A Different New Year's Eve?!

One might presume that the horrors in SEAsia would cause us to revise our New Year's Resolutions. If ever a sense of Global Community is called for, it's now. And as we craft those Resolutions—that often focus no more deeply than on shedding the 2.9 pounds we put on over the Holidays—I would hope that Community, local and global, would be on and perhaps at the top of many of our lists. Go ahead, today, and volunteer to put your time in on the Community Center expansion drive this Winter! Frankly, it would be a marvelous tribute to the dead of SEAsia if 12.31.2004 was marked by a renewed commitment to Faith, Hope & Charity at home. Prayers are great, but let's go beyond the talk to ... Action! Now! Get High on Volunteer Activities in 2005! (And keep those disaster relief Donations rolling out, too!)

My best wishes for a Thoughtful, Caring, Community-centric and Action-besotted 2005!

More Opportunities to Give

CNN names more than 30 aid agencies that are taking donations for disaster victims. You can use this link to go to their list to find your charity of choice. Or the Red Cross donations page is here. We hope you'll make a contribution.

Unspeakable Tragedy: Lend A Hand!

The death toll from the Southeast Asian tsunami staggers the imagination. And, alas, more is surely to come. In addition to our prayers, I urge each of you to contribute to disaster relief. $$$$ do matter! FYI, I chose to send my initial donation to Doctors Without Borders (www.doctorswithoutborders.org).

Tom Goes Live on AOL Coaches!

Tom is working with Minneapolis-based Better Life Media. BLM in turn is working with AOL. The "product" launched ... TODAY! Go to Keyword "coaches" at AOL, and get Tom on Brand You, or John Gray and others in the BLM stable. This link will also take you there—non-members must sign up free.

Peace on Earth

The apparent Viktor Yushchenko victory at the polls in the Ukraine is a wonderful way to end Y2004! Let none of us ever take Democracy for granted! Let all of us make Participation in local (or more) Political Change a Resolution2005. Getting riled up once every 48 months is, simply, not Satisfactory Exercise of our Democratic Gift!

Musings in PowerPoint!

A couple of new Special Presentations, concocted while taking a "time out" from too much Christmas pudding. "New 'C-Levels'" is a suggestion about the sorts of "Chief" Officers we might have ... if we were truly intent upon achieving Dramatic Difference2005. This flowed from a conversation with Blog-queen Halley Suitt about designing entire Companies (and WebSites) around the explicit idea of Better/More Encompassing/More Exciting ... CONVERSATIONS. (Hence the Chief Conversations Officer in the attached.) The Second SP is titled "We Live In A 'Brand You' World"—a short riff about dealing with the BrandYou Reality. Msg2005: Long-Term Jobs ... GET OVER IT!

Lost Bags

I hope none of you were ensnared in the Comair-USAir fiascos! The story reminded me of a brief conversation with a United check-in employee at O'Hare on December 19. My transaction went just fine, but I commented on the generally long lines and obviously small # of UAL employees. Her response, "Yes, United is running an experiment called 'Fly the Airline with no employees.'" Uh huh.

Quote/s of the Day & for Y2005

"Take away that pudding—it has no theme!"—Churchill

May all of our puddings & projects have Technicolor themes in 2005!* (*Or why get out of bed?)

"If I had any epitaph that I would rather have more than any other, it would be to say that I had disturbed the sleep of my generation."—Adlai Stevenson

May all of our projects disturb the sleep of the establishment in 2005!* (*Or why get out of bed?)

"In classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, 'How well he spoke,' but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, they said, 'Let us march.'"—Adlai Stevenson

I vow that I will try my damnedest to be Demosthenes in 2005!* (*Or why get out of bed?)

Pursuit of 80 Degrees (F)!

Off to Kaua'i today/Monday ... for 10 days. Dial-up at about 14400bps ... plus a determination to truly take a vacation ... will doubtless limit Blogging. (First cut ... 209 "finalist" book candidates. Susan insists ... 10 max! Ouch.) (My North Shore cottage-shack is about 200 yards from a tall yellow tower with a giant siren on top ... mid-Pacific tsunami warning. Hope it stays silent!)

Peace On Earth ...

It's a little difficult to square the Christmas message of "peace on earth ..." and the body bags arriving from Mosul. Or is it? The rise of Christianity was, as is true with all innovations, spiritual or material, a reaction to a bankrupt & intolerable status quo. And then, a thousand or so years after the First Christmas, Martin Luther had had enough with what he saw as the corruption of the dominant church, posted his theses ... and launched the Protestant Reformation.

The masterwork of the great philosopher of science, Karl Popper, was titled Conjectures and Refutations. We create a hypothesis, test it, and if it stands up to scrutiny it supplants what came before. For a while! There is no definitive "last word," but merely today's best effort. In short, to paraphrase the political scientist Charles Lindbloom, whose work I assiduously studied three decades ago, man "muddles through"—in war, peace, religion, economics, management, a career.

Iraq may eventually be judged a disaster. Or it may in fact have begun a Middle Eastern march to democracy and modernity. We don't know. For heaven's sake, I spent Christmas 1966 and Christmas 1967 in Vietnam; nearly 40 years later, I'm still not sure whether or not that war was necessary!

Yes, we muddle through. But that's not as bad as it sounds. The idea: We do indeed try our damnedest ... to create a safer and more liberated world, a less corrupt version of the spiritual life (the Reformation). And at Christmas and during this "holiday season," and despite grotesque commercialization, most of us pause and spend more than the usual amount of time appreciating friends and relatives. Take the company Christmas lunch. Sure, it is often a boozy affair, a little short on conventional "spirituality," but it is also a rare opportunity to relax and joke with colleagues, to swap stories about what your kids and their kids are up to ... that is, to pause and for a moment be quintessentially human.

Consider me. I had a lovely day yesterday amidst the hustle and bustle (and honking horns) of little Manchester, VT. Sure, the lines in various stores were "annoyingly long" ... or were they? In the course of a 4-hour shop, and many a line wait, the highlights were clearly not the gifts I was purchasing. The highlights, the true gifts, were the dozen or more conversations with pals and acquaintances I rarely see. In fact, I'm going on a mostly unnecessary shop today ... mostly on the off chance of a few more conversations. That's perhaps the deepest meaning of the Season.

Speaking of Conversations ...

Conversations (and A New Year's Resolution)

Don't want to be maudlin on Christmas Eve, but for me (yes, I've said it before) this will be the Year of the Blog. The Community we have at this site means a lot to me. Moreover (and how Cool!), we've only begun! I've decided—the NYResolution bit— to keep on Re-imagining Tom Peters and the Tom Peters Network:

I imagine ... a truly Web-centric TPN. (Tom Peters Network.)
I imagine ... wildly expanded Communities of Interest.
I imagine ... a Wild & Heated series of Conversations led by our Coolest of Cool Friends, many of whom gathered in VT a couple of weeks ago.
I imagine ... a Wild & Determined Commitment to "Re-imagining" on the part of our Community.
I imagine ... a full-fledged Network of Re-imagineers ... devoted to Radical Renovations of our careers, schools, hospitals, businesses, agencies.
I imagine .. TPN becoming the Hub of Excitement for Brand You Nation!
I imagine ... Tool Kits for Radicals, from Individual Contributor to CEO, to spur on the Necessary Revolutions required by so many of our organizations in 2005 and beyond.
I imagine ... Real & Virtual Salons on any topic ... as long as the Conversation is Radical & a bit Unhinged.
I imagine ... becoming Grand Central Station for the most interesting & Influential & Mind-stretching ideas in the World of New Management.
I imagine ... much, much more ... things that I'm not currently capable of imagining!

Are you up for it? (I hope so, for I've already begun discussions about operationalizing my Dream.)

Speaking My Mind

As a Rumsfeld supporter, I Blogged a couple of days ago that the machine-signing bit has led me to say, "Enough." Most agreed. Some didn't.

I love dissent, this topic included. In fact, I live for dissent. But that does not preclude me from responding. I'll bet my last Christmas present that those who think the machine-signing story is a tempest in a teapot either (1) never were on active duty in the Military or (2) surely were never in Combat. As I said above in an entirely different context, I was in I Corps Vietnam for two Christmases. And if I'd run over a mine and been sent home in a body bag ... I'd have been appalled in the Afterlife if then SecDef McNamara had sent my parents a machine-signed letter. No letter is fine! A Fake letter is the Ultimate Profanity! (Hey, I drafted a couple of my Commanding Officer's letters to families—which he tore up and made ever so deeply personal. My CO was a busy guy, and I observed him spending days on those handwritten missives.)

I think it was Napoleon who instituted the idea, a central tenet to this day, that one risks lives to retrieve the dead bodies of one's valorous mates. We sailors & soldiers expect no less. Honoring those who have fallen is arguably the most important contributor to the morale & integrity of a fighting force. It tells the living, "When my number is up, I will have been seen to have mattered." Shame on Rumsfeld! (That's all I'll say.) (And, hey, this is an apt part of a Christmas message—after all, religion is ultimately about the sanctity of the human spirit.)

Merry Christmas!

Badvertising: El Pais of Spain

El Pais, the largest circulation newspaper in Spain, wanted to promote three free months of access to elpais.com. This ad, which shows before and after pictures of the New York skyline labeled "NYC, 11-Sept-01" and "NYC, 12-Sept-01" respectively, (with the obvious difference being the missing towers in the second picture) was emailed to 50,000 people. It carries a headline which (translated) reads: "A lot can happen in a day. Imagine what can happen in three months."

'nuff said.

Have a ??!!! Christmas!

How did our friends at TPC!UK celebrate the season? With a tacky Christmas contest. See the finalists here. And your vote?

Capitol Wrap

Last act before boarding Acela at Union Station D.C. for Boston & Home & Christmas. Stop in Lids. Pick up a hot-off-the-Chinese-loom Washington Nationals baseball cap ... and wear it to Beantown. After a several decade drought, feels good to be back in a Washington BBall cap! Go Nats! (Hope it works out.)

Four Books

The Fred Factor. Mark Sanborn's book is a gem. It's easy to dismiss as another entry in the Endless BizLit Simplistic Derby. But it struck me as Short & Clear & To The Point & about The Right Point. Fred is a real guy, not another Parablized, Cheeze Movin' Man (or Beast). He's Fred-the-Postman, who, simply, makes his Work Matter to his Clients (folks, like the author, on his postal route).

I'm sure it's been said before, doubtless a jillion times. But I loved the following, from author Sanborn, reflecting on Fred-the-Postman: "Nobody can prevent you from choosing to be exceptional."

Is there more to life than that? I don't think so.* (*As I recall, psychologist Victor Frankl said about the same thing concerning Hitler's concentration camps. "They," even the SS, cannot steal your ability to choose the attitude with which you will address the day.)

History of Beauty. This Rizzoli masterpiece is edited by Umberto Eco (the Name of the Rose author). I have bought 5 copies so far to give as Christmas offerings to professional pals. I have just begun to read it, but will audaciously recommend it, based upon my hasty sampling. I, among an increasing number of others, have claimed that an Aesthetic Sensibility is the key to hard-nosed economic success in an insanely crowded marketspace, from Target & Samsung to IBM & Infosys & UPS. If beauty writ large-ubiquitous matters most, then it may pay to examine the way we humans have considered beauty over the last 25 centuries or so—which is exactly what Mr Eco does. I may renege on this, but I'm thinking of making History of Beauty the only book I take next week to Kaua'i; I love the idea of rejuvenation by total immersion in this primal train of thought.

Oscar Wilde's Wit & Wisdom. I picked this up for $1.50 on Bridge Street Books' curbside discount table. I'm sure I already own several copies of the same book—no matter, a dose of Wilde is always a good tonic. Here's my fave quote (which sounds like it came from The Fred Factor): "To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

Yikes.

Old Boys. Author Charles McCarry has been silent for a long time, but this master of thrillers is back. What a book! A couple of dust-jacket quotes: "Ranks up there with le Carre in a select class of two."—Daily Mail. "The absolute best thriller writer alive."—P.J. O'Rourke. My wife is begging me to race through the book—and hand it over. But it's so well written that I like reading just a few pages at a time and savoring the experience.

100 Ways to Succeed #37:

To Live Is the Rarest Thing in the World

"Nobody can prevent you from choosing to be exceptional."—Mark Sanborn, The Fred Factor

Call this Success Tip #37, and NYResolution2005 #1.
Okay?

(Hint: I have tried using this as a Right Breathing Mantra: NOBODY CAN PREVENT ME FROM BEING EXCEPTIONAL. It works wonderfully.*) (*And is still worth repeating at age 62.)

You Asked For It

Readers requested that we post an accumulation of Tom's blogs for downloading. The first BigBlog is now available in Microsoft Word format. The current file contains all of Tom's (and only Tom's) posts from July 27 through December 16 and will be updated periodically.

The Word document doesn't contain the links and images you find on the website, but if you see a post that interests you, you can find the html version in the Blog Archives.

Look for future BigBlogs in the right-hand column of this page under "Files to Download." We know it's not perfect, but hope it gives you an easy-to-read, printable, searchable source for reviewing Tom's posts. Let us know if this is helpful.

Sure-Fire Employment Test

Trying to evaluate a potential new hire? Here's a great test: Arrange for them to work for a day—a particularly slow day—at a place like Best Buy or a hotel check-in desk. Make sure that there are ropes set up to control long lines—you know, the kind that corral the crowd and make customers walk back and forth many times before making it to the counter. Remember: Be sure to choose a slow day.

Now, station yourself at a place where you can surreptitiously observe your prospective new hire. Watch him as he watches the occasional customer walk back and forth through the empty labyrinth, following the course of a long line even though there is no line and no other customers. What does your potential new employee do as he watches customers take these extra steps? Does he do nothing? Does he assume that "the powers that be" (I hate that term) have decided the ropes are necessary, even on slow days? Or, does your future star worker take the initiative to undo the ropes and let customers walk right in?

The formula is simple: If he does nothing, don't hire him. If he takes the initiative to change the configuration of the ropes, hire him.

The other day an America West airport gate agent—standing in front of an empty counter with no other customers in sight—saw me duck under the ropes, carrying a large portion of my family's luggage, to avoid walking the empty maze. She, in a very friendly way, said, "Cheater." I smiled, but thought to myself, "You should be ashamed of yourself. Do you consider yourself so unimportant or helpless that you can't imagine that it is within your power to walk ten feet and rearrange these ropes, making the customer's path more sensible? Do you think yourself to be so unaware and undiscerning that you won't be able to notice when, an hour from now, things get busy and you have to put the ropes back up to control a line?"

If a company was great at marketing, its employees would instinctively move the ropes.

Cheers to Susan!

My wife's favorite day of the year is the one following the shortest day. At 7:42 a.m. this morning, the days began to lengthen! I feel warmer already!

More D.C. Plaudits

Looks like Baseball will return to D.C. Hooray! My first favorite hometown team was the old Washington Senators. (The Orioles were still Bill Veeck's St Louis Browns.) My first Major League ballgame was at Griffith Stadium—and I routinely wear for summer barbequing my replica Senators #3 jersey, the uniform of my first BBall hero, 1st baseman Mickey Vernon. (Now you know.)

And then there's my favorite bookstore in the U.S.A. It's the tiny, eclectic Bridge Street Books in Georgetown. I arrange my trips to make sure I can work in a Bridge Street stop. As usual, I wasn't disappointed today—and picked up some unusual books to top up my Christmas shopping. Incidentally, their specialties are politics (no surprise), baseball, and crime—after all, what else is there to life?

Cool Christmas Find

I love Christmas music. Got a great new CD: Mediaeval Babes, "Mistletoe & Wine," far more traditional than the title sounds. Doesn't displace King's College Choir/"O Come All Ye Faithful," but wonderful nonetheless. BTW, are there any Roches Christmas music fans out there?

Alas, Enough!

I have staunchly & consistently defended Don Rumsfeld, because of my abiding belief that his radical overhaul of DOD was long overdue. I still believe that, but I am appalled by the latest flap—his machine signatures of family condolence letters. Thanks, Mr Secretary, for delivering your strong medicine—but how about headin' home.

Biz2004

My picks as 2004's top business stories:

China I. China's been coming on for a decade or so; arguably this will be seen as the year China ... ARRIVED. Hint: The World damn near has a second Superpower. China is manufacturing everything. China is exercising its trade muscle in Asia. China is moving rapidly up the value-added chain, investing like crazy in research, buying into branding. Etc. Etc. And: More to come. Much more!

China II. As I traveled the world, everyone (the Irish, Thais, Singaporeans, Danes, Swedes, Italians, etc.) have figured they can't meet or beat China on cost—all are looking for ways to move up the value-added spectrum. My "American message" played as well in Dublin and Singapore as in Chicago and Houston.

Infosys. I call this story "Infosys," rather than India, because for me the rise of this stellar firm signifies the growing aspirations of the likes of India in the world economy. Infosys gleefully takes on all comers at the top of the VA chain.

Outsourcing. The heat around outsourcing cooled a bit post-election, and in fact the #s were always overblown, Lou Dobbs' rants notwithstanding. Nonetheless, the hue and cry over outsourcing has enormous symbolic impact. Message: No American job is safe. The Brand You-Free Agent attitude is no longer an option. Let's hope, in the public sector, that the "ownership society" idea is not stillborn—because some version thereof is necessary to support a far more independent workforce.

Google! The recent story of Google's overture-deal with Oxford et al. defines a new era in information ubiquity-availability. Corporate transparency may still be more wish than reality, but Planetary Transparency is well on its way; if you don't believe me, just ask Dan Rather!

Eliot Spitzer & Martha Stewart & Fannie Mae. Alas, corporate malfeasance is still not a thing of the past. While many complain of the heavy hand of Sarbanes-Oxley and the political aspirations of AG Spitzer, executive housecleaning still appears far from complete.

Richard Florida vs John Ashcroft. We need a solid Homeland defense. And we need to continue to welcome brains-by-the-bushel to our shores ... and be a Welcoming Society in general. The tension will not be easy to resolve—the stakes on both sides of our table are very high.

George Bush. The Economy hasn't been Mr Bush's top priority. By some measures (the mess in Iraq, the continuing terror threat), that's still necessarily the case. Moreover, the dollar's slide (tumble!), the twin (trade & budget) deficits, and creeping lame-duck status effectively tie the President's hands. All that aside, our ultimate defense against global instability of any & all flavors is unequivocally a matchless economy. Let's pray for strong & responsible presidential leadership.

Big Pharma Implosion. First Merck, now Pfizer. A ton of consolidations among Big Pharma have made them more vulnerable, not less. The Era of Life Sciences is dawning, and the Big Guys are looking more dinosaur-ish with every passing day. By the by, while safe drugs are imperative, the dawn of the life sciences age is precisely the wrong time for the Congress & FDA to wrench drug approval to a halt.

Creative Destruction. Capitalism's primary calling card (esp the American Flavor) was/is/will be "built to flip" (churn!), not "built to last." Big Pharma imploding! Kmart buys Sears ... and nobody cares! IPOs healthy again! BioTech rising! Cheer on the mess! Churn rules!

Design recognized. Think Samsung. Think DHL. And, of course, think iPod. Design has long been the secret weapon of the likes of Nike & Sony & Apple & Starbucks—but finally the world-at-large is catching on. High time!

Christmas Highlights from the Nation's Capitol!

Yup, I got a kick last week out of the festive feel on the streets of Chicago. And last night, I was spellbound by Union Station in Washington D.C. Decided to avoid the airports ... and Acela'd it Sunday afternoon from Boston to D.C. to see my Mom. That meant arriving at Union Station about 6pm. The Grand Old Lady looked Glorious in her Christmas Splendor. And I still get a chill out of reaching the front of the imposing edifice ... and spying the Capitol, glowing yesterday in the snow, framed by the entrance archway to the Station.

Just Keep 'Em Away From Me!

House & Garden (January 2005) devotes an entire issue to "The New Tastemakers: 50 For The Future Of Design."

Uhmmmm ....

70% are ... Men.
(How stupid??? This is about ... the home, no??? Men are irrelevant, the stats show, right??? Am I missing something???)

90% of the Ms, or Fs for that matter, I'd not let within miles of my house. H & G seems to be catering to some Client with whom I find it impossible to identify (or, probably, even like)—but then I actually, I'm gonna say it out loud, prefer to ... GET COMFORTABLE & COZY... in the place/s I live; you know, put on Sweats, or even Pajamas, early in the evening before settling in for West Wing or Sopranos or Seinfeld reruns—I never imagine for a moment that the Editor of Vogue (or House & Garden) might "drop in" ... at least I hope not.

What are they thinking about?

The Difference Is Profound I

I love the writer Anita Shreve. (Most women are surprised by this fact.) Just finished her magnificent The Weight of Water. No one else—and certainly no male—deals so lucidly or movingly, or consistently in such depth, with the painful tangle of what's called human relations. Simple fact: Women appreciate complex human relationships. Men are clueless.

Implication (I've said this before, but Shreve reminded me all over again): Men cannot "get" women. Period. Thence ...

MEN CANNOT DESIGN PRODUCTS-EXPERIENCES FOR WOMEN. PERIOD.

MEN WHO DISAGREE WITH THIS ARE DELUSIONAL. PERIOD.

Men approach & deal with the world in a Linear way. No twists. No turns. Little reflection, little attachment. Get the facts. Act. Move on. Let the chips fall where they may.

Women see bends and twists and reversals in every path that involves the interplay of humans. Women appreciate & live for those bends and switchbacks; they are the essence of the human experience on earth.

Implications for every aspect of business? Profound. (Don't tell House & Garden—see above.)

The Difference Is Profound II

Been studying the M-F thing for close to a Decade. Reading Anita Shreve (see immediately above) revived my awareness that my professional language-approach, the words I use, the stories I tell, my pace, my mannerisms ... are in a Foreign Language for women. A thousand subtleties (not so subtleties!) of my language-approach-posture-tonality-etc. are ... All Male. (No matter how aware ... intellectually ... I am of differences. And I am Very Aware ... intellectually.) I am in fact fascinated at how incredibly little progress I've made ... or am capable of making.

And just think of how backwards the ones are who have not gone through my self-inflicted, decade-long "Awareness 101" tutorial.

I don't even understand how Ms and Fs get through the days together at work or at home. Well, I guess on second thought ... we often-usually don't.

Business implications: Again ... PROFOUND.

100 Ways to Succeed #36:

Do Your Part, Boys!

Males: TAKE PLEDGE2005!

I PLEDGE ... THAT I WILL NEVER ENGAGE IN ANY SORT OF DISCUSSION OF PRODUCTS-SERVICES-EXPERIENCES THAT INCLUDE WOMEN AS CUSTOMERS-CLIENTS, UNLESS ONE THIRD OR MORE OF THOSE PRESENT AND IN POSITIONS OF AUTHORITY ARE WOMEN. IN SUCH SETTINGS, I PLEDGE ... THAT I WILL WORK TIRELESSLY TO ENSURE THAT WOMEN'S VIEWS ARE HEARD FIRST & LAST AND ARE CLEARLY INCORPORATED IN A COMMANDING WAY IN ACTION PLANS. I PLEDGE ... THAT I WILL NOT SIGN OFF ON AN INITIATIVE AIMED PRIMARILY AT WOMEN UNLESS WOMEN ARE ALMOST UNANIMOUSLY IN AGREEMENT. I FURTHER PLEDGE ... THAT I WILL BECOME A "PIONEER" IN GETTING WOMEN-CENTRIC VIEWS CLEARLY INTO THE MAINSTREAM.

Any takers?

Thesaurus of WOW!

"They" hate it if you call them "bankers." "They" love it, on the other hand, when you ask to see their #s—stupendous. "They" are ... Commerce Bank. These absurdly fast growing, insanely profitable "retailers," rewriting the rules of East Coast retail banking, sent me a copy of their booklet, "Traditions." It explicates their "Wow the Customer Philosophy." At the end there's "A Collection of Commerce Lingo." I won't define (use your imagination), but simply offer a small sample: "Fans, Not Customers." "Say YES ... 1 to say YES, 2 to say NO." (A staffer has to get a supervisor's approval to say "no" to anything.) "Recover!!! To Err Is Human; To Recover Is Devine." "Leave 'Em Speechless." "Positive Behavior." "Positive Language." "Kill A Stupid Rule." (Get cash rewards for exposing dumb internal rules "that impede our ability to WOW!") Make the 'WOW! Answer Guide' Your Best Friend." "Buzz Bee." "CommerceWOW!Zone." (A K-12 financial education program.) "Doctor WOW!" "Ten-Minute Principle." ("Stores" open 10 minutes before posted hours, stay open 10 minutes after posted hours—and the hours, such as open 7 days a week, are already incredibly generous & tradition-shattering.) "Wall of WOW!" "WOW! Awards." (The annual recognition ceremony—Radio City Music Hall, with the Rockettes, in '05.) "WOW! Patrol." "WOW! Spotlight." "WOW Van." "WOW Wiz." (A service superstar.) Etc.

Not your father's bank! Or yours (or mine), for that matter. In a word ... WOW!

NB: Commerce's market cap, via organic growth, has grown at a compound annual rate of 48% from 1993 through 2003. Moving beyond New Jersey, the bank (current assets: $30 billion) will stretch from Boston to Metro D.C.-MD-VA by 2009.

I Reiterate ...

Reminders: (1) I did some rereading on my 6-hour train trip from Boston to D.C. I re-read The Wisdom of Crowds. I've Blogged it 3 or 4 times already, most recently in my MVP2004 screed. Anybody out there listening ... or reading? Consequences for every project we undertake are enormous. Author Jim Surowiecki at one point quotes Wharton prof J Scott Armstrong, on predictions of outcomes: "I could find no studies that showed an important advantage for expertise. Expertise and accuracy are unrelated." "Experts" included docs, psychotherapists, stockpickers, market researchers and their-our ilk. Do I have your attention?

(2) I also reread Atul Gawande's "The Bell Curve," the amazing 12.06.04 New Yorker article on variations in medical outcomes that I blogged before. Not only does Dr Gawande argue for outcome measurement and results transparency, but he observes that "best practices" are far from an adequate explanation for the frequently hundredfold differences he found in results even among "top" programs. Consider: "We are used to thinking that a doctor's ability depends mainly on science and skill. The lesson from Minneapolis [Fairfield-University Hospital cystic-fibrosis center] are that these may be the easiest parts of care. Even doctors with great knowledge and technical skill can have mediocre results; more nebulous factors like aggressiveness and consistency and ingenuity can matter enormously." I carry around my already dog-eared copy of Gawande's article as a Totem; it keeps me focused on my Healthcare Results passion, and my more general concerns about what makes for excellent professional practice.

(3) I'd like to see some more comments on my 12.17 Post, "Real Estate Joins 'Club Crushing Competition'! Big Time!" I think it's important ... and applies to most all of us. To underscore the importance I refer you to a new Special Presentation, just posted: "The 'PSF' 33: Thirty-Three Professional Service Firm Marks of Surpassing Distinction." I think almost all of us work these days in "professional services." I further think that "good work" is nowhere near an adequate survival ticket. Yearend2004 seminars for three groups—lawyers, investment bankers, realtors—redoubled my commitment to this topic.

Badvertising: Inflight Eyeball Capturing

America West Flight #6—Chicago to Phoenix. Altitude: 300 feet and climbing. I bring my tray table down and see a picture of a handsome, rugged guy in a workshirt, and realize that I'm looking at a Woolrich ad. I'm in seat D. I look across the aisle to my wife in seat C and see a Kenneth Cole ad. Next to her my daughter has Shick Quattro, and by the window by twelve-year old son's tray table has a Jhane Barnes ad. (Great targeting)

I can imagine the pitch the ad agencies made to their clients about this one: "You've got a captive audience." "We can capture millions of eyeballs." "Potential customers can't help but look at your ads—they'll even be able to see your logo through their Sprite!." "Think of all of the impressions you'll get on a three hour flight."

So what?

Marketing is not about jumping in front of your customers and shouting, "Hey, look at me!" But the marketing world is drunk with the idea that interrupting customers is the key to winning their love and loyalty.

Imagine if you were a sixteen-year-old boy, and you decided your best strategy for winning the affection of a girl in your sophomore class would be to lurk around corners so you could pop into her field of vision as she walked by. Would it work? NO! So why should it work with marketing?

LOVE!

I love Chicago!

LOVE!

Almost instant MVP material! The positive attitude of all staff at Borders on the Magnificent Mile/Michigan Ave was a huge ... WOW!

"Good to ... Ouch!"

Basics run to Walgreens on Michigan Ave/Chicago. A "good to great" company. Could they be the world's worst merchandisers? Could well be. Looks like someone used a Giant Shot Gun to fire goods randomly around the store. (Looks this way all the time, not just holiday season.)

40 Winks

I'd like to get a good night's sleep. But the Terror Threat makes that tough. Mr Bush has a legacy to craft. It will be around the War on Terror (yes, damn it, it is a War) and the commitment to Homeland Security. I want his Legacy to be Churchillian. Which means we need ... politics aside ... a Dream Team in intelligence, defense, and homeland security. Of the three, Defense is in the best shape, Rummy's miscalculations notwithstanding. The man has caused a revolution in military thinking, as I see it. Intelligence and Homeland Security are different kettles of fish.

So here's my Dream Team. As I blogged several days ago I almost desperately want former IBM chief Lou Gerstner as the new intelligence czar. (The enabling legislation was signed into law today.) Smart. Tough. Independent. A bureaucracy buster. At Defense, I'd send Rummy packing and beg John McCain to take over. He is savvy—and would deeply appeal to the troops.

But in these post-BernieK days, I've mostly been thinking about DHS. Here's my surprise pick: Robert Rubin. He's made his political bones as Treasury chief; he's up to it. He's instinctively bi-partisan. He's urban (read New York) in his prejudices, a good thing when it comes to homeland security—face it, my beloved Vermont is not a target. He's independent like Gerstner and McCain. (Not a "yes man" bone among the three.) And, above all, he knows his probabilities—thanks to a Big Brain and superlative Wall Street training. And I've decided we need, to build a lasting DHS, a human calculator who will measure and debate the odds of various nightmare scenarios and apply resources accordingly. Mr Ridge may have done a decent (too decent?) job of calming us down, but he did damn all to create a Revolutionary Organization—which I believe DHS must be if I'm to ever sleep soundly again!

Truth is, when I imagine a Gerstner-McCain-Rubin team, I go as weak in the knees as when thinking about that first, basketball Dream Team. What a trio! My "sixth man," as they say in basketball (fourth in this case), is Giuliani—again, the words "tough," "smart" and "independent" come to mind.

How do you like my team? And my reasoning? Do you agree that we need—like Churchill's cabinet in WWII—above all strong-willed, brilliant, tough leaders in all these slots? I salivate on behalf of President Bush over this Quartet; I think he would dramatically up the odds of leaving a Rushmorean Legacy behind if he truly played the "War President" role and went in a direction like this.

Real Estate Joins Club Crushing Competition! Big Time!

Upon being questioned by a member of the audience concerning slipping commissions, I drew a rueful laugh when I snippily retorted, "Get over it." I added, "Be thankful for how long your Monopoly lasted, and when you do hold your Weeping Party, don't invite Stockbrokers—their fee structure means they can hardly afford Cab Fare to your whinging party, so the sympathy will doubtless be in short supply."

Truth is, I had a ball during my 90th and Last seminar of the year—to the Very Progressive ... Houston Association of Realtors. Texans are fun to be around to begin with, and I as usual got a great kick out of dealing with yet another Profession coming ... Under Direct Siege. After years of an almost guaranteed 6% commission ... The Web Has Arrived. I spent hours patrolling the likes of LendingTree.com, ZipRealty.com, ServiceMagic.com, HomeLoanCenter.com, HouseValues.com, forsalebyowner.com and homedepot.com. The array of online services, advisory to turnkey, is staggering ... and growing daily-exponentially. (And attracting aggressive players like Barry Diller and Cendant.)

Some 70% of prospective RE residential purchasers now start their search for home & agent on the Web; those who so utilize the Web spend on average 1.9 weeks with a live Realtor, vs 7.1 weeks for the non-Webbies. Realtors pay 25% or so—a Big Deal—of their fee for on-line generated leads from 3rd-party providers, and commissions in general are more like 4.5% than 6% these days and headed for the Rio Grande. Talk about trauma-for-traditionalists! (The industry, including Houston, sports a, shall we say, sizeable share of Gray Hairs.)

The Houston Association of Realtors, typically considered best-in-breed nationally, has its own brilliant & aggressive & high-investment Web site, HAR.com. Unlike many of its sister associations, HAR is urging members to progressively live with and take advantage of the changes; other associations are following the futile "genie-back-in-the-bottle" approach, and frequently using their formidable local political clout to shut down public-listing sites in their locales. Talk about baying at the moon! Eventually, the courts will stop the silliness, but not before the Luddites lose another few years playing defense.

My Tom-message was fourfold: (1) The Web is here to stay/You ain't seen nothin' yet. (2) Make the Web and the New Services your allies & partners, make them work for you, not vice versa. (3) The old commission structure is DOA—get on with life. (4) Respond to competition by Leaping Up the Value-added Chain ... and offering Irresistible Experiences of the Cirque du Soleil variety.

As some of you know, I just returned from England where I participated with Saatchi's Kevin Roberts in a Microsoft Webinar on KR's powerful-profound Lovemarks idea. I hawked it like crazy yesterday, as I did with Lawyers a few weeks ago. I demanded (Can a consultant "demand" anything?) that my Newfound Houston Realtor Pals begin 2005 by responding to my 2 questions: (1) WHAT'S THE "DREAM" THAT YOU OFFER? (2) How do you become a ... LOVEMARK?

I insisted I was not "talking at" my Clients, but "with" them. Hey, I, too, am caught in exactly the same pincer movement: (1) On the high end, the "guru market" supply-side is outpacing the demand-side. (A recent Variety story claimed there are 150 speakers priced at or above $40,000 a pop—up from 1 when I effectively invented the "guru industry" 20 or so years ago.) On the other/lower end of the-my market-spectrum, eLearning is eclipsing classroom training at an extraordinary rate. All fine with me! I well know that I must work night & day—including this Blogging—on my Lovemark!

Welcome to 2005, Realtors. (And Lawyers.) (And "management gurus.") (And just about everybody, including the hundreds of thousands in the "I've Been Outsourced2005 Ranks.")

Come in, Houston!
Message:
Think/Obsess "Offense."
Become a Lovemark!

NB: Houston/HAR, thanks for making my Grand Finale2004 a Peak Experience! And being such gracious Hosts!

NB2: For those interested in this market, see the Wall Street Journal (12.06.2004) piece "It Will Still Take Time, But Net Is Modernizing Home Buying, Selling."

100 Ways to Succeed #35:

Lovemark or Bust!

(1) Enjoy your Holiday Season!
(2) Between now and 1JAN2005, invent 10 actions, solo or with pals, to Launch Your "Lovemark Journey2005."
(3) Focus directly—Architect or Lawyer or Realtor—on the following "KRWs"/Kevin Roberts Words: Mystery ... Magic ... Sensuality ... Enchantment ... Intimacy ... Exploration.
(3A) The words in #3 above Do Apply to You!
(4) Develop a "No Bull" Action Schedule that includes 2 Hard First Steps by 10JAN05, 5 Hard First Steps by 01FEB05.
(5) Report back to this Website, tompeters.com.

Pronunciamento: I HEREBY DESIGNATE, IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE POWERS GRANTED TO ME (the Inalienable Right To Blog) THAT 2005 IS PROCLAIMED AS "THE YEAR OF THE PROFESSIONAL SERVICE LOVEMARK."

Welcome aboard!

NB: Can we start a Continuing Dialogue around ... Becoming A Lovemark?

Alas ...

Nope! No "bad service" airline stories from me! My attitude is one of ... sadness. Fly IAH to ORD via DFW last night on American. (I'm a 2-million mile guy, Member of the Admirals Club since 1977.) Houston: PA system out at gate, a problem as we were both overbooked and subject to a "mechanical." Eventually arrive in Chicago (hey, I really didn't expect—or need—a snack of any sort on the combined 3-hour, $800 flight); no one at the ORD jetway at 11PM ... we wait about 15 minutes. My bags arrived, thankfully—as I was next to the lost baggage line, about 40 deep, with 1 employee painstakingly processing claims, at 1130PM.

It's Catch23! (One worse than Catch22.) To deal with horrific losses, AA and the Other Decrepits are all very short staffed ... hopefully not extending to Mechanics! (Don't want to go there.) I am totally unemotional about the non-existent service; it's simply pure sadness watching the Pleasure of Flight, which stayed with me for decades, deteriorate to something reminding me more and more every day of my traveling youth on Greyhound and Trailways. The equivalence, other than price, is eerie. One wee implication, not good for the airlines: I'll take Acela from Boston to Washington to Boston for my Christmas visit to my Mom in Annapolis this Sunday. (I'd take Southwest, but the SWA lines, esp security, at BWI must come close to worst-in-nation.) Hmmm. I used to love Hitchhiking up and down the East Coast; am I too old for that?

Norwegian Blues ...

This, from thewashingtonpost.com's Al Kamen: "A spokesman for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency denied that the test was a failure. It was just not completed, sort of like Monty Python's dead parrot, the famous Norwegian Blue, which we all know wasn't really dead but merely 'kippin' [napping] on its back."

Success Tips Collected

Okay, this is not perfect, but Erik asked if you wanted it, and many said "yes," so here it is. A compilation of the first 25 of Tom's Success Tips. We did not fix it, so there are many places where Tom refers to the post immediately above or below, and, since the entries have been taken out of order, those bits are not true. One day we'll polish it up and put it out in final form, but right now we just want you to have it. Success Tips 1-25 as a pdf. This is linked permanently from the column on the right of this page, too, to allow you to find the link after this post sinks out of sight in our blog.

Manchester Summit!

We had a Blast! I had a Blast! What an Incredible Group! My head is spinning ... alas, spinning toward England, now back from England. (With a quick Kevin Roberts/Saatchi/Lovemarks stop in-between.) I haven't had time to process it all. For the best notes so far, go to Jack Covert's 1800ceoread.com/blog.

More later.

[The slides are available from the links below.—CM]

Manchester Summit, Sunday
Manchester Summit, Martha Barletta's slides [PDF format]
Manchester Summit, David Wolfe's slides
Manchester Summit Credo, Manchester Center, VT

MVP2004

For 10 years I wrote a syndicated column, with the Chicago Tribune as my flagship paper. My favorite annual column was my yearend "MVP" awards. Blogging now presents the same opportunity. So ... here goes:

MVP/Biz. Cirque du Soleil takes this one. "The product" of course defines WOW! and "experience." But most everything else tops the charts as well—from huge R&D investments to mastery at strategic alliances (in the likes of Las Vegas) and damn sound financials.

Runners up: Another Canadian entry, British Columbia-based London Drugs, is my retail pick. Incredible distribution, superb design-merchandising, a brilliantly trained staff and "go for it" top management are all part of a very pretty picture.

Financial services get three honorable mentions, all fit for the #1 slot: An amazing group of Washington DC-area investment bankers, FBR/Friedman Billings Ramsey, have a Unique Selling Proposition in a me-too world, an entrepreneurial-unconventional staff—and the pleasure of being hundreds of miles from New York. NJ's Commerce Bank is eating up the East Coast with Cirque du Soleil-level "experience" provision in retail banking—all sung to their favorite tune of "WOW!" (Oh yes, and numbers to die for!) Progressive insurance CEO Peter Lewis almost attained a dead heat with George Soros in the political donations race. He backed a loser, it turns out ... but most everything else came up roses for Lewis and Progressive. A terrific talent pool, a bias for action, and IS-IT driven fanaticism for speed are among star traits.

The fifth and last runner-up slot goes to South Bend's Memorial Hospital & Health System; while I've ranted and raged about acute-care centers, Memorial is inventive & caring & very quality conscious. Hats off to CEO Phil Newbold and his stellar team!

MVP/Chief. Co-winners here. From education, Dennis Littky, boss of Big Picture schools and creator of Providence RI's Met school. This is education as it might be! Kids at Big Picture's 24 public high schools, from disadvantaged neighborhoods, are deeply engaged in sophisticated projects of their own making—and the anchor school in RI has, no bull, a 100% college acceptance rate among the 75% of kids who apply; moreover, almost all stay the advanced-education course.

The co-recipient is Narayana Murthy, founder and Chairman of India's peerless IS superstar ... Infosys. Infosys is growing like topsy, competing effectively against the IBMs and Accentures ... and Murthy's vision is no less than that of global architect of game-changing industry transformations. Once more: WOW!

Perpetual honorable mention: Richard Branson. Now he's off to outer space! If this be business, I'm all for it!

MVP/CIO. Hats off to Dave Holland of Genesys Regional Medical Center. No set of CIOs are more important than those in healthcare. They can save more lives than docs! Dave is! (Though he's the first to acknowledge he's only scratched the surface. Hey, keep on scratchin' Dave!)

MVP/Winning "Experience." The opened envelope reveals the winner as Maxine Clark's Build-A-Bear. The company, which just successfully went public, provides scintillating experiences for kids by the tens of thousands. Maxine's Build-A-Bear Website is also a/the Top Pick in my book (or, rather, Blog).

MVP/BigIdea. Ideas move mountains, especially in turbulent times. And my kudo for 2004 goes in a flash to Lovemarks, the product of the fertile-iconoclast mind of Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide. Roberts argues vociferously ... and with a ton of data to support him ... that traditional branding practices have become stultified. What's needed are customer love affairs, iPod or Harley style. Roberts lays out his grand scheme for Mystery, Magic, Sensuality, and the like in his gloriously designed book ... Lovemarks.

MVP/TransformationalTool. What else ... Blogging! It's changed my life in 2004. Not to mention Howard Dean's! The Dean campaign, though ultimately unsuccessful, clearly altered politics forever, and in a fundamental way. "Only Connect!"/"Conversation Rules!" is/are the rallying cries in most every sphere of life ... courtesy Bloggers of every description.

MVP/Department-of-I-Told-You-So! eBay. Amazon. Google. Et al. The Web Rules! We champions-from-the-90s-of-the-New-Economy chortle each & every day! Yo, like we said ... it's WebWorld!! (On the Crass & Crude & Capitalist side, see Holiday Web sales stats. Another BigWow!)

MVP/BizGuru. Winner, in a runaway ... Martha Barletta. Marti is the most vociferous and accomplished spokesperson-presenter in the mega-opportunity-world of Marketing to Women. If I know anything, it is a masterful presentation! (Masterful = Compelling Idea, Mountains of Persuasive Data, Brilliant Delivery.) Again: WOW!

MVP/Book. My top pick for 2004 is Crucial Confrontations, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. In my forward, I said "If you read but one business book this year ..." I meant it! The authors, I contended/contend, have discovered the Double Helix of organizational effectiveness. My runner up choices are: James Suroweicki's thought-provoking The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations. And David Wolfe and Robert Snyder's Ageless Marketing—by far the most persuasive book yet about the stupendous Boomer-Geezer market opportunity.

MVP/Cool. iPod. Obvious? Sure. But what else?

MVP/Winning Streak. Steve Jobs. Who else? (Even his losses, like Lisa, have been wins.) (Jobs retires this award!)

MVP/Drop-dead Gorgeous. As an (old) Civil Engineer, I marvel-drool at the beauty of France's Millau bridge over the Tarn River, opened this Tuesday! Huzzahs to British architect Norman Foster and, of course, the French.

MVP/Country-on-the-Move, Country-on-the-Make. China. Appropriate phrase: Ye gads! Next up: More "Ye gads!" Has a day passed of late without a breaking & big China story?

MVP/Regions. Red States. And ... Blue States. Both are full-scale partners in the amazingly diverse & resilient experiment called the United States of America!

Goats. (1) Health"care" quality in acute-care centers. (2) Overly restrictive visa policies that are turning the day-after-tomorrow's winning entrepreneurs & Nobel Laureates away from our universities & labs & shores. Fixing this will not compromise our security. (2A) America's dimming reputation, however necessary our aggressive actions may be, which could stunt or even reverse our world leadership in the long-ish haul. (3) The Total Lack of Fiscal Discipline within the Borders of the District of Columbia. (4) CEOs who don't "bet the farm" on New Technology, and seek but incremental change—bad "legacy" move!

Your nickel, please. Catcalls. Alternate nominations. Additional categories & winners. I'll Blog a "Best of" Your Winners & Goats around the end of the year.

100 Ways to Succeed #34:

Make 2005 "PlayTech Year"

Regardless of what you "do for a living" promise yourself to "play" with technology this year. We had a lovely session at our ManchesterSummit, introducing one and all to Blogging. (Thanks, Halley Suitt!)

DO YOU BLOG?

Rewriting History!

BusinessWeek thrashes (and thrashes!) Coke in its December 20 cover story, even discounting some of the legendary Roberto Goizueta's achievements from 15 or 20 years ago—claiming they were partially chimeras of clever+ balance sheet engineering. Frankly, I was not overly surprised. I was never the fan of Goizueta's Coke that many were. (Fortune adored him, along with another fella, from GE, who also engineered the hell out of his balance sheet.) By contrast, I've been a long-time PepsiCo aficionado, and have and do far prefer Pepsi's boisterous, decentralized, entrepreneurial ways to those of their stately, centralized, sagging competitor from Atlanta.

Populism Rules!

Just back from London. Susan made three brilliant restaurant choices during our brief 2-day stay. She gets the lion's share of the credit—and the rest goes to Zagat's. How did we live without 'em? Bigger point: Amazon and Zagat's are part of the Populist-Web Megatrend. I trust Amazon reviewers (collectively) far more than the peculiarities of the New York Times Book Review. And I trust Zagat's far more than Frommer's or some Blue-Green-Red guide. The Web is the Great Democratizer—and I also refer you again to Mr Suroweicki's The Wisdom of Crowds (see above, MVP awards). Crowds often "get it right"—and I for one salute the "crowd" of volunteers at Zagat's that contributed to my gustatory wellbeing in London.

Long, Late, Lingering Lunch Rules!

Susan and I had a lovely, lingering lunch in London on Tuesday. (Greenhouse—superb restaurant pick!) Made me aware of how seldom I have long, lingering, late lunches with my spouse. I highly recommend it! viagra without a prescription usa

News in Brief, News Worth a Snooze?

Sprint-Nextel. Ho hum. Saving grace? Maybe it will make hapless Verizon vaguely responsive to its customers. I find Verizon "service" so bad it's not worth space commenting on.

Fannie Mae. Its $9 billion write-off? Well, I guess that means "good-to-great-to wretched," eh, Jim? (I've had a few of those! Think Wang!)

Quote of the Day

"Poor people need low prices. Wealthy people love low prices."—ACNielsen analyst, on the fact that customers with incomes of >$50,000 are the fastest growing demographic for soaring Dollar General & its dollar-kin

Event Slides: HAR

Tom is back from London, though not quite home. He made a stop in Houston (is that on the way from London to Vermont?) to speak to the Houston Association of Realtors. Get the slides here.

UPS or OOPS?

I know this story is going to be a long one, but I have a point to make about customer service. I went to the UPS Store to have them pack and ship some things. I filled out the paper work, discussed the shipping options and resigned myself to paying $40 for 3-day delivery plus $20 to put some stuff in a box, dump in some peanuts and tape it shut. And that's when William, the UPS employee, said, "But this won't go out tonight. We can't possibly get everything here packaged and shipped out tonight." I suggested he could sell me the box and the peanuts and I'd pack it myself, but William said, "Even if you do that, we won't be able to get the order processed in time to send it out tonight." It was 4:00pm, 10 days before Christmas and there were TWO employees on the premises of the UPS Store in downtown Cincinnati. He did not say he was terribly sorry. Nor did he offer any suggestion for getting my business package sent on its way.

I put everything back in my bag and left William and his co-worker dumb-founded by my behavior. At the FedEx office across the street, Elaine helped me select a box, crumpled up sheets of paper to fill in the gaps, whipped out her giant tape dispenser, and asked me how fast I needed it to be delivered. $38 got me a two-day delivery guarantee. The box and packing assistance were free.

Need I say where I'll go next time? The OOPS Store has lost a customer. Not because they couldn't do what I wanted them to, or because I considered their prices high. They lost a customer because (1) they didn't have enough staff on duty and (2) they didn't teach their employees to "feel my pain." In a service business, you must help the customer accomplish her mission, even if that means suggesting that your competition might provide better service on this particular occasion. "Take it or leave it" is not an attitude that will bring customers back to your business.

Lovemarks Seminar Replay

If you missed the Live Meeting seminar yesterday, you'll find it (audio and slides) in the Live Meeting archives. Just click on Lovemarks by Design on the list of seminars and sign in.

COMING ATTRACTION!

Tom's First Annual MVP Awards, coming Thursday. Tom spent two intense days (Sat/Sun) with Cool Friends at the Manchester Summit in VT; then he rushed off to London to present a Microsoft Live Meeting with Kevin Roberts. But he's working away on MVP04, his 2004 Most Valuable (Player) Awards. Top Company/ies, Leader/s, Idea, etc. We'll post on Thursday.

Event Slides: Lovemarks

Lovemarks by Design
Yes, Tom's slides from the Live Meeting seminar are available now. Also, Kevin Roberts', but be warned that downloading them can take up to five minutes, even on a good connection.

An audio re-creation of the event can be heard at the Live Meeting website.

And Speaking of ...

Microsoft©Office Live Meeting ... our friend Steve Farber is presenting one on Thursday. You may remember him from his Cool Friend interview. He's the president of Extreme Leadership, Inc., and author of The Radical Leap. Obviously, his language is tinged by his having been part of Tom Peters Company for a while. You have the chance to see if his ideas are, too, by joining in. Go to the Live Meeting site to register.

Event! (and Its Slides)

A fabulous gathering of people in Manchester Center, Vermont. Tom talking, other people talking. Great ideas being generated. Even the weather cooperated by changing from dreary rain on Saturday to sparkling snow on Sunday. And, of course, the slides are here: Tom's from Saturday, Tom's from Sunday, Martha Barletta's from Sunday, and David Wolfe's from Sunday. Enjoy!

Integrated Marketing

Marketers have always looked at integrated marketing as something they do. Start with a foundation of advertising, then add a pinch of PR, a dash of direct marketing and a spoonful of sales promotion and voila!, you've got effective marketing.

I think that's backwards. Marketers don't do integrated marketing, customers do. Customer integrate all experiences with a company into a composite impression. If a customer decides that listening to music on hold for 15 minutes while waiting for help tells her more about that company than their radio commercials, that's her privilege. If another customer decides to focus more on how an invoice reads than how the brochure or print ad read, he can.

Do the marketing efforts of most companies recognize this?

Blog-itis

Showing our blog to our new friends in Manchester. Continuing the revolution.

Ethics

Would you buy a used car from this ad exec?

A new poll by the Gallup Organization showed that only 9% of people rated the ethics of advertising professionals as "high" or "very high." Ad execs scored higher than car salesman (6%) and telemarketers (5%), but less than stockbrokers (12%). 36% of people rated the ethics of ad professionals as "poor" or "very poor," compared to only 27% last year.

So—what's going on? Have they become less trustworthy, or are we just less trusting?

More Important Than the Intelligence Czar?

In the mid- to long-term there might be something more important than the war on terror; namely the effort to keep the American economy atop the league standings amidst turbulent times and in the face of the rise of the likes of China. Thus yesterday's post concerning a potential intelligence czar may be less important than today's disturbing news that John Snow is staying on at Treasury. Personally, I was hoping (praying?) for a Republican Robert Rubin, a steadying Wall Street hand who understood the gravity of the likes of the plunge of the dollar. Hey, the lunatic fringe (often the canaries in the mine) are already, according to the Wall Street Journal, talking about our losing our AAA debt rating—a genuinely traumatic occurrence, no matter how far fetched.

The Economist this week (4-10 December) features as cover story "The Disappearing Dollar." Subtitle: "America's Policies Are Putting at Risk the Dollar's Role as the World's Dominant International Currency." I do not pretend to be a macroeconomic expert, but I don't think it takes such an expert to smell the current state of fiscal irresponsibility—perhaps even "recklessness" is merited. I am admittedly not thrilled with the results of the past election. On the other hand, I have no interest, personally or as a citizen, in seeing the other party triumph by default in 2008 because the country is trapped in an economic maelstrom. Among other things, when the economy spirals out of control both parties' remedies tend to be politically shortsighted nostrums that invariably make things worse, not better. It seems to me, then, that 2005 is a good year for modest economic alarmism. And, facts-on-the-ground being facts-on-the-ground, I do dearly hope that the so-far insipid Snowman finds a steel spine & a bushel of resolve under his Christmas tree.

A parting Xmas message from me to our Treasury chair-holder: (1) The debt- and trade-driven plunge of the dollar does matter! (2) We are not so big and thence invulnerable-invincible as to be able to make the world mindlessly dance to our jig forever!

Event Slides: The Met

Tom and his friend Dennis Littky did a joint presentation to the students at The Met School, in Providence, RI (see the slides). I'd bet the event was really exciting! Read more about Littky and The Met at their website or in our Cool Friend interview with Eliot Levine, where Littky joined in.

Special Presentations

Tom has updated two special presentations. After his event at The Met School, he had to add them to his list of excellent orgs for 2004: "X04: Excellence Found". And he looked again at his Thirty-Three Professional Service Firm Marks of Excellence: "PSF33". So, new versions are available, through the links in this blog, or from our special presentations page, where you might find others that catch your attention.

Gerstner

It appears we are to have an intelligence czar with unprecedented power ... and responsibility. The question will soon turn to ... WHO?

I wish to offer a nominee. And I am thoroughly confident in the correctness of my suggestion, no matter how implausible a political likelihood.

Lou Gerstner.

Lou is smart. (Understatement.)
Lou is tough ... a "culture buster." (Understatement.)
Lou is unflinchingly honest. (Understatement.)
Lou gets things done. (Understatement.)
Lou gets & thrives on Big Org politics.
Lou grasps the Big Picture.
Lou sweats the details.

Lou's only shortfall is the lack of experience with a start-up, which the new intelligence apparatus is in many respects.

I could elaborate on any of the points above, but will choose but one: Lou is a ... Culture Buster. In his autobiography, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance, Gerstner admits the following: "If I could have chosen not to tackle the IBM culture head-on, I probably wouldn't have. My bias coming in was toward strategy, analysis and measurement. In comparison, changing the attitude and behaviors of hundreds of thousands of people is very, very hard. [Yet] I came to see in my time at IBM that culture isn't just one aspect of the game—it is the game." And it "is the game" for the new intelligence honcho. Frankly, I guessed that no one could break—and then remold—the IBM culture; I fully expected that the Board would eventually have to revert to the pre-Gerstner strategy and break up the company. In fact Gerstner did effectively destroy and then remold IBM, and most important to the new intelligence job, mostly vaporized the dysfunctional barriers between IBM's former baronies. This is something, in the corporate world, that stands 10.0+ on the Difficulty Scale ... and is a challenge that is 10X more significant than the sorts that, say, Welch faced at GE at the same time.

Washington is of course in a League of Its Own. Perhaps no one is up to the job. Let us just pray that Mr Bush and Mr Rove don't appoint a political hack and/or "Yes man."

N.B. On the topic of "dysfunctional barriers," you could do worse than to spend time with former Microsoft COO Robert Herbold's The Fiefdom Syndrome. It's perhaps the first book exclusively devoted to Barrier Busting. In Herbold's case he was quite successful at thwarting the growth of such barriers as Microsoft rapidly grew to Giantism.

I anxiously await your picks for I-tel Czar ...

"Top Line," If You Please!

My snailmail offerings recently included an opportunity to donate to the Stanford B.School. (Admission, though reluctant: I've done so in the past.) Part of the inducement was a photo of four recent Deans. To be sure, one bagged a Nobel in Economics; however, he's offset by another who was chief of Enron's board audit committee.

But it was something else that struck me. The quartet represented: finance, economics, accounting, finance. What's missing in this picture?

Duh!
THE TOP LINE!

And so I was led to wonder:

Will my alma mater ever have a ... MARKETER ... as Dean?*
Will my alma mater ever have an ... ENTREPRENEUR ... as Dean?*
Will my alma mater ever have an ... INNOVATION GURU ... as Dean?*
Will my alma mater ever have a ... SALES SPECIALIST ... as Dean?*
Will my alma mater ever have an ... PEOPLE/HR PERSON .... As Dean?* **
(*Fat chance!) (**HR/People Person is not, strictly, "top line" ... though it's a helluva lot closer than accounting!)

Now this will surprise you, but I'd vote (this is a "voting" day ... see riff on Gerstner above) for bringing back a deposed prof, who was a student favorite: Jim Collins! Actually, I'm not so sure Jim is a "top line" guy ... but at least he's not from the finance-accounting-economics school-of-passionless-management. Hey, a guy who invented B.H.A.G.s—Big, Hairy Audacious Goals—can't be all bad!

No, Jim!

Don't want to give Jimbo (Collins) too much of a Free Ride. I just blurbed a superb new book, The One Thing You Need to Know, by Marcus Buckingham (first famous as co-author of First, Break All the Rules); I went so far as to compare him with the otherwise incomparable Peter Drucker. I'll tell you more later, but for now I just want to offer up his swipe at a Collins-ism to which I am inalterably opposed. Buckingham: "Although I appreciate what Collins was railing at—egomaniacal leaders such as Al "Chainsaw" Dunlap, Dennis "Shower Curtain" Kozlowski, and Jeffrey "Off Balance Sheet" Skilling—the most effective leaders are not self-effacing and humble. In fact, a powerful ego, defined as the need to stake grand claims, is one of their most defining characteristics (although, obviously, not the only one)."

Yup.

A "Finance Guy" Votes "Top Line"!

Consider this sterling exchange, published on 12.05, between Warren Buffett and a Boston Globe reporter (the occasion was a Jordan's store opening—Jordan's is a Mass. corporation.):

Reporter: "Why did you buy Jordan's Furniture?"
Buffett: "Jordan's is spectacular. It's all showmanship."

More Buffet #1: the Great Man responding to a question about why his Berkshire Hathaway annual reports are so readable, some say "down to earth": "I write the report for my sisters Doris and Bertie. I pretend when I write that report that they've been traveling for a year. I tell them what I would want to know if I were gone for a year and they'd been in charge."

More Buffett #2: A BizWeek Cover Story addressed similarities (many) and differences (just one) between Buffett and Eddie Lampert, King of Kmart (and now Sears). The similarities included an emphasis on long-term value, mature industries, and holdings in a small # of companies. But the Big Difference is telling: Buffett buys gems (like Jordan's) and helps build them; Lampert believes he can make silk purses of sows' ears. (To me, the word "delusional" pops to mind in the latter case—sorry.)

Quote Of The Day

"The less people like their jobs, the more they focus on balance." —John Wood, ex-Microsoft Asia exec (from the new worthwhile magazine)

Comments?

United Airlines Thinks I'm Stupid (Guess what I think)

I leave a meeting in Lynchburg, Virginia, yesterday, with just enough time to drive to the Roanoke airport for my non-stop flight home to Chicago. Checking voicemail, I hear an automated message from the "United Airlines Easy Re-Booking System."

The message is from a very upbeat, happy, pre-recorded voice telling me I have been "successfully re-booked" on a cumbersome connection through Washington, D.C., that will get me home 4 hours late.

Of course there are no details on why I'm being re-booked, or any apology. I call United and wait on hold to find out that my flight has been cancelled.

Great idea: Call it the Easy Re-booking System and use an upbeat voice. That'll fake out those dumb customers. (Remember the scene in the book 1984 when the government lowered the chocolate ration? They announced the new, lower number with great fanfare, congratulating themselves for raising the chocolate ration.)

Read it! Now! Damn it! (Please!)

Anyone who cares in the least about a loved one, or their own well-being, must ... MUST!!!!!!!!!!!! ... read/absorb/inhale Dr (surgeon) Atul Gawande's "The Bell Curve: What Happens When Patients Find Out How Good Their Doctors Are?" in the New Yorker/12.06.2004. It is simply the best-most profound health"care" article* I have ever read ... by a long shot.

(*Until patient care & patient safety & outcomes measurement & physician-acute care center accountability improve dramatically, I vow to spell h_____c___ as you see above: health"care.") (I also now call hospitals "killing fields" ... e.g., recent stats show an unnecessary hospital death in the U.S. every 2 minutes, 38 seconds.)

Dr G: "It used to be assumed that differences among hospitals or doctors in a particular specialty were generally insignificant. ... But the evidence has begun to indicate otherwise. What you tend to find is a bell curve: a handful of teams with disturbingly poor outcomes for their patients, a handful with remarkably good results, and a great undistinguished middle.

"In ordinary hernia operations, the chances of recurrence are one in ten for surgeons at the unhappy end of the spectrum, one in twenty for those in the middle, and under one in five hundred for a handful. A Scottish study of patients with treatable colon cancer found that the ten-year survival rate ranged from a high of sixty-three percent to a low of twenty percent depending on the surgeon. ...

"It is distressing for doctors to have to acknowledge the bell curve. It belies the promise that we make to patients who become seriously ill: that they can count on the medical system to give them their very best chance at life. It also contradicts the belief nearly all of us have that we are doing our job as well as it can be done."

The stunning, appalling, fact-drenched article uses Cystic Fibrosis, where data has been rigorously collected (oh, so rare!), as a case study. Gawande reports, for example, that among the "best" (quotes again!) specialist CF centers, expected longevity systematically varies by 15 years!

Frankly, a drugged-out newsboy wouldn't be as sloppy at running his business as is the average hospital-medical specialty. And I, with one wee voice, refuse to urge "doable steps," as one attendee at a health"care" lecture I gave urged. I want ... Revolution.

I am accountable for my actions! I am measured against my peers by Clients and the whole damn planet every damn day! So are you! Why not His Preciousness, your Doc/Surgeon? Why not hospitals? Cut the crap! Shove the excuses! I personally have no problem spending 15% of our GDP on health"care." I have a big problem spending that much for crappy, uneven, unmeasured results!

The emperor has no damn clothes! He ain't wearin' shorts ... and he sure as hell doesn't merit a white coat! He is ... STARK NAKED ... and someone/s needs to say so/shout so ... LOUDLY! (I hereby volunteer.)

P.S. Yesterday's (12.05) Boston Globe Magazine, headline, p 30: "Left Behind: The stories are scary. A patient finds that his surgeon left a sponge or maybe a clamp in his body. But Atul Gawande is trying to write happier endings."

P.P.S. See also Gawande's prize-winning, readable, profound Complications.

P.P.P.S. See my Special Presentation, "Health'care': The Rant".

Please ...
Read
This/These
Article/s.

Please ...
Forward to ...
Docs-you-know ...
Hospital administrators-you-know ...
With the Following Note:

"WHY?
"WHY?
"WHY?"

Badvertising: Quiznos (& AdAge)

On February 9, 2004, Bob Garfield, ad critic for Advertising Age, wrote a glowing review called "Dead Vermin Sell Quiznos Sandwiches, And Both Spots Break Through The Clutter As Few Ads Do," in which he raved about Quiznos' "Spongemonkeys" ad campaign. The ads, which can be viewed via this link, show some sort of disgusting animated rodents singing about Quiznos.

On December 3, 2004, Ad Age reported that Quiznos was firing the Martin Agency, the creators of the campaign.

How Garfield could have missed this one is beyond me. In his review he reminded his readers that he had criticized Quiznos' previous campaign, which featured a man sucking on a wolf's teat, as "unappetizing, self-destructive and fundamentally unhinged ... the apotheosis of irrelevance and agency self-indulgence," noting that he was proved right. So how could he think that characters that look like "animated mouse carcasses" (his words) would work any better?

The clue to his mistake is right there in the title of his review. He thought the ads would "break through the clutter." Whenever I hear this term, my advertising-cynicism antennae go up. The idea that the key to great marketing is just to shout at your customers for 30 seconds louder than your competitors are shouting is not an accurate description of how the world works. The key to your customers' love is not to act obnoxious enough that they can't help but pay attention. Customers are way too discerning and scrutinizing for that.

When I hear like terms "break through the clutter" or "capturing eyeballs" I get suspicious. It is hardly ever the answer. For every Aflac duck or "I just saved money on my car insurance by switching to Geico" there are a million—no, make that 100 million—ads that are barely noticed and, more importantly, don't motivate customers to do anything.

Why Marketing Programs Fail—Encore

A few days ago I wrote a post asking for your ideas on why marketing programs fail. We had a lively discussion here at tompeters.com, plus many of you clicked on the above link and filled out the form on my website. As we can see quickly, most of us don't think that the key to great marketing is a catchy tagline or "breakthrough creative."

Let's keep the discussion going! What is it, in your experience, that makes marketing programs succeed ... or fail?

12.02.2004. BA213. Heathrow-Logan.

"China Widens Access for Foreign Banks"—Headline/Financial Times/12.02.2004

"Foreign Inflows Push India's Stock Market to Record High"—Headline/Financial Times/12.02.2004

"The 'Insourcing' Problem"—Headline/OpEd/Wall Street Journal/12.02.2004 ("Total flows of Foreign Direct Investment capital into the U.S. have collapsed since 2000—from a peak of $314 billion in 2000 to $29.8 billion in 2003. No doubt some of that decline is a cyclical response to the giant surge in the late 1990s. But some of the falloff might be structural. In 2003, for the first time, China attracted more FDI than the U.S.")

Born? Or Made?

One thing is sure ... WE WON'T SOLVE IT HERE! "It," being a query within a Comment on my Nelson post. Upon reading my post, our colleague was moved to say that surely such leadership traits are born ... and that's that.

On this eternal issue, I've come down on the "born" (more accurately, born or bred early) side more than the "trained" side more than most of my colleagues—no surprise since many of them are leadership trainers!

Intelligence, dispositions such as energy and enthusiasm, and the likes of a proclivity for hard word work are pretty well set in something like stone before we "employers" get our mitts on a person.

Consider: I worked briefly with a speaking coach decades ago. He declared me a "pleasure" to work with. I remember him saying, "Tom, it's a lot easier to work with someone energetic—and try to help them round off the rough edges—than it is to try and 'spice up' a turnip."

I think that personal vignette is very near the heart of the matter. There is—clearly!—some stuff that one can help with. I had a colleague, a fine and caring person, who never took the time to send "Thank you" notes or perform other overt acts of recognition. (My assessment: He had been raised in a very reserved setting, and one mostly kept one's emotions to oneself.) Now if this person had been a misanthrope, I wouldn't have bothered. But that not being the case, I banged on him for a period of years—and today he surpasses me in this vital area of human interaction.

There are a lot of things, then, that can be brought to life, or things that have worked for others that one can be made aware of. I've observed—back to Nelson—that a lot of high-powered leaders, up to and including U.S. Presidents, devour good biographies and autobiographies. Read enough, a few hundred I should think, and one sees some commonalities in the way certain types of situations are handled—e.g., building support for unpopular causes, such as Roosevelt's efforts to convince a skeptical Congress of the wisdom of going to England's aid in WW II.

Bottom line: Train "fundamental dispositions"? Tough! Provide a bushel of useful strategies for working with people and situations? Yup!

To allow myself to lean a little to the "trained" side, I admit that I am trained in part as a Rat Psychologist. (No, alas, I didn't inspire Spencer to write Who Moved My Cheese.) Thence I believe in the primacy of repeated positive reinforcement—even when dispositions are at issue. Get a person hooked on Toastmasters, for instance, and after she or he has declaimed in public 50 times, the "Inherent" Fear of Public Speaking will indeed wane, even if one does not become the next Reagan.

Minimum "New Work" ... SurvivalSkills2005

In Re-imagine! (Chapter 19, "Re-imagining the Individual: Life in a 'Brand You' World" ), I offered a 10-item "Survival Kit." I had occasion to use the list/kit recently in a presentation, and ended up fiddling with it. Hence I present to you here my somewhat cryptic (but I think basically comprehensible) SurvivalSkills2005:

Mastery! (Best/Absurdly Good at Something!)
"Manage" to Legacy (All Work="Memorable" /"Braggable" WOW Projects!)
A "USP"/Unique Selling Proposition (R.POV8: Remarkable Point of View, captured in 8 or less words)
Rolodex Obsession (From vertical/hierarchy/"suck up" loyalty to horizontal/"colleague"/"mate" loyalty)
Entrepreneurial Instinct (A sleepless ... Eye for Opportunity! E.g.: Small Opp for Independent Action beats faceless part of Monster Project)
CEO/Leader/Businessperson/Closer (CEO, Me Inc. Period! 24/7!)
Mistress of Improv (Play a dozen parts simultaneously, from Chief Strategist to Chief Toilet Scrubber)
Sense of Humor (A willingness to Screw Up & Move On)
Comfortable with Your Skin (Bring "interesting you" to work!)
Intense Appetite for Technology (E.g.: How Cool-Active is your Web site? Do you Blog?)
Embrace "Marketing" (Your own CSO/Chief Storytelling Officer)
Passion for Renewal (Your own CLO/Chief Learning Officer)
Execution Excellence! (Show up on time! Leave last!)

Over to you ...

Shore to Shore! Cover to Cover! Hooray!

A small miracle occurred! A first! I read a poetry book cover-to-cover ... and in one sitting no less! (London-to-Boston.) Not bad for a Civil Engineer!

I do read poetry, but not well. In Hatchards (see yesterday's post), I happened upon The Nation's Favourite Poems, a BBC Book.

I LOVED IT!

In 1995, The Bookworm, a popular BBC program, decided to conduct a poll on England's favorite/favourite poems. Many were skeptical, the editor reports, expecting a low response, or results dominated by Shakespeare or "dirty limericks." Instead 12,000 votes were cast, and a very eclectic list was birthed—topped by Rudyard Kipling's "If" ("If you can keep your head when all about you ...") and favored with just two from the Bard.

Whatever. Worked for me. And perhaps for some of you. I'm going on vacation in Kaua'i after Christmas, and it's my plan to go another step ... and read these 100 aloud to my wife. (Who probably memorized half of them decades ago.) I'll report to you in '05!

Return From the Edge. Roll Credits.

Thus my last major "road trip" of 2004 winds down. When BA213 kisses the jetway in Boston in 3 hours, the tally will be: 57 days. 63,000 miles. 8 states. 9 countries. 24 speeches-seminars. 1 happy accountant. (I did squeeze 2 visits home, for 7 days.)

I'm exhausted, but I loved every minute of every speech and interaction with my Clients ... and only hope my enthusiasm for these fascinating times was/is contagious ... from Dubai to Torrey Pines, CA!

(WHAT A LUCKY GUY: I TRULY LOVE WHAT I DO! AND LITERALLY LIVE FOR MY CLIENTS!)

And: Public "Hoorays" to the amazing "BIW" (Best-In-World) band who represent me in the world-at-large: The Washington Speakers Bureau. Alexandria's gang-that-always-shoots-straight and I have been married for 2 decades now! Also, another Roar of Appreciation to our Executive Events Director in Manchester Center, VT ... Abbey Bishop ... who has injected sanity and operational excellence to my recent madness. Plus a "hats off" to you ... BlogCommunity has become my on-the-road-family since I activated the Blog part of this site on 27 July ... 49,000 words or so ago. (Plus comments!) You in turn can Cheer ... Cathy Mosca ... who manages the site's blogging activities and is also responsible, among many other things, for the integrity of my jillion PP presentations.

Special Presentations

Two new special presentations are up at our special slides page. One is an expansion of a slides set that Tom did in September with excerpts from Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind (coming in March), and Dennis Littky's The Big Picture. As he reads more (and more) books to get excited about, he's adding sections to the presentation. The result (so far) is "Pink-Florida-Littky-Enriquez". The Creative Class, by Richard Florida, and As the Future Catches You, by Juan Enriquez, join the ranks of the books to note.

The other new special presentation is "Beyond the 'Knowledge Economy'", and I think the title speaks for itself.

Tidal Surge

Dubai. Lounge reading. Flying to London. More HEADLINES:

"EU Spells Out Trade Threat From China. Asia Storms On Every Front"—The Daily Telegraph/11.30.04

"China, ASEAN Sign Accord To Lift Tariffs By 2010"—The Wall Street Journal Europe/11.30.04 (thus creating "the world's biggest free-trade area")

"Markets Covet China IPOs"—The Wall Street Journal Europe/11.30.04 viagra discount

"The Three Scariest Words In U.S. Industry: 'The China Price.' A Massive Shift In Economic Power Is Underway."—BusinessWeek/Cover/12.06.04 (A little piece inside the Cover Story is titled "Does It Matter If the U.S. Isn't No. 1?")

Comments?

Amazing Dubai!

Had a superb time in Dubai at a two-day leadership forum. My UAE hosts were welcoming to a fault, and participants were as eager as anywhere in the world ... and that may be understatement. While the nasty side of the Middle East dominates the headlines (to the point that I wondered what my welcome would be like), the "other side of the story" is worth broadcasting. The 2,500 execs in attendance were hungry for the message from the likes of me, Lester Thurow, Alan Toffler, Mike Porter ... and "Rudy-and-Jack" (Giuliani & Welch, the Dynamic Duo of ConferenceLand these days). I pulled no punches, was my typically noisy self, and ended up with a small basketful of invitations to hurry back—including the makings of an offer to workshop on enterprise and economic transformation with the Jordanian cabinet. On the personal side, I absorbed nothing but genuine warmth, as evidenced by several offers of home cooking, Middle Eastern style.

And if there is a more energetic city/city-state than Dubai (check out www.dubai.com), I don't know where it's hiding. What an Architectural Feast & Fantasy Land! Dubai, rather short on natural resources, and long a trading hub, is more or less modeling itself on Singapore. Some proof of the vitality: The day I arrived, Addar Properties, a real estate conglomerate, had its IPO. Headline the next day in Gulf News: "Addar IPO Subscription Far Exceeds UAE GDP." Ye gads! The IPO was over-subscribed by a factor of 458, perhaps a world record. There may well be a bubble in the making here, but it is nonetheless an unequivocal testimony to bursting-at-the-seams energy level in the Gulf States.

My Hatchards Addiction

I love bookstores ... even in the age of Amazon. And there is none I love more than London's Hatchards, on Piccadilly, est. 1797). I made my annual Christmas pilgrimage there this afternoon (I added a day to my voyage from Dubai to Boston expressly & solely to go to Hatchards) ... and emptied my backpack in anticipation. Ha! I ended up expressing a big box home. And also ended up with a $900 book bill, high even by my standards. (I'd brought a list, thanks to the Economist's best books of 2004 selections, but put it aside for unfettered binging in short order.) The only thing I missed—by just one day—is the Christmas authors' night. The British literary establishment, fiction and non-fiction, attends, sit patiently at little tables scattered all about the 4 floors of books, and sign and personalize their works. (I stumbled on this remarkable event a couple of years ago.) My special treat—yes, for myself—is N.A.M. Rodger's The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815, recipient of rave reviews. It weighs in at 907 pages, but yes, Susan, I am including it in my carry-on, bad back notwithstanding.

Once again ... THANK YOU, MOM PETERS! She made me the marrow-sucking, reading-maniac I am today. Nothing contributes more to my personal and professional well-being. The thought crossed my mind that I'd happily spend the rest of my life in a condo above Hatchards, slipping down to exchange books at a second's notice.

(On a controversial-to-some note-from-the-stacks, I picked up a wonderful member of the delightful Penguin Books' Great Ideas series: Charles Darwin's On Natural Selection. This little extract from The Origin of Species is 4-inches X 6-inches, and runs 117 pages. I plan to carry it with me permanently, as a Totem, along with the likes of my books on Breathing. One reason is to underscore my devotion to science and progress ... and express to myself my abiding dismay that so many millions of my fellow citizens are unconvinced of evolutionary theory. I guess it turns out that my generic disposition toward tolerance has limits.)

100 Ways to Succeed #33:

OUT-READ 'EM!

Read!
Read Wide!
Read Deep!
Read Often!
Surprise Yourself With Your Reading Picks!
Out-READ the "Competition"!
Take Notes!
Summarize!
Share With Others What You Read!* (*Not to impress them, but to practice what you've learned.)
Create/Join A Reading Salon!
Cultivate A Learning-Curiosity ADDICTION.
Read!