, but the Entire Point is to do absolutely nothing more than bring every moment of those 30 years to bear on this ... this "mere" 30-minute Press Conference in São Paulo. Screw the 'long term.' I will achieve IMPACT in answering your particular question or ... as I see it ... I will have pissed away the entire 30 years! My life will mean shit all! No kidding! I just came from speaking for 90 minutes to 4,000 (FOUR THOUSAND!) of my fellow human beings, Brazilian execs and professionals and managers. That 90 minutes ... is my life. THERE IS NOTHING ELSE. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Only now ... a God-given, Incredible, Once-in-a-Lifetime, Never-to-Be-Repeated Opportunity to Make an Impact. (Or not!) To: Make a Difference about some Ideas I care Very Deeply about. (Or not!) 'Built to last'? Who gives a Tinker's Damn! Built to Do My Utmost to Make This Moment Matter! To Make This Moment Sing! Period! Tomorrow will take care of itself ... tomorrow. (If I am lucky enough to be given the gift of another day.)"

Clear enough?
Your thoughts?

(As to the "apologies" in the Blog title, I was doing a video taping last weekend, and at one point I exploded with profane anger at a bystander comment. Such an outburst is clearly unbecoming from a Senior Citizen. But the point was ... I was 100.00000% engaged in my "performance." As I said above, "The Performance Am Me!" Total, Excruciating Concentration ... on bringing every ounce of Intellect & Passion & Life Experience to bear on the Beady Eye of the Unforgiving Camera. Mess with my Total Concentration ... and reap the Whirlwind! But I am sorry. Sorta.)

"We" Apologize!

Another apology. (It must be the day for it.) I met ... me. Not pretty.

My voice ... PENETRATES. (Hey, it pays the bills.) However, on a flight yesterday, I sat behind me. That is, a Fellow Penetrator sat in front of me. How annoying! He wasn't shouting, not at all. He just had a ... Penetrating Voice. (Shades of you-know-who.) I know when I've gotten home after giving 2 or 3 speeches, Susan will frequently say to me, "You're home. It's just me. There aren't a thousand of me."

"We" are sorry! I can't speak for Penetrator II, but I'll try a little harder to keep my voice to myself in public spaces!

Junk Man Speaketh Out

I can already imagine the Comments. But what the hell ...

I Am Junk Man.
I am ... Garbage Man.
My curiosity knows no limits.
My appetite for the Undesirable is ... Always Unsated.
I read everything.
I talk to everybody.
(I am the guy in the grocery store applauding the long line ... so I have time to get ... all the way through ... the Enquirer.)

I love the ... "unwanted," intrusive INTERRUPTIONS ... that are ... The Spice of Life.
(Of course I am ANNOYED by those Unwanted Interruptions ... BUT THEN I DISCOVER THAT THEY ARE THE BASIS FOR 99% OF WHAT I LEARN THAT'S COOL.)

I never know where an Inspiration will come from.
(I do ... KNOW ... KNOW ... KNOW ... it will likely come from an un-likely-"UNWANTED" ... UNSOLICITED ... quarter!)

Junk Man (me) ... LOVES ... Junk Mail. (You never know ...)
Junk Man ... LOVES (here I go) ... most Spam.
(Not phishing however.)

Junk Man ... HATES ... Filters ... All Filters ... on Any Aspect of Life.
(Junk Man is still ... IRRITATED ... that his beloved wife signed up for the national No-call List. Junk Man misses the telecom solicitations at dinner time.)

Junk Man ... as a child ... had ... Inappropriate Friends.
(Blacks, Jews and Catholics were Spam in WASP world 50 years ago, when Junk Man was a 12-year-old Junior WASP. In those days we had Filters. Oh, did we have Filters ... such as laws that kept Spam from building in our WASP communities, for one example. Jim Crow was anti-Spam man, alive and well in those self-same, pre-MLKing, Ozzie-and-Harriet "idyllic" '50s.) (In 1960, when Junk Man was 18, there was a Breakthrough: Catholic Jack Kennedy spammed WASP-world ... and became President.)

It's a ... Philosophical Point!
Junk Man is a Libertarian!
Junk Man ... SPAMS ... Corporate Meetings with unwanted messages.
(A group of healthcare execs hires Junk Man to talk innocuously about "the future" ... and he calls them "killers" to their faces, based on Patient Safety Data—that the HC Execs don't think Junk Man ought to have access to.)

Junk Man ... LOVES ... Capitalism & Entrepreneurialism, where "unsolicited start-ups" crowd the competitive space of Orderly Oligopolists. (LISTEN UP: What else were Microsoft/Apple in 1982 to IBM if not Computer-industry Spam??? Unwanted, unauthorized, unsolicited, annoying, distracting, graceless, hippie boys sticking a juvenile finger in Daddy Blue's Private Monopolistic Pie! From Big Blue's perspective, fending off Microsoft-Apple was causing ... what else ... a Wretched Waste that led to loss of productivity!) (Isn't it true that everyone who makes the History Books does so because they ... Spammed the Establishment? Wasn't Tom Paine's 49-page Common Sense ... Maxi-Spam ... to Georgie-ThreeSticks-The-Big-Brit?)

Junk!
Celebrate it!
All ... SUPER-COOL THINGS ... start as ... Junk!
Hooray!

That Damned AV Guy!

Giving a seminar.
Everything went wrong!
Small sins.
Big sins!
Un-professional!
Un-forgivable!

And I was in a deservedly foul, foul mood about it all. (No way to go into a speech.)
And then I did by last stop before ShowTime ... my AV check.

That damned AV guy!

I was in a foul mood.
Conference organizer a weenie.
I savored ... self-righteously ... my Foul Mood.

That damned AV guy!
He was in a Great Mood!
Happy with the World!
Humming!
Can you believe it ... HUMMING!

And, in spite of my full-load of determination, my damned mood started to improve. We started joking about this or that, talkin' shop, and in short order I was bordering on ... CHEERFUL.

You get the point, I'm sure. Despite one's Very Best Efforts to Harbor a Grudge for Various Injustices ... Another's Cheerfulness acts as a Contagion!

That damned AV guy.
He saved my Speech.
He saved my neck.
Cheerful people will do that.

(Message I: HIRE CHEERFUL!)
(Message II: Avoid-Dismiss FMCs ... Foul Mood Carriers. THEY SCREW YOU UP!)
(Message III: All Hail "that damned AV guy"!)
(Message IV: One "damned AV guy" can change the mood of a Battalion!)

100 Ways to Succeed #26:

HIRE SUNNY! FIRE GLOOMY! Q.E.D.

Hire/Promote those with ... Sunny Dispositions.
Fire those with perpetually ... Gloomy Dispositions.

(Hint: The farther Up the Organization you go, the more important this gets.)

(Rule: Leaders are not permitted to have "bad days" ... especially on Bad Days!)
(Rule: One Sad Dog can Infect a group of 100.)
(Rule: One Energetic, Optimistic, Sunny Soul can motivate an Army to Move a Mountain.)

Design Kudos in Unlikely Settings

I hate those endless gray highway barrier walls.
Guess what?
They needn't be so awful!

Welcome to Arizona!
(I'm in Scottsdale.)
Barrier walls around here are exquisite, excitingly designed Southwest-style stone sculptures!

How COOL!
AttaArizona!

Check It Out!

Way to go, /pd! Thank you for alerting us to Alexandre Guéniot's resume-on-the-web. We love it!

Catchin' Up

Flying to and from São Paulo (Boston-New York-São Paulo-Houston-Phoenix), I cleared my pile of "gotta reads." Hence the collection of highlights-tape "stuff" that follows ...

Dumb? Or Dumber?

"While Fox's overall ratings are down about 6% from last year, the network has moved from fourth place into first among viewers from ages 18 to 49, which all the networks other than CBS define as the only competition that counts."—New York Times/11.01.04

"Only competition that counts."
This is stupid! (Except for CBS, apparently.)
Very stupid!
Very, very stupid!
Think: Boomers-80 MILLION-Geezers-Ready$$$$$-MANY Ready$$$-MANY Years To Go-Ignored-Opportunity.
Suggestion: Don't be stupid!

And your plans (wee biz or giant) are ...

The Missing Link

At the Management Congress I attended in São Paulo, a Brazilian marketing guru (BMG) and Planetary Strategy Guru (and my old pal from McKinsey) Kenichi Ohmae had this exchange:

BMG: "What's the main thing missing in Brazilian companies' efforts to achieve 'branding excellence.'?"

KO: "Aggressive marketing budgets!"

Amen! SMEs (Small & Medium-sized Enterprises) in particular routinely shortchange their marketing-positioning-PR budgets and activities. I don't believe in "throwing money at marketing," but I do believe in ... Naked Aggression ... in getting your name before the Client base and starting BUZZ pre-Day One!

CEOs With Zip? One Vote "Aye."

Thanks to Jim Collins and Good to Great, "quiet" CEOs are the rage these days. I don't subscribe to noisy-for-noisy's-sake, but I do believe the Buzz surrounding a Welch or Gates or Branson or Buffet can add billion$$$ to market cap. Burson-Marsteller would seem to side with me ...

"Surveys conducted by PR giant Burson-Marsteller suggest that 50% of a corporation's reputation is attributable to that of its CEO." —Fortune/11.15.04

(Hint I: 50% is a lot!)
(Hint II: This holds for a local, buzz-worthy restaurateur as much as for BigCo's CEO.)

Powerless Kills! (REALLY!)

"[Epidemiology & Public Health Professor Michael] Marmot says that more than cigarettes, sugar, and too many hours spent bench-pressing the TV remote, it's the lack of control in our jobs that's killing us. When our need for control is frustrated, the result is a vulnerability to disease that shortens life." —Shoshana Zuboff/Fast Company/11.04

Yikes!

YOU'RE FIRED!

"Analyzing Customers, Best Buy Decides Not All Are Welcome"—Headline/Wall Street Journal/11.08.04.

Best Buy has classified 100 million of its 500 million annual customer visits as "undesirable." And it aims to quash the "devils," by the likes of cutting promotions and pruning mailing lists, and supporting its "angels" with a better and better array of Cool (& Expensive) products.

Best Buy is not alone. There's a heap of research that supports dumping underperforming customers. (And some counter research.) Fact: It's easier done than said—and untold, lasting damage can follow for doing it gracelessly!

What's in a Name

Progressive Insurance is, well ... Progressive. Consider the following:

* "[CEO Peter] Lewis has created an organization filled with sharp, type-A personalities who are encouraged to take risks—even if that sometimes leads to mistakes."

* "One thing that we've noticed is that they've always been very good at avoiding denial. They react quickly to changes in the marketplace."—Keith Trauner, portfolio manager who follows Progressive

* "When four successive hurricanes hit Florida and neighboring states in August and September, Progressive sent more than 1,000 claims adjusters to the Southeast. Result: 80% of 21,000 filed claims had been paid by mid-October, an impressive figure. This pleased policy holders and probably helped Progressive because delays in claims payments typically mean higher costs."

Source: Barron's/ "Polished Performer: The Car Insurance Game's Best Managers Have Put Progressive in the Fast Lane"/11.01.04

Net: I've long been a Progressive-Lewis admirer. (My favorite Lewis-ism: "We don't sell insurance anymore. We sell speed.") I've now added Progressive to my X04 list, my first Excellent Company list since '82.

Time Flies!

"Today, you own ideas for about an hour and a half."—Larry Light/Global CMO, McDonald's (from Advertising Age/10.11.04)

Speed rears its head ... again. My "moniker" for dealing with "all this" is ... Metabolic Management. I believe it's one of the boss's prime tasks (Task #1 ... Peter Lewis would say so; see immediately above) to consciously speed up the corporate (project team, etc.) Metabolism. Start by "Doing a Gandhi": "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." I.e.: HUSTLE! NOTICEABLY!

100 Ways to Succeed #25:

Hustle!

Hustle!
Noticeably!
Now!
And evermore!

(Msg: Hustle begets hustle! And, of course, the converse. Duh.)

Product++

"Apple doesn't sell an MP3 player, they sell a lifestyle. Buyers of iPods are buying into a club. They know that and want that."—Andrew Green, VP Marketing, Griffin Technology/Advertising Age, "THE IPOD ECONOMY," 10.18.04

Go Steve!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Go Experience Marketing!
Go Dream Marketing!
Go Lovemarks!
(Think: Beyond-the-Brand.)

Why, Oh Why?

Why must I screech at "staffers"? Why must I beg them to take their rightful place in the sun? Well, too many seem to be content to be "good, conscientious professionals," rather than ... IN-YOUR-FACE-TRANSFORMATIONAL-LEADERS.

Here's how I not too gently put it to groups of HR and IS/IT Execs recently:

"This is an important speech! Why? You are important people! And why the hell do I have to persuade you of that? Get the %$^&&* chip off your shoulders! Stand tall! DARE TO BE 'INSANELY GREAT.' Act like the stalwart heroes you truly are! Damn it!"

Screech!
Screech!
Screech!

Thrilled!

Thrilled to see the Major Ink that Stephen Covey is getting for The Eighth Habit. He is a remarkable human being, with a remarkable message. "They" may well have invented the word "authentic" as tribute to Stephen! I am a lucky guy to be his friend!

Credit Where Credit Is Due

I left São Paulo on Continental 94 at 11:20 p.m. last night. Scheduled to fly 9 hours 20 minutes, traverse about 5,000 miles including an Amazon fly-over, and get to IAH/Houston at 05:20am. Well, we kissed the jetway at 05:19am.

Ho hum?
Sure.
But ...

Jaded is natural after flying about 200,000 miles a year for the last 29 years. (Yup, 6 million miles, give or take.) But ...

Hey it's pretty damned amazing all the same! A plane with a million+ parts! Weather systems hither and thither (T-storms as we left São Paulo, for instance, God knows what cosmic disturbances over the Amazon). Air-traffic control systems in a dozen nations we flew over. A zillion human factors that could cause a glitch. And yet I flew NYC-São Paulo-Houston ... spoke to 4,000 Brazilian execs ... and landed in Houston within a ... MINUTE ... of planned arrival.

Cool!
(I'll go back to taking it for granted tomorrow, but this day I will dwell, at least briefly, on the Wonder of It All.)

A Hearty Salute to Veterans!

Happy V-day fellow Vets! We deserve our annual applause! So ... the rest of you ... applaud! And to my fellow Viet Vets, "WELCOME HOME, SAILOR-SOLDIER-AIRMAN-MARINE!"

(NB: Thomas J. Peters, 693355, Lieutenant, United States Navy. U.S. Naval Mobile Construction Battalion Nine, Danang, RVN, 1966-1967. U.S. Naval Facilities Engineering Command/Seabee Operations and Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Arlington, VA, 1968-1970.)

(NB: Was in Toronto week before last, and got my Remembrance Day poppy, which I have proudly worn ever since. Happy R-Day Canucks, Brits, etc!)

Thanks for Asking

I'm in São Paulo, getting ready to declaim to 4,000 managers at EXPO/Management World [slides here]. It's an incredible three-day event put on by my Excellence+ pals at HSM, which is HQ'd here, but works around the World. Spoke for them in Frankfurt and Milan two weeks ago, and will be with them in CHICAGO next week.

Professional Service Firm Excellence

Preparing to speak to a Professional Service Firm this Friday. Trying to get my arms around their world ... which, incidentally, has been my world since "signing on" at McKinsey in 1974. Per my usual trick, I resorted to Listmaking. Hence what follows ... The PSF25+:

Work & Legacy

1. Crystal Clear Point of View (Every Practice Group: "If you can't explain your position in eight words or less, you don't have a position"—Seth Godin)
2. DRAMATIC DIFFERENCE ("We are the only ones who do what we do"—Jerry Garcia)
3. Stretch Is Routine ("Never bite off less than you can chew"—anon.)
4. Eye-Appetite for Game-changer Projects (Excellence at Assembling "Best Team"—Fast)
5. "Playful" Clients (Adventurous folks who unfailingly Aim to Change the World)
6. Small "Uneconomic" Clients with Big Aims
7. Life Is Too Short to Work with Jerks (Fire lousy clients)
8. Obsessed with LEGACY (Practice Group and Individual: "Dent the Universe"—Steve Jobs)
9. Fire-on-the-spot Anyone Who Says, "Law/Architecture/Consulting/I-banking/ Accounting/PR/Etc. has become a 'commodity' "
10. Consistent with #9 above ... DO NOT SHY AWAY FROM THE WORD (IDEA) "RADICAL"

People & Leadership

11. TALENT FANATICS ("Best-Coolest place to work") (PERIOD) 12. Eye for the Peculiar (Hiring: Go beyond "same old, same old") 13. Early Opportunities (vs. "Wait your turn") 14. Up or Out (Based on "Legacy"/Mentoring as much as "Billings"/"Rainmaking") 15. Slide the Old Aside/Make Room for Youth (Find oldsters new roles?) 16. Talent Is Obsessed with Renewal from Day #1 to Day #"R" [R = Retirement] 17. Office/Practice Leaders Evaluated Primarily on Mentoring-Team Building Skills 18. Team Leadership Skills Valued Early 19. Partner with B.I.W. [Best In World] Outsiders as Needed and to Infuse Different Views

The Firm & The Brand

20. EAT-SLEEP-BREATHE-OOZE INTEGRITY ("My life is my message"—Gandhi) 21. Excellence+ in EXECUTION ... 100.00% of the Time (No such thing as a "small sins"/World Series Ring to the Batboy!) 22. "Drop everything"/"Swarm" to Support a Harried-On The Verge Team 23. SPEND AS AGGRESSIVELY ON R&D AS A TECH FIRM OR CIRQUE DU SOLEIL 24. Web (Technology) Obsession 25. BRAND/"Lovemark" Maniacs (Organize Around a Point of View Worth BROADCASTING: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world"—Gandhi)

26. PASSION! ENTHUSIASM! (Passion & Enthusiasm have as much a place at the Head Table in a "PSF" as in a widgets factory: "You can't behave in a calm, rational manner. You've got to be out there on the lunatic fringe"—Jack Welch)

I'll return to some bits of this in the days to come ...

[See "Preview2005", Tom's new Special Presentation, which includes The PSF25+.]

PSF: Outsourcing Close To Home

"Outsourcing" is usually associated with moving tasks previously done by US workers to other countries.

This morning, in a workshop with a room full of CEOs, the discussion turned to outsourcing. But, instead of talking about moving jobs offshore, most of the CEOs said that in the last few years they had outsourced many tasks to companies nearby. Maintenance of truck fleets, accounting, IT, HR—the real outsourcing happening in America is using your neighbors' expertise to help you thrive.

This is exactly what Tom was talking about 5 years ago in his Professional Service Firm50 book—whatever task your department does for your company, there is an outside company ready to prove that they can do it better, for a fee.

WOW!Store Hiatus

Just wanted to let all of you know that the WOW! Store distribution center is being relocated and while this transition is taking place, we won't be able to fulfill any orders at the store. In the meantime, you can submit orders; we just won't be sending anything out until Wednesday, November 17. Sorry for any inconvenience. If you've got questions or issues, please email wowstore@tompeters.com.

Next week, when we begin fulfilling again, we will have a new item for sale, a collection of some of Tom's recent writings called Project '04. It's a spiral bound (well, technically a wire-o bound) 80-page booklet that we'll be selling for $10. And the WOW!Store is the only place where you can get it.

Firefox Rocks!

Not that I'm any kind of expert on this front, but I've started using Firefox as my browser and it's fast and clean. An article from today's Boston Globe, "Web power to the people," confirms that I'm not the only one changing my access road to the Web.

Hospitals, Heal Thyselves

Tom has been on a rampage lately about the medical industry in the U.S. and how hospitals are killing people. Here's a story from today's Boston Globe titled, "Five years later, medical errors still a leading killer." Take a look.

Cool Friend: Lou Carbone

Lou Carbone is the CEO of Experience Engineering, an experience-consulting firm whose clients include IBM, GM, Allstate, and Blockbuster. He coauthored one of the first articles to talk about the systematic management of experience as a value proposition. His recent book is Clued In: How to Keep Customers Coming Back Again and Again. He knows this experience business, and we are glad to add him to our roster of Cool Friends. Interview here.

New Special Presentations

Two new special presentations hit our list today. They are short, but packed with ideas. One is a preview—just the kernel, really—of what Tom will be saying at his events in 2005: "Preview2005". The other is a realignment of some key ideas: "Brand Inside6-PSF25-Survival Skills11". Check them out. Also look at the other special presentations in Tom's collection.

R.I.P.

Had a burial ceremony on the Farm (VT) near my studio. I opened an old-ish "techie casket," and next to my 17 Beloved 35mm Slide Trays from another age I ceremoniously dumped 8 Beloved Floppy Drives. They suffered the brutal life-on-the-road with seldom a complaint ... but their time has passed. R.I.P. And: Many cheers for the Tech Revolution that makes the unimaginable ever more imaginable by the day.

Speaking of Revolution/s ...

Book Tip-of-the-Week: Juan Enriquez, As the Future Catches You: How Genomics And Other Forces Are Changing Your Life, Work, Health and Wealth. Brilliantly written & presented. For a flavor, Google Enriquez and read a sample of papers; he's an entrepreneur and Director of the Life Sciences Project at Harvard Business School.

Also, for starters, I urge you & some kindred pals to create an informal Luncheon Group to discuss the book, perhaps roping in a knowledgeable outsider.

Worth the Viewing

Yes, I believe fervently in self-responsibility. (I'm a closet Libertarian.) And I also believe fervently in Wellness. Hence this weekend I watched Supersize Me, newly out on DVD. Forgetting this or that policy implication, it's simply worth your time!

100 Ways to Succeed #24:

Agenda-NoteTaker-Notes Publisher "Spin" Power!

He/She who writes the Agenda and Summary Doc (innocently called "Meeting Notes") wields ... Incredible Power!

Believe it!

The question is innocent, "What should we cover at the Weekly Review Meeting?" The response is not. The "agenda" is in and of itself a Group "To-Do" list. (More important than any pretentious "strategic plan".) And: A "To-Don't" list. (What's left off ... to the Supreme Annoyance of many Power Players.) Moreover, some stuff will be at the Top ... some at the bottom (and probably won't get covered, or be given short shrift). Hence a "mere" agenda Establishes & Determines the Group Conversation for, say, the week, or even the Quarter. And ... the lovely catch ... concocting the Agenda by soliciting members is typically a "crappy task," unwanted by one and (almost) all.

My message: GRAB IT!
(And chortle as you do.)

Of at least as much importance is the grubby-demeaning "Notetaker" (and Publisher thereof) task. Talk about ... UNVARNISHED POWER! Everybody is so damn busy preening, interrupting, bullheadedly pushing their pet peeve, etc ... that they seldom hear what actually goes on. Only the meek & quiet Notetaker knows the story; and long after the participants have washed the memory of the meeting clean from their crowded lives, the Notetaker's Summary comes along explaining what transpired ... Carefully Edited.

You get my drift, I presume. The "powerless" soul who agrees to "develop the agenda," "take the notes," and "publish the notes" ... may just be the ... TRUE POWER PLAYER!

(I believe this so strongly and fear it so greatly that I religiously publish my own version of notes, in summary form (never more than 4 or 5 lines), within minutes of the end of a meeting—just to try and co-opt the damned notetaker. I call it ... Spin!)

Easier Said Than Done!

During a recent 2-week+ trip, I revealed the intimacies of my "pack heavy" strategy ... and was the subject of many a snide remark from you, my "friends." Well, I'm off later today for 3 weeks. I will address but one "packing issue." And ask your advice ... which I plan to pay no attention to. I have 7 baseball caps in my "prelim pile," waiting to be thinned. And I frankly don't see how I can do without any of them. The set:

Boston Red Sox ("Official" World Series Champs hat). Boston Red Sox (my all-black version—including the "B" in inky black—which I started wearing after the 19-8, 3rd game loss to the Yanks; hence it's my success talisman). My Stanford and SF Giants hats (my California talismans—a Big Deal). My favorite Canyon Ranch hat, another talisman. A Four Seasons Beverly Hills cap—because it's the perfect fit & feel. My new & cool black & white "Governator" cap, featuring Arnold in shades. And a VT hat in bold Green.

I cannot imagine dumping any of these ... True Pals. What to do?!

New Special Presentation

A Peerless "Brand Inside": The New Basis for a Value-Added Revolution. Tom recasts some existing ideas into a cohesive, up-to-date Brand Inside statement.

"IS/IT Professional" or "Healer"?

I Blogged on Wednesday about Corporate Walls ... and used healthcare CIOs and their relationship to patient safety as whipping boys. Got this great comment from one industry CIO that I decided to move up from the Comments section:

"As a CIO, I totally agree that we are just as responsible for patient safety as any doctor. I asked my IS staff [4 years ago], 'What do you do?' They answered, 'We're IS people.' I responded, 'No, you are healthcare professionals who use IS technology to deliver healthcare.' That was a turning point for the department. Genesys [Genesys RMC/MI] docs are able to access Medical Charts electronically via the Internet. They often do virtual rounding on patients from their offices and homes. They can use a wireless Palm to access lab results, consults, etc. We have a long way to go, but thanks to the IS healthcare professionals our docs have anytime-anyplace access to patient information. But, there is so much more to do."—Dave Holland

viagra and paypal uk no prescription Nice! Thanks for sharing, Dave.

My Kinda College

I'm really a fan of the Electoral College! As we worked on the Constitution in the late 1780s, the States ever-so-reluctantly, and one drop-of-blood at a time, ceded power to the Feds. And the Feds, Reagan Revolution notwithstanding, have been accumulating power & rules ever since, under Republicans as well as Democrats. The nice thing about the Electoral College (in its winner-take-all modality) is that it forces the Candidates to focus on the States. Despite the fact that I did not support Mr. Bush, I am perfectly happy that my fellow citizens in Florida and now Ohio were the "kingmakers" in 2000 and 2004. I'm delighted that the candidates have to direct extraordinary effort to "battleground states," even though that meant that we Californian-Vermonters (me) didn't see much of them or even their ads (no loss there!).

In my "official" "professional life" I am a screamin', shoutin' supporter-champion of radical decentralization ... so, too, in my personal-political life. At times the Feds are absolutely necessary—terrorism and Jim Crow laws, for instance. But most times I want to scream ... Get Outta My Life.

Send the Bill to McDonald's!

The CDC reported another airline woe yesterday. During the '90s the average American packed on another 10 pounds. In 2000 that meant the airlines spent $275 million on 350 million gallons of fuel necessary to launch the extra blubber into the Heavyweight Skies!

What Leaders Should Know

Live Meeting Online Seminar
Tuesday, November 23, Ron Crossland, vice chairman of Tom Peters Company and coauthor of The Leader's Voice, will identify what leaders should know in order to be successful in a rapidly changing global marketplace. He will discuss the characteristics of an admired leader that stand the test of time and show what organizations can do to improve leadership on an individual and system-wide level. The seminar will take place from noon-1pm EST/9-10am PST. Get more information and register at Microsoft Office Live Meeting.

More on Walgreens

Following up on Tom's "Oh, Canada!" post from earlier today, which compared London Drugs (favorably) to Walgreens—I have a story in Brand Harmony about receiving a receipt at Walgreens, on which was printed, "Hi, I'm Robert. I'm here to serve with the 7 Service Basics."

I asked Robert what the 7 Service Basics are, and he said he'd never heard of them. I have since asked many Walgreens cashiers what the 7 Service Basics are, as they hand me receipts with their names printed on them, promising me this service. Not one of them has yet been able to tell me what the 7 Service Basics are, even though they are handing out these receipts thousands of times each day. (One Walgreens cashier actually told me he knew four of them and then said, "Sh__, Shower, Shave, and Shampoo." No lie.)

Great idea: Create a customer service program, reprogram all of the cash registers in 4000 stores to print info about the program on receipts, but don't bother to tell the people on the front lines who actually deliver the service.

Make Election Day the Beginning, Not the End of Engagement

Check out Kirk Samuels' comment on my blog "100 Ways to Succeed #22" ... and my response thereto. The idea: Getting worked up about a better-different world every four years during an election build-up (especially if your bank account is slimmer than George Soros') is not enough. It's what each of us does to help shape better communities ... Starting Today ... that matters!

If You Are Looking to Be Motivated to Change the World, and If You Have a Strong Stomach ... Read This Book

I knew I didn't want to read the book, despite a cover blurb that reads, "Nobel Prizes are given to books like A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali."

"It" is about Rwanda, no details spared; and about how the world stood idly by and watched. Try this brutal masterpiece from Gil Courtmanche ... if you dare.

Design Rules!

Design!
Yellow!
DHL!

New Color = F.A.I.*
(*Fundamentally Altered Identity.)

How Cool!
How Powerful!
Design Rules!

(It's soooooo gooooood that I want to start using DHL ... just because of the Coolness-Makeover.) (How Weird! How utterly Human!)

100 Ways to Succeed #23:

Design Means You!

Sure, "design" means DHL spending Gazillion$$$$ on ... YELLOW. IT'S THE NEW BROWN.

But that's not all.

Design means ... me obsessing on line breaks and "..."s in the presentation of this Blog.
Design means ... me ... at age 61 and somewhat successful ... going through more than 25 drafts of a mere update of my Official Bio ... that will be circulated to Clients for the next several months.
Design means ... me worrying equally about presentation style as content ... 365/6 days-per-year.
Design means ... my abandoning a Great Publisher (Knopf) to go to Dorling Kindersley so I could get the sort of design treatment for my books (E.g., Re-imagine!) that added up to Marshall McLuhan's famous "The medium is the message."

Design means ... that every action I take is Consciously Mediated by my implicit-explicit "design filter": That is ... HOW DOES THIS COME ACROSS? COULD IT BE CLEARER? CRISPER? MORE EXCITING?

(My last Client ... London Drugs ... "got it." The president told me that my goal/minimum success standard was to "make the audience gasp." Nice, eh?)

I "am" design!
It works for me.

I invite you aboard!
It's a daunting journey ... and an exciting one.
It's near the Heart of the Matter in a BrandYou World.
(Hint: We live in a BrandYou World ... like it or not.)

You = Desire to Survive = BrandYou = Branding Fanatic = LoveMark Fanatic (thanks, Kevin Roberts) = Design Fanatic.
Q.E.D.

Design Rules II

Hats off to MLtea!
Wow!
Silk tea bags ... not paper!
Wow!

Oh, Canada! (Redux.)

Speaking of London Drugs (we were, right?), let me tell you about me & London Drugs & Jim Collins & Good to Great & Walgreens. Okay?

Prepping for London Drugs speech. In SF. Needed some miscellaneous stuff. Go into a Walgreens on Market Street, across from Four Seasons Hotel.

Walgreens ... one of Jim Collins' small # of good-to-great exemplars. The place is a mess. Dirty. Msde just lying about. Undistinguished on every dimension you can name.

"Experience"?
Some experience!

No doubt WGs passed Jim C's rigorous financial hurdles. And that is ... Cool. But I, for one, reserve words like Great for things that are ... GREAT.

Put simply, London Drugs is ... GREAT. (And so are its #s!)
Walgreens is not ... great. (Regardless of its #s.)

TP message: Reserve "great" for ... GREAT.

(Maybe I'll write a book about Walgreens titled Good to ... Whatever.)

Oops!

"A couple of years ago a book like this one would have been very hard to imagine."

Seen the "best short stories" books? Or "best sports stories"? Or even "best business writing"? (Not an oxymoron.)

Well those "best" books, alas, have a new companion that I found at Pearson airport in Toronto. Namely, from which the editor's opening line above came: Best Business Crime Writing of the Year.

Shit!

Alas (double alas?), it's a Great Collection of Superior Writing-Reporting about a sad group of jerks who take us all down a notch. Alas (triple alas?), I commend it to your attention.

And if a whole book is a little too much, at least buy BusinessWeek this week (1 Nov issue) ... and read the (alas) top notch reporting-writing in the cover story, "The Secret World of Marsh Mac"—the story of slime-at-the-top and grime-throughout in our biggest insurer, Marsh & McLennan.

Shit!

Tear Down These Walls!

There may be walls more impenetrable than the Soviets' old Berlin Wall. Namely, those that divide the Functional Warlords in enterprises of all stripes.

To reiterate, I spoke last week to a great group of Healthcare CIOs. I was nasty on the Hot Topic of patient safety. (I've shared my Rant/s earlier.)

But there was really another point I tried to ram home. Namely, that they ... CIOs ... are as responsible for patients as any doc or nurse. That they ... CIOs ... are no-holds-barred "healers" Here, specifically, is the way I put it:

"You are not 'CIOs.' You are ... 'Executive Members of an ... Integrated Healing Services Team' ('Healing Arts Team'?) ...with a specialization in IS/IT."

buy viagra without prescription overnight shipping To me—and you?—that is the difference between day and night. Take the case of electronic patient records. For a CIO, that's a "program," albeit an important one. Per my framing, it's a ... Life & Death issue ... with a "program" component.

I want/wanted each CIO to feel as ... DEVASTATED ... by a (preventable) hospital death as the Bedside Nurse and Attending Physician did/does. The issue before me is/was "patient safety"/acute-"care" quality. But it was also the peril-lost opportunity of Functional Walls. The CIO brings a different skillset to the Healing Stage ... but he/she is as much (or more ... per me) a "healer" than an "IS/IT professional."

Query:

(1) Do you agree in general?
(2) Do you agree that the Mindset Delta (CIO v. Healer) is a Day-Night difference?
(3) Do you agree that the CIO is as responsible for Patient Safety as the M.D.-R.N.?

Definitely Worthwhile!

Just got my premier issue of worthwhile.
Wow!
A magazine whose heart is captured by this exhortation from cofounder & Pulitzer Prize winner (Wall Street Journal) Anita Sharpe: "Love Your Work (no, seriously!)"

This is not Fast Company redux.
This is a magazine for those of us who care deeply about our work ... or want to.

Start with the cover Story ... "Joy, Meaning and How to Love Your (work) Life" ... and keep reading!

(Full disclosure, there's a wee bit on me within.)

I've been chanting about "The Work Matters" for at least 5 years, since the publication of my The Brand You50. This mag, as much or more than Fast Company, is what I've been waiting for.

For starters ... visit worthwhilemag.com.

Mis-Fortune 500

I've never been a fan of the Fortune 500 list. It's considered a weighty honor for companies and a proxy for their credibility. But, after all, it's only a list of the companies that sell the most stuff. So what?

If you look at this year's list, you'll see that 66 of these 500 companies—13%!!—lost money in 2003. I'll bet every one of them brags about being "A Fortune 500 Company."

Vote! Vote Twice! Keep Voting!

Vote.
Take someone to the polls!
Take someone else!
And then again ...

(And prepare for a sleepless night!)

100 Ways to Succeed #22:

A "Mission Statement" That Matters!

I hate "mission statements."
Or "vision & values" statements.
Especially when they appear on plasticized cards.

Why?

I totally support the notion of the importance of ... Clear Values. (Hey, Bob Waterman and I practically invented the whole thing via In Search of Excellence, 22 years ago.) Like all good things, the idea has been attenuated beyond recognition. A Tepid Top Team goes "offsite," to someplace warm in February, produces 6 insipid statements that (1) differentiate them/the company from no one; and (2) they have no clue as to what it really means to live up to these statements, assuming they were serious in the first place, and not just following the herd. (No one has absorbed Gandhi's "You must be the change you wish to see in the world.") Then they (3) return home, have their gin-soaked "gem" immortalized in plastic ... and hand it out ceremoniously to 20,000 of the Unwashed as Holy Writ.

Yuck!

But all that's changed ... for me!
In a flash!
Now I'm a fan!
Bring on the plastic!

I was at a WooWoo resort last week in (Warm Place), giving a speech. Got up, as usual, at 4:00am. Alas, room service not open 'til 6am—pretty crappy, but I can't expect everyone to share my strange habits. So at 6am sharp (6:04, actually ... I took note) I call and place my complex order: a pot of tea. (Period.) I'm told it will be "about 30-40 minutes." I think to myself it's outrageous, but I hold my tongue. (I want—NEED!—the tea.) Some 45 minutes later ... NO TEA. I call room "service" ... and ... IT HAPPENS!

The guy says he's sorry but ...
But ... "IT'S NOT MY FAULT."

(You know, the Gremlin stole the teapot, we're outta hot water in Arizona, or some such.) (That's when I ... lost it ... and no amount of "right breathing" helped in the least.)

But ... IT WAS A GOOD THING!
Now I—finally!—realized I'd "seen" (it was almost religious) an inkling of a "mission statement" I could imagine & live with & publish & plasticize & champion!

I immediately put it on a slide, and used it to tee off my remarks a few hours later ... to vigorous applause.

Herewith the "slide"/idea/Supreme Mission:

XYZ Corp: Complete Vision & Values & Mission & USP Statement

Any Service or Product is yours
for absolutely NO CHARGE
if any employee
including the CEO
ever
says
or implies
at any point ...

"It's Not My Fault."

V. Big Cheese, Founder, CEO, & Dictator

If we could flatly & finally eliminate "It's not my fault" from the explicit or implicit vocabulary ("life style") of room service clerks—and CEOs!—many of the world's woes would be instantly righted.

If ... ACCOUNTABILITY ... and ... SELF-RESPONSIBILITY ... were our routine practice, well, how fabulous! How effective! How profitable!

So I invite you (Way to Succeed #22, remember) to fully adopt for yourself and your tiny or huge enterprise, temporary or permanent, my ... COMPLETE VISION & VALUES & MISSION & USP STATEMENT!

Eh???

Go to Canada! Find Excellence!

canadian pharmacy and real viagra

In Toronto yesterday. For the annual supplier-partner conference sponsored by London Drugs (slides).

Wow!
What a company!

The Richmond BC (British Columbia, chums) company has over 60 giant retail stores in Western and Central Canada. They have won every damned "top retailer" award available in Canada, and many for North America as a whole.

The "drugs" part is awesome in and of itself—including many "service added"/"experience" components, such as private consultation booths for customers to allow discussion-education relative to a prescription. While LD has been called a "mass" merchant, all their major departments—e.g., photo, computers, cosmetics—feature an astonishing range of products (peanuts to several thousand dollars an item) and exquisite education-service, provided by an amazingly well-trained, lower-than-low turnover staff.

Store openings are Happenings of the first order, even in big cities. And if anyone outside of IKEA deserved the moniker "destination," it's London Drugs. The payoff for the firm, opened in 1945 and owned by the private conglomerateur H.Y. Louie Co. Ltd., is numbers to die for ... getting ever better, even as Wal*Mart's invasion of Canada moves at flank speed.

(Oh yes, did I mention that they are such an IS/IT pioneer that they often are positively compared to Wal*Mart when it comes to supply-chain management? And did I mention that they are ... Design Fanatics ... of the First Order; the stores are simply eye-popping!)

By the by, longtime President Wynne Powell is as exceptional as the enterprise. He is a champion nonpareil of Fun & Commitment & Care & Enthusiasm & Talent Acquisition-Retention & Brash Experimentation-Innovation.

London Drugs is the newest member of X04, my new "excellence" Hall of Fame (my first since In Search of ...). Fellow members are another Canadian winner at the tip top ... Cirque du Soleil; and India's audacious Infosys. Plus scintillating-experience maniacs Build-a-Bear (which just went public, very successfully), healing-freaks Planetree Alliance/Griffin Hospital, and the brash Brazilian seminar-exec education company HSM. Also see our Special Presentation ... X04.

2 Minutes, 38 Seconds

Recall my discussion of my Slide that reads, simply ... 26. As in, another foreign-owned factory in China opens every 26 minutes. Well, now there's a companion that reads ... 2 minutes, 38 seconds. "Incidentally" ... it's set on the background of a Tombstone. The point? I'm on the warpath. Started with a speech to a healthcare group last week. A recent report suggests that "acute care" facilities ("hospitals," to us civilians) kill 195,000 patients a year due to quality lapses. That is, one victim of crappy management every ... 2 minutes, 38 seconds.

My rant (if more than that stat-slide is necessary): This issue is not about Dollars & Cents. As I said to my group, "If a truck rolled up to the back gate, dumped a full load of gold bullion, and left ... there is, alas, no reason to believe patient safety would improve in the next 5 years." We have, after all, been focusing on Patient Safety for several years now, and as one expert said ... nuthin' much is happening.

I have ginned up a Special Presentation titled "Health'care': The Rant." I'd urge you to read this indictment of our biggest (and most important) industry. Here's the opening salvo (slide), my 10 Point Manifesto:

Tom's Cold Fury at Healthcare "Professionals," Especially Acute Care Operatives:

1. You are killers: "Quality" remains a bad joke.
2. Pick off bunches of Low-hanging Fruit. (E.g., Tom's 1st Executive order as Your Next President: Providing a Handwritten Prescription is punishable by not less than 60 days of Hard Time.)
3. The "science" in "medicine" is often fanciful: Most "scientific" "treatments" are unverified. (So quit the kneejerk denigration of alternative therapies—trust me, Breathing Meditation beats Univasc; Good Nutrition beats Lipitor; Regular Exercise beats bypass surgery.)
4. You continue to obsess only on after-the-act "fixes," the automatic resort to Chemicals and Knives, rather than P-W-H-C ... Prevention-Wellness-Healing-Care.
5. Your Mindful Lifelong (mine) Failure to focus on P-W-H-C will probably cost me a decade of longevity, Canyon Ranch/Lenox not withstanding. THAT PISSES ME OFF. (For one thing, I need those 10 years to spread the P-W-H-C Credo to "health'care'" "professionals.")
6. You are hereby ordered to stop using the term "healthcare": You haven't earned the right to utter the word "care"!
7. $$$$$ Are Not the Issue/Excuse I: Quality Is free!!! (There are MANY who are ... Getting This Right ... without Buckets of $$$$$.)
8. $$$$$ Are Not the Issue/Excuse II: Planetree Alliance/Griffin Hospital "Models The Way" ... on P-W-H-C ... Every Day. IT CAN BE DONE!
9. ALL THESE PROBLEMS CAN BE FIXED! WE KNOW HOW! THERE ARE NO EXCUSES ... EXCEPT LACK OF GUTS & WILL! "It's Attitude, Baby!"
10. All "members of staff"—regardless of "professional discipline"—are Healing Arts Practitioners. OR TURN IN YOUR EMPLOYEE BADGE. NOW.

I showed this to one M.D. friend,* who said, simply, "Wow." (*Note: She is one of the few who qualifies as a "wellness"-prevention fanatic.)

I plan to make this a centerpiece of my work. "This"? I am not planning to "take on healthcare." I leave that to others. I am simply cherrypicking two issues : (1) Quality of acute "care" treatment. (I will put CARE in Quotes ... as in, Health"care" ... for the foreseeable future.) (2) A revolutionary shift from fix-it-after-its-broken to wellness-prevention-healing-care. (I will unmercifully "push" the Planetree/Plantree Alliance/Griffith Hospital "model" in the World of Patient-centered, Healing-oriented Acute Care; and the Canyon Ranch "model" in the World of Wellness.) Here's one more Summary Slide that summarizes my concerns-focus:

1. Hospital "quality control," at least in the U.S.A., is a bad, bad joke: Depending on whose stats you believe, hospitals kill 100,000 or so of us a year—and wound many times that number. Finally, "they" are "getting around to" dealing with the issue. Well, thanks. And what is it we've been buying for our Trillion or so bucks a year? The fix is eminently do-able ... which makes the condition even more intolerable. ("Disgrace" is far too kind a label for the "condition." Who's to blame? Just about everybody, starting with the docs who consider oversight from anyone other than fellow clan members to be unacceptable.)

2. The "system"—training, docs, insurance incentives, "culture," "patients" themselves—is hopelessly-mindlessly-insanely (as I see it) skewed toward fixing things (e.g. Me) that are broken—not preventing the problem in the first place and providing the Maintenance Tools necessary for a healthy lifestyle. Sure, bio-medicine will soon allow us to understand and deal with individual genetic pre-dispositions. (And hooray!) But take it from this 61-year old, decades of physical and psychological self-abuse can literally be reversed in relatively short order by an encompassing approach to life that can only be described as a "Passion for Wellness (and Well-being)." Patients—like me—are catching on in record numbers; but "the system" is highly resistant. (Again, the doctors are among the biggest sinners—no surprise, following years of acculturation as the "man-with-the-white-coat-who-will-now-miraculously-dispense-fix it-pills-for-you-the-unwashed." Come to think of it, maybe I'll start wearing a White Coat to my doctor's office—after all, I am the Professional-in-Charge when it comes to my Body & Soul. Right?)

I will have lots more to say on this topic ... count on it. I will report that I got my health"care" execs' attention when I repeatedly referred to their "places of work" as "the killing fields." Hey somebody's gotta say this, no?

Comments?

Step Out ... or Get Stepped On

Another Special Presentation/PP makes its debut today: "Step Out or Get Stepped On." The impetus is an excellent-provocative article in the current issue of Wired, by James Suroweicki, perhaps the most trenchant business observer on the scene today. His argument, in a nutshell: "[The decline of brands] doesn't mean that making a better gizmo no longer matters—offering genuinely innovative products is, more than ever, the best way to capture market share. But savvy consumers are no longer wiling to pay a high premium for an otherwise identical product because it has a fancy nameplate."

My short offering is a plea for Rampant Radicalism in Innovation. It brings together the viewpoints of some of my favorite people: Seth Godin, Doug Hall, Kevin Roberts, Steve Jobs, Rolf Jensen, Wayne Burkan, and the late Jerry Garcia! (Not to mention Thomas Jefferson ... whose "moonstruck mind" brought us the outrageously audacious Louisiana Purchase!)

Back to 2 min 38 seconds

Or how about this: The odds are exactly 50-50 that we will vote the President of the United States out of office, mostly for having been responsible for what detractors say are about 1,100 unnecessary deaths of military personnel in Iraq over the last 2 years. Hospitals unnecessarily kill that many every 2 days.

Event Slides: London Drugs

Tom is in Toronto, speaking to London Drugs. Download the slides here.

What Kind of Boss Are You?

Before joining the ranks of the self-employed, I spent about 25 years working for only four "bosses." All four expected excellence (and a lot of it), and all four got what they wanted from me. Numbers 2 and 3 were always right, condescending, and incapable of letting anyone else make decisions. I left each of them as soon as it was economically feasible to do so. Numbers 1 and 4 were respectful, appreciative, and smart enough to know they didn't know everything. I would have worked forever for either of them, had they not moved on to other things. Theodore Roosevelt summed it up nicely:

The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men [or women] to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

Certainly, this is nothing new to Tom Peters readers, just a reminder that leadership by intimidation and micro-management may seem to get the results you're looking for, but in the long run, the best people will leave you and look for someone who leads by inspiration and empowerment.