I Disagree!

From Taipei (the Vice President of the country) to Memphis (senior national church official), I've been pushed hard/hounded lately to turn my attention to the non-profit and public sectors. (Part of it may be Drucker's passing; he spent a lot of energy on non-profits.) I surely agree with the abiding importance of the non-commercial spheres. And in fact, as a government veteran (6 years in the Navy and White House), I've probably addressed over 100 gov't groups in the last 20 years.

But while trying not to sound defensive, I want to offer a defense. I have carefully re-examined my work over the last quarter century, starting with In Search of Excellence, and I can find almost nothing that does not apply ... one-for-one .... to the non-profit and public spheres.

Consider the "guiding premise" and the "eight basics" that were the heart of In Search of Excellence (chapters 4 through 12): "Managing Ambiguity and Paradox"; "A Bias for Action"; "Close to the Customer"; "Autonomy and Entrepreneurship"; "Productivity Through People"; "Hands On, Value-Driven"; "Stick to the Knitting"; "Simple Form, Lean Staff"; "Simultaneous Loose-Tight Properties" (tight adherence to a couple of key/visionary values, otherwise enormous latitude for down-the-line initiative).

While about 20 percent of the companies Bob Waterman and I chose in 1982 have faltered (investing in 1982 in our "portfolio," according to Forbes, would have made you a rich man/woman by 2002, the book's 20th anniversary), the "basics" have held up surprisingly well—perhaps because they are "simply" universals. ("Universals" that Bob and I felt had fallen into disuse in the "Quantitative Age" that dominated in the 50s through 70s.) Today, the closer I bring my magnifying glass, the more I think all eight/nine of these Guiding Notions are absolutely & unequivocally applicable to non-profit and public enterprise; and that their abiding absence is as deleterious to non-profit and public enterprise effectiveness as to private-sector effectiveness. (In recent times, think FEMA vs the U.S. Coast Guard in the wake of Katrina. Think, in NGO world, about micro-finance aimed directly at an impoverished populace vs giant World Bank projects that seem mostly to have lined the pockets of corrupt politicians in recipient countries.)

Going farther (if less systematically), on a recent trip from DC to Boston, thinking about "all this," I simply jotted down a few words that have been central to my thought and also my "point of difference" with most other theorists, including, frequently, Drucker: Technicolor, Enthusiasm. Energy. Respect. Listening. Grace. Cause (worth getting up for). Caring. "Thank you" (recognition). Action, action, action. Experimentation, experimentation, experimentation. Quick prototypes. Excellent failures. Fast failures (he who has the most tries usually wins). MBWA (managing by wandering around). Empowerment. Customer intimacy. Decentralization. Accountability. Integrity. Truth-telling. Truth or consequences. Relatively small is relatively beautiful. Widespread entrepreneurial behavior. WOW! Weird! Gasp-worthy! Insanely great! Love! Design (great). Women (as leaders). No barriers (to communication or action). Staggering "value-added." "Beautiful" systems. (See the pdf version, available at this site, of Tom's 60 TIBs—my bedrock beliefs, for once in brief.)

Or consider this single slide, on love, from my recent, updated "Leadership50" Special Presentation:

"Message: Leadership is all about love: Passion, Enthusiasms, Appetite for Life, Engagement, Commitment, Great Causes & Determination to Make a Damn Difference, Shared Adventures, Bizarre Failures, Growth, Insatiable Appetite for Change."

I could go on ... and am sorely tempted to. But I'll stop. I've either made my point. Or not. I believe (fervently) in the profit principle, am a fanatic capitalist. But I also fervently believe that the capitalist dream comes true and profit is maximized when ... turned-on people are empowered to dream big and produce awesome products and service experiences for their customers and communities. And that "meta"-idea, profit excepted, applies as well to the non-profit and public sectors as to the private sector.

Comments?

(I could well/may well spend more time in the future on the public and non-profit sectors, but I'd be surprised, even stunned, if my basic ideas and approaches changed much or at all.)

Not Indifferent!

Susan and I had a rather boisterous and extended argument over pretty much nothing last night. How sad to take notes on a spousal argument, but in the end I yam what I yam. Actually the note, on a scrap torn from the Rutland Herald, "merely" said "not indifferent."

Temper soothed, I got to thinking about it, and one thing I thought is I'd like that on my tombstone: "Tom Peters. Not Indifferent." (No rush.) That is, that's most of what I've offered over the years. Often as not my "axioms" were not original (nothing new under the sun, etc.), but I put them forward with a visible/vocal determination that brooked little dissent. Customer is King. People are All. Women Rule! (Etc.) At a recent conference in Sydney, my pal Anita Roddick, who followed me to the podium, said in the Green Room just before she went on stage, "'Raging enthusiasm.' That's what you sell ... no matter what the topic." I guess that's true. I am "not indifferent," and do not open my mouth about a topic unless I feel it's worth going to the mat for. Make "every" project a "Wow Project"! "Every," you say; "that's nutty." Answer: I damn well do mean "every" ... why else, at 63, would I have bothered to fly 12,000 miles or so to Sydney. Moreover (I admit it), I think anyone who doesn't "get it"—in 2005—is a bloomin' idiot.

"Not indifferent." Sorry, Susan. I will try to "curb my enthusiasm" at inappropriate times ... but not bloody likely to occur.

TP Day at inBubbleWrap

Our friends at 800CEORead have put together a venture called inbubblewrap where they are currently offering free books—and other goodies—to people who sign up at their site. And today, five lucky folks have a chance to win a copy of Tom's beautifully designed Sixty as well as a bucketful of other books and paraphernalia. Cost? Your email. Value? Priceless, of course. Check it out.

Cool Friend: Ray Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil has a great deal to talk about, and we're glad he spent some time talking with Erik to become our new Cool Friend. Discussion centered around Kurzweil's new book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, but took off in many directions. Read the interview here. You should also take a minute or two to visit his website to see all the projects Kurzweil is involved with. They're fascinating!

Updates

Tom has polished two PowerPoint presentations that we posted last week. You can keep up-to-date with the revisions by downloading them here: Dramatic Difference, the 1-hour version, and Transformational Change. Enjoy!

Signing Up Rich Karlgaard

Just added nouveau blogger Rich Karlgaard to our Blog Roll. Rich, Publisher of Forbes magazine, is an old pal—and a wise and energetic commentator on the New Economy, assuming it's okay (again?) to use that term. (It's very okay by me. Always was.) Among many other things, social commentator Dinesh D'Souza, in his 2000 book The Virtue of Prosperity, called Rich, George Gilder, and me chief cheerleaders for what D'Souza labeled the "Party of Yeah"—vociferous advocates of the sweeping impact of the then-emergent new economy. I can't think of any duo I'd rather be paired with. Rich's new blog at Forbes.com is titled "Digital Rules" (that's also the title of his bi-weekly commentary at the magazine). We've listed it on our Blog Roll as "Rich Karlgaard/Forbes." Welcome aboard, Rich.

Not Too Bad! (Not Too Good.)

Just finished a brief phone ordering frenzy for Christmas. (Far earlier than usual; not sure what got into me.) Here's the scorecord, ranked: #1Tied, Sharper Image. Answer very quickly (1st ring—salesperson answers). Minimum of required information. Everything (4 items) in stock. Duration: less than 3 minutes. #1T, Territory Ahead. Answer very quickly (same as Sharper Image). Info collection dragged out. Everything in stock—7 items. Duration: "about" 7 minutes; email confirmation within 180 seconds (no one else offered an email confirmation). #3T, LL Bean. Answered very quickly. No items (three) in stock. (Typical of Bean in my experience.) #3T, PBS Home Video. On hold for over 3 minutes; quit. (Ah, alas, so predictable, eh?)

Not all bad. On the other hand, given the early date and time of call (noon, Tuesday), not all that great. If you wonder why I didn't do this online, perhaps the repeated experience of getting 90 percent of the job done, then being derailed by a glitch. Frankly, the phone is still easier, at least at this early date.

Greatest sadness: LL Bean, love of my childhood, continues, year-after-year, to come up (very) short.

Blue + ? = Green

Technology, culture and behavior seem to evolve together. Years ago, we started to see people walking through airports talking on cellphones with headsets. In order not to seem like wierdos talking to themselves, these folks would routinely hold the headset microphone to their mouths, so you could clearly see that they were on the phone.

Then people dropped their hands from their headsets, assuming you'd know they were on the phone because of the cord dangling from their ear. After a while, the introduction of the bluetooth headset took away that cord, but by then nobody was self-conscious anymore, and it became commonplace to see people walking through airline terminals talking without shame to an unseen companion.

But now, at least for men, social norms have relaxed to a new level. Many times in the past year I've walked into an airport men's room and seen a lone man standing at a bank of urinals, actively engaged in a hands-free conversation with someone hundreds of miles away, presumably with a hidden bluetooth headset in his ear. These people inevitably speak in extra loud voices, as people speaking on cell phones in public often do. So, it's hard not to hear about the latest deal they're trying to close, or the new investment idea they're discussing.

I guess the call of the greenback makes it difficult to wait two minutes to make the call. After all, cash is king. But, I personally refuse to take part in this latest cultural development. And, I'll hang up on anyone who calls me if I hear the sounds of the airport bathroom in the background.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! Indulge! Overeat! Overhug! Boys: Look up from the TV football, once an hour, just for a quick smile ... even if it kills you. (My closest friend leaves the TV on all day no sound at all.)

Say a special prayer for all of our young women and young men in harm's way on T'day.

Trippin'

Done! My "Fall Tour" ended in San Antonio last Friday. Final stats: 71 days. 29 speeches/seminars. 11 countries. 12 states. 121,000 miles.

River Walk. 71 speed walks in 71 days. Last one ... River Walk in San Antonio ... was as good as it gets, especially in the quiet of 4:30 A.M. It was particularly speedy, as I was accompanied by a fabulous Didgeridoo CD I got in Sydney.

Real Orlando. Wednesday was my introduction to Orlando. In fact, my first trip to Orlando! Of course I'd been to the "other orlando," or "disney orlando," on many an occasion. But, courtesy my SunTrust Banks hosts, this was my first visit to the real/old city. It was lovely, as were the Real Orlandans I met.

Now ... VT for Thanksgiving!

Thank You, Ann!

American Airlines lost my baggage on Thursday. All ended well ... thanks in large measure to former Texas Governor Ann Richards.

I attended a speech Ms R gave a couple of years ago ... and, yes, it actually changed my life. Here's what she said (among many other things): "When you are facing a horrid service situation, which has you fit to kill, take a deep breath and remember, as, say, you approach an employee from the offending company, 'This woman [man] is the only person on earth who, at this moment, can help me—or not.'"

So, Thursday, AA lost my baggage. I was on a tight schedule, needed my suit pressed ASAP, among [many] other things, and I was ... screwed. Moreover, given the state of airlines, the lost baggage desk was, as usual these days, woefully undermanned. As I waited in line, getting more tense with each passing moment, I listened to one traveler after another light into the AA employee manning the desk. A couple of The Irate were truly over the top. (The way I routinely was for years and years—pre-Ann.) My turn came, I took two meditative breaths in which I expelled all bad vibes (yes, I can do this), thought deeply about Ann's advice, and mounted a charm offensive: Operation You-Alone-Can-Help-Me-and-I-Dearly-Pray-You-Will. We joked a little, commiserated about our different but extreme pickles, and I just kept on smilin'. Several things happened. By behaving in a relaxed, empathetic, life-goes-on fashion, I actually started to feel better myself—hey, this wasn't a trip to market in Baghdad. More important (selfishly), my "you're the only one for me" AA buddy bent over backwards and then some to track the bag, double-confirm its current whereabouts, get unequivocal info on the arriving flight, give me a priority hotel dropoff slot, and so on. And I flatter myself by thinking that she, too, ended up feeling a touch better about life—it really isn't much fun to be ripped, and ripped again, by customers mostly because your employer is in dire straits and understaffed everywhere and has left you on point to take [all] the heat.

That's my "little tale." But of course it's not so little at all. It's near the heart of what happens on those occasions when human beings take the trouble in the face of trouble to deal in a civil and empathetic and even cheerful fashion with their fellows. That's not "news" ... except that of course it is!

Thanks, Ann. I'm almost tempted to say this is the best piece of advice I've ever gotten. (And three cheers for me for eventually following it.)

Change!

RLG International is an organizational change & implementation consultancy, based in Vancouver and working with the likes of Shell, BP, and Boeing, that steers away from Grand Strategy and instead works assiduously on transformative culture change at the front line ... which they (and I) think is the obvious and oft overlooked key to effective and replicable project implementation practice.

They asked (not so politely) that I spend my allotted time to do the Tom Peters "change speech." Trouble was, as I came to realize—there wasn't one. Ignoring three speeches in the prior four days, I went to bed at 8 p.m. and got up at 1 a.m.—and spent the next 6+ hours cobbling together "Tom's Transformative Change Speech."

Procrastination?

Were my poor planning habits the reason I was up two-thirds of Thursday night reworking (re-inventing!) my speech?

No. (I swear to that.) I had in fact prepped like hell for the RLG seminar mentioned immediately above. I had a "good speech" ready to rock-and-roll ... or so I thought.

But then the "10-hours to H-hour Factor" kicked in ... with a vengeance. Fact is (for me), there is an "eleventh hour" "connection with the audience" factor that kicks in. It isn't possible earlier—for me.

That is, as the opening bell approaches, my mind & soul enter an incredible, inexplicable zone. I am transported to the speech site. The plight of the audience stirs deeply within me in excruciating detail—more or less in High-definition Technicolor and with Dolby sound.

I feel myself in the conference room. I can "see," with remarkable clarity, individual audience members. I get inside their skins and feel their issues-plight with stunning, almost breath-taking intensity.

And that's when I madly start re-doing my speech ... regardless of the time of day or (usually) night. My "disease" is hardly one-of-a-kind. I've talked to dozens of "performers" in a wide variety of professions. Almost without fail they describe a like process of "getting [deeply!] in the zone"—which often leads to dramatic last-minute course corrections (or more).

I remain amazed at what goes on inside me, and surely can't explain it. But I know I'll hang up my spikes the moment it ceases to occur.

Event Slides: RLG

RLG International Client Forum in San Antonio, Texas, is Tom's event of the day. The slides are posted for downloading purposes: the live presentation here, or the long Web version here.

"We"

A few months back, I asked this question on a post:

When thinking about themselves and you, how many of your customers think "We," and how many think "Us" and "Them?"

The readers of tompeters.com had some great comments and insights about this concept. I've spent a lot of time since then thinking about the idea of a "We" relationship. I've had hundreds of conversations with people, integrated the idea of "We" into my client work, and I'm deep into the first draft of a new book on the subject.

What do you think? What are the features of a "We" relationship?

Compliance Rules, OK!

It's National Enterprise Week in the UK. Our next Prime Minister Gordon Brown is launching Enterprise Summer Schools to train British 14- to 16-year-olds to become "the next generation of British entrepreneurs." Instead of the usual long summer holiday, these lucky students will get the chance to go through training modules on innovation, enterprise, decision-making, problem-solving, management, and leadership; a sort of Re-imagine Boot Camp!

Shame that these young entrepreneurs will all too often be growing up in an education system that models the opposite: order, regulation, standardised curricula, hierarchy, etc., and then pass on to work where their bosses will talk a good game on innovation and entrepreneurship, but run regimes where "Compliance rules, OK!"

The big question is what is it going to take to disrupt this pattern and give our budding entrepreneurs a real chance to blossom? Much more than today's "creativity summit" in London, where Mr Brown and 200 specially invited business leaders will discuss how creativity and innovation can boost British business. Better they spend their time together talking about how they systematically suppress any sign of entrepreneurship! I wish.

Cool Friend: Eamonn Kelly

Eamonn Kelly is our new Cool Friend. He is CEO of Global Business Network, a future-oriented consulting firm, and the author of Powerful Times: Rising to the Challenge of Our Uncertain World, which was launched in September 2005. For more than a decade Kelly has been at the forefront of exploring the emergence and the consequences of a new economy. Here's a quote from his interview:

We need to give up the nostalgia for the past and adopt a new attachment to the future. It should be based on really understanding what's happening today, really understanding the nature of the challenges, but with a sense of opportunity, a sense of optimism, and a sense that we can seize and create a new future without being terribly troubled about letting go of what has been, for the West in particular, a pretty good run of superiority. But superiority in the future isn't guaranteed, and it's not a disaster if other major players enter the scene and start to become full participants too.

You can read more in our current Cool Friend interview.

Sales Blood Drive

We got an email from someone who was inspired by his own experience giving blood to implement the first-ever virtual blood drive. To give it focus, he's targeted sales professionals.

In an "attempt to rally one of the largest professional groups in the world to donate blood," his company has proclaimed the last week of this month to be the first "Global Sales Blood Drive." It seems this is a time of year when need is up and supply is down.

If you're a salesperson who'd like to be part of this effort, go to www.salesblood.org for details. It's a Wow! Project, and you can help to make it more so.

Event Slides: SunTrust, Orlando

Tom's speaking to SunTrust Banks again, this time in Orlando, FL. If you would like to get the slides he used in his presentation, you can download them here: live version and
long Web version.

Event Slides: SunTrust, Memphis

Today's event takes Tom to Memphis, where the weather seems to be just like Boston's, but warmer. Memphis: overcast and 70°, Boston, overcast and 50°. He's speaking to SunTrust Banks. You can get the slides here: live version and long Web version.

Peter F. Drucker: Right Man for His/Our Times

I don't like Robert McNamara, circa 1966. (I was in Vietnam at the time.) I think his overly analytic approach to warmaking contributed greatly to the Vietnam quagmire-fiasco. But I do appreciate the Robert McNamara who assisted U.S. Army Air Force General Curtis LeMay at the outset of World War II. To grossly oversimplify, LeMay didn't know how many planes he had or where they were. McNamara came aboard and fixed that. After the war, McNamara was one of the handful of "Whiz Kids" who brought Ford into the modern world by, in effect, doing the same thing for Henry Ford that he had done earlier for General LeMay.

Robert McNamara and Peter Drucker "arrived on the scene" at roughly the same time. And faced an/the same intriguing issue. In short, whether the military or big corporations, organizational size and complexity had far outstripped the toolkit available to manage these busting-out-of-their-pants behemoths.

Jack Welch was not the first CEO of GE, though to read Fortune in the '90s one might have thought so. And Peter Drucker didn't "invent" management. The Chinese probably did thousands of years ago—among other things, Sun Tzu's roughly 2,500-year-old The Art of War is a full-blown "management" text. So, too, Machiavelli's The Prince. And Frederick Taylor's century-old The Principles of Scientific Management.

But Peter Drucker did arguably (1) "invent" modern management as we now think of it; (2) give the study and craft of management-as-profession credibility and visibility, even though biz schools like Harvard had been around for a long time; and (3) provide a (the first?) comprehensive toolkit-framework for addressing and even mastering the problems of emergent enterprise complexity.

And he did something else incredibly important: He popularized the study of-appreciation of modern management. Doubtless Mr Drucker would have been appalled to be described as a "popularizer"—after all, that was one of his abiding and biting criticisms of me. But the truth is that, though his consulting was carried out in the stratospheric confines of CEO-world, his books and articles were very comprehensible and accessible to the likes of LTJG Thomas J Peters, USN, in 1968, when Peters, age 25, left Vietnam and was assigned to a forces management team in the Pentagon. No, the Stanford Graduate School of Business from which Peters got an MBA six years later, in 1972, did not assign as much as a single word of Drucker's work. But in 1968 Peters read (devoured!) his first management text, Drucker's The Effective Executive—and was profoundly influenced by it. LTJG Peters was hardly alone!

To be sure, Drucker wrote continuously on a variety of issues; he was a genuine polymath. His comprehensive pieces in the Atlantic, for instance, covered an absurdly wide spectrum of human endeavor. Yet Drucker, correctly, will not be known for that work, and personally I don't think his historical significance will hinge on "inventing" the "knowledge worker." Rather, it will rest on works such as The Concept of the Corporation (1946), The Practice of Management (1954) and The Effective Executive (1967), which are the tracts that launched the "practice of management" as we know it to this day—and probably as we will know it for decades to come.

More Tributes

Tom's post today about Peter Drucker was also posted at 800CEORead. And for the rest of the week, the 8cr blog will honor Mr. Drucker by posting one tribute each day.

Event Slides

Tom is speaking to Computer Associates in Las Vegas. You can get the slides here: the final live version, or the long Web version.

Updates

Some of Tom's favorite topics have been in the news recently: China, mergers (failure thereof), marketing to women and boomers. And, of course, he has reflected those developments in his slides. An update from November 11th of Tom's Working Master is now available for downloading. His special presentation on Dramatic Difference warranted an update, too. And he designed a new Master presentation, the 1-Hour. Enjoy!

Peter Drucker, 1909-2005

Tom's away and out of touch, but all of us here at tompeters.com mourn the passing of the father of modern management.

Stuff: New Slides

Catching up, after my Monster Trip, on New Slides. Here are a few that I thought you might enjoy (I think they're self-explanatory):

China:

"U.S. manufacturers and retailers are shifting their domestic warehouses and distribution facilities to China as they seek to make supply chains more efficient"—Headline, page 1, Financial Times, 11.05

"A Return to Quotas: Limits on Textiles Could Push China Toward Making Upscale Goods"—Headline, New York Times, 11.05

"From Gunpowder to the Next Big Bang: Modern China Is Set to Get Creative"—Headline, New York Times, 11.05

Women:

Women poker players: More cautious. More patient. More disciplined. Bluff with more attention to the odds. More notes [on-line]. Learn more and improve faster. Less emotional, less ego. Know more about men than men do about them; more effective at exploiting men's attitudes. (Source: "Ante Up, Ladies: As poker mania grips the nation, more women are mastering the game, applying their own life lessons to poker and the lessons of poker to life," Time, 11.05)

"Women come out better on almost every count as investors ... They are less likely to hold a losing investment too long, and less likely to wait too long to sell a winner; they're also less likely to put too much money into a single investment or to buy a reputedly hot stock without doing sufficient research."—The Merrill report: "When It Comes to Investing, Gender A Strong Influence on Behavior." (Source: Atlantic)

"More Hotels Try to Offer What Women Want: Security, Luxury ... Female Travelers Are Coveted by Lodging Industry"—Headline, USA Today, 11.05

Q: No. 1 contributor to developing country economic improvement?
A: More education for women.

Source: Many* (*On a related note, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife just gave $100M to Tufts—its biggest gift ever—to support micro-lending; women typically are the recipients of 90% of micro-loans because they use the $$$ more productively than men.)

Medical errors:

"Disclosure of Medical Mistakes Sought: State Legislator Wants Hospitals to Forfeit Fees"—Headline, P1, Boston Globe, 11.05

Bar bets:

Q: #1 R&D spending, last 25 years?
A: GM

GE:

Immelt reverses Welch, goes long: "He is now identifying technologies with which GE will systematically set out to build entirely new industries."—strategy+business, Fall 2005

All yours.

"Simple"

Of course it's not simple! "Nation building," that is. Especially in Iraq. On the other hand, I urge you to read, "How One Soldier Brought Democracy to Iraq: The Mayor of Ar Rutbah," by the "mayor" himself, Major James Gavrilis/U.S. Army Special Forces (Foreign Policy, November-December 2005). The often brushed-over fact is that around the world the Army is becoming more and more decentralized, depending on "entrepreneurs"-in-uniform to perform the complex tasks of stabilization and nation building. Some are successful at these remarkably complex tasks, and many aren't. Gavrilis is an exemplar of those who "get it." The task is insanely (right word) complex, but on the other hand built upon remarkably simple and universal pillars—that work in the coal mine, finance department and in the middle of the desert. Consider these two compelling quotes from MAJ Gavrilis:

"We behaved as if we were guests in their house. We treated them not as a defeated people, but as allies. Our success became their success."

"We were friendly and respectful whenever we met a Bedouin or farmer, often sharing tea with them in the middle of the open desert. Our behavior sent the clearest message: We cared more about the people of Ar Rutbah than did the Fedayeen. ... After all, we had done everything possible to limit damage to civilian infrastructure and private property. ... We treated enemy wounded and distributed contraband food. I stopped our final assault to institute a day-long cease-fire as a gesture to the people of
the city."

I don't mean that MAJ Gavrilis wasn't tough when required (often!), but that the guiding principle was to avoid acting like an occupying victor and acting instead a respectful supporter. After all, the entire idea of this venture (chimerical quest for WMD notwithstanding) is to build a symbolic Fortress of Democracy in the heart of the Middle East.

Democracy's underpinning ultimately is respect for the rights and collective wisdom of the governed.

To put it mildly, the major's remarks ("secrets") dovetail perfectly with quotes that I've long used in my mostly private-sector leadership seminars:

"What creates trust, in the end, is the leader's manifest respect for the followers."—Jim O'Toole, leadership guru, Leading Change

"It was much later that I realized Dad's secret. He gained respect by giving it. He talked and listened to the fourth-grade kids 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."—Professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Harvard, Respect

There's no such thing, for example, as a wildly successful six-sigma program (or a nation-building effort) without respect for the autonomy and goodwill of the "governed."

Consider another pillar of my take on implementation of successful change programs and MAJ Gavrilis's mid-desert approach. Here's a common exchange between me and a participant at one of my events:

Participant: "How long does it take to bring about significant change?"

TP: "Whatever you say it does."

That is, more or less (mostly more) change takes as long as you expect it to. Expect it to be a 3-year process and so it will be. (In fact such lengthy processes seldom materialize; the "targets" are worn out long before execution has progressed very far.) On the other hand, if you believe that the attitudinal shift, even a fundamental attitudinal shift, can occur in a couple of weeks, so it will ordinarily will be. (ASSUMING YOU GET AN A+ IN "WALK THE TALK." Gandhi: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world.") And so it was in Ar Rutbah. Believe it or not, MAJ Gavrilis and his cohorts and Iraqi "partners" had made giant (right word) practical strides toward local autonomy and stabilization in a ... week!

Not to drag this out too long, the Foreign Policy article coincided with a brief but compelling piece on the under-appreciated, under-funded Coast Guard's remarkable effectiveness post-Katrina:

"HOW THE COAST GUARD GETS IT RIGHT"—Headline, Time, 10.31.2005

The USCG's "secrets":

*Autonomy
*Flexibility

And the bedrock upon which these two all-important principles rest: "Perhaps the most important distinction of the Coast Guard is that it trusts itself." Or, rather, the degree to which the USCG trusts its local commanders to do the right thing without ceaseless checking and "co-ordination" with the always clumsy chain of command.

Which, in turn, calls forth another of the pillars of my belief system as expressed in my seminars. It was best and most succinctly explicated by Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman in their masterwork Organizing Genius:

"Groups become great only when everyone in them, leaders and members alike, is free to do his or her absolute best."

"The best thing a leader can do for a Great Group is to allow its members to discover their greatness."

Amen!

I could go on ... and on. Instead I'll close by emphasizing the obvious: When an organization works—very small or very large, private sector or public sector or independent sector—it invariably does so by assiduously attending to the Universal Principles demonstrated above.

It's that simple.
It's that hard.

(Part of this analysis is captured in the attached PowerPoint Special Presentation.)

Blanket Endorsement

When I'm confused or concerned about public issues (most of the time), I almost unfailingly start my journey through/out of the wilderness via Andrew Sullivan. I occasionally or more disagree with him, but invariably leave the discussion with a shimmer of congealing clarity.

More Space

Our friend Todd Sattersten over at 800CEOREAD has been very, very busy. In addition to his duties at 8cr, writing his blog, having a baby, and launching inBubbleWrap, he's just published a new book. It's called More Space: Nine Antidotes to Complacency in Business, and it's written by nine hip business bloggers (edited by Todd). This book gives the bloggers a bit "more space" to amplify and deepen their thoughts on the themes of passion, authenticity, productivity, change, community, simplicity, innovation, and perspective. I can't wait to dig in. Order your copy, then let us know what you think!

Cool Friend: Gartner

The book The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a Little) Craziness and (a Lot of) Success in America has a lot of buzz going on around it. Tom wrote about it in March, in a blog entry called "Nuts!," where he said, "'nuts' is the source of our economic might. ... I'm quite taken by John Gartner's new [book]." Hypomanic Edge has been featured in many national, business, and international publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and the International Herald Tribune (paid subscriptions required except Fortune). Perhaps its ultimate tribute is to come—it is to be featured in the New York Times Magazine's annual "Year in Ideas" issue, which highlights the "most innovative, controversial, and exciting ideas of the year."

We interviewed John Gartner, the author of The Hypomanic Edge, and we're glad to have him join the ranks of our Cool Friends. Read the interview here. You can also visit his website, hypomanicedge.com.

Not Gloating (Much)

No, I'm not gloating, because too much pain has been caused. But if you go back almost exactly a year in this Blog, I think you'll find that as part of my utter contempt for Giant Mergers in general I was utterly contemptuous of the Sears-Kmart linkup, despite the track record of Linker-in-Chief/Hedge-fund Main Man Edward Lampert. Nonetheless, I promise on my word of honor that I did not gloat at the following:

"Mr Lampert should stick to investing, not matchmaking."—Gretchen Morgenson, Page 1, New York Times Sunday Business, 11.06.05, "The Sears Catalog of Problems" (subscription required for link)

So why does this S***/the Same S*** keep happening?

Breaking My Rule

I'm obviously a lucky guy. My fees allow me often to stay at Four Seasons Hotels. I know I'm unusually lucky, and that the Four Seasons is an uncommon treat—and so I try not to overdo Four Seasons examples.

But I've got to break my rule ...

I have a Presentation in Chicago today, and Susan came with me yesterday so we could go to a birthday dinner. My closest friend's son and I are born on the same day, November 7. (Dead-center Scorpios, by the way.) Frank Jr lives in Chicago and is turning 36; I'm his mirror image, 63 ...

Anyway, Susan was desperate to see last night's West Wing, which of course was pre-empted by the dinner. On a lark, about 15 minutes before we went out, she called the Concierge and asked if by any odd chance they could tape the show for her/us.

"Naturally," they said, "No problem."

Upshot. Great dinner. Returned to the hotel at 10pm. Our VCR was set up with the show tape in it, and a little Post-it note saying, "Happy Birthday, push Start." (There was also a plate of treats next to the note.)

Ye gads ...

Event Slides: Chicago

In Chicago, Tom's speaking to investment & corporate banking firm Harris Nesbitt, and his theme for the day is "Innovate or Die." Lately, he's been making two PPT files for each speaking engagement, the presentation version, and the longer Web version. This time, he's gone one better, and I think you'll like it. There's an outline of today's presentation. Hitting just the main points on that theme, it has a great deal of impact.

Am I More or Less Right?

11.03.2005/Headline/USA Today: "Time Warner Announces 80% Higher Earnings: Company Raises Stock Buyback Goal"

TP: When a so-so company's stock is in the tank and shareholders are restless and unimpressed with short-term earnings boosts and when the company has cash on hand and when the company has utterly no idea how to invest the cash in anything exciting that will offer a great return that will lift the share price it can buy back a big hunk of its stock which not only lifts the share price but also relieves the company of the crushing burden of having to worry about doing anything imaginative with the money and it also puts wealth in the hands of shareholders who following the precepts of portfolio theory can quit worrying for awhile about the hapless, unimaginative leadership of the buyback company and instead invest the newfound wealth in a firm such as Google or Amgen which always is in need of cash to fund a long list of very cool ideas which probably will result in the creation of ... can you believe it ... actual underlying and perhaps even sustainable value.

(For those who agree with the above, you'll find it in PowerPoint here.)

Vioxx Makes Me Feel Better!

It's damned hard to love a Big Pharmaceutical company—especially if you viewed John LeCarré's latest, The Constant Gardener. Moreover, I don't know the details of the Vioxx lawsuit which Merck effectively won today.

What I can say is that with Great Gain comes some Pain. I do not take lightly the death of a single human being from Vioxx, if indeed that were the case. I do believe that if a drug dramatically helps millions, one must, for better or worse, expect a little downside. I do not want to see clinical trials for new drugs extended forever and ever. And subsequent approval extended forever and ever. Perhaps it's a function of age, but I want demonstrated good stuff available even if there is a minute chance of attendant harm. As in: Welcome to Life 101. Right now I have a couple of docs fighting about a drug that might help me with a minor problem. One is conservative. One is aggressive. The med that the aggressive one wants to use has a few low-odds side effects. I don't know how I'll decide, but I damn well appreciate having the two options.

(Truth in lending: I was a temporary Vioxx user, following a bout of knee pain a few years ago. It worked.)

Creative Destruction

Folks I know are still abuzz over the Martin Scorsese documentary on Bob Dylan, No Direction Home, telecast a few weeks ago on the Public Broadcasting System. It's no surprise that my musician and actor friends have been energized by it, but business clients, too? What gives? Maybe it's because so many leaders in business are baby boomers and Dylan was a major contributor to the soundtrack of their lives in their formative years. But more importantly, the film is a powerful reminder that it sometimes makes business sense to blow up what you're successfully doing and start over. No Direction Home accurately portrays Dylan as a pioneer/mutineer who kept burning his bridges and creating new markets as he moved on. Initially he branded himself as a traditional folk singer, then as a singer of self-penned topical protest songs, then as a stream-of-consciousness psychedelic poet, then as a rock star—before retiring, temporarily, in the late 1960s. Want to see creative destruction in action? Witness Dylan "going electric" at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 (and in other concerts for the next two years) with a noisy band of rock musicians—a move that ENRAGED many of his core customers. Yet Dylan picked up new customers with every reboot. He'd be loath to call it a business strategy, but it was certainly a successful one. Something here for us to learn?

Big Moo Reminder

I know we've mentioned it before, but I've got Big Moo on my mind since I'm headed to NYC for a launch party Thursday night. The book's sales number at Amazon.com is now 150, though it was as low as 70 last week. Help Seth, Tom, Dan Pink, and all the other authors raise more money for charity by buying multiple copies of the book. Thanks.

Cool Friend: Kelley

Tom Kelley, General Manager of IDEO, is back with his second Cool Friend interview. His new book under discussion is The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization, coauthored with Jonathan Littman. From the following you can see how the roles ("faces") work in real life:

[Someone at a meeting] will say, "Now, Erik, don't take it personally. I was just being devil's advocate." And in fact, nothing could be more personal. They just shot down your favorite idea, right? Anyway, the devil's advocate makes a pretty darn good illustration of how a role works. ... I believe that if we were to catch ourselves about to say, "Let me be devil's advocate," we could turn that around into something more constructive, such as, "What this idea really needs, or "What this lacks," or "The way I would make this better is ..."

You can read the whole interview here. Welcome back, Tom!

Naiveté!

Hate to make this post because it betrays both my wholesale ignorance and stupendous innocence. I take no notice of the numerous "mail delivery failed" emails that arrive and for which I simply press "delete." In an idle moment today, or by accident, I clicked the read icon, and then puzzled through the email. It was 14 pages of gibberish, except for the address section at the top. What was being returned was an email from my very private address that I had sent to aprasad.ahd@omamconsultants.com. Omamconsultants may well be legit; on the other hand, they may be planning to destroy the world ... and have hijacked my email address as part of the convoluted process.

There's not a damn thing I can do, as far as I know, but it did send literal chills up & down my back ...