Efficient Toast

There is an interesting article in this month's Harvard Business Review called "Breaking the Trade-off Between Efficiency and Service." The basic idea is that service businesses, unlike manufacturers, have the unfortunate challenge that customers come barging in and interfere with their operations, introducing significant variability. Most businesses think they face a black and white choice:—accommodate the variability, or reduce it. The author, Frances Frei, says there are better ways to address this challenge.

While reading this article, I came face to face with this problem as I tried to order toast.

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An Old Debate, Revisited

I recently read Marcus Buckingham's Now, Discover Your Strengths. I bought in to the idea that tapping into and developing an individual's innate talents is the way to go. He argues that training is ineffective if someone does not have a natural propensity to learn what it is you are trying to teach. However, someone could have an unrealized talent that, once discovered, can be developed through knowledge, education, and experience.

Well, if you've read the recent Fortune magazine (October 30, 2006) cover story, "What It Takes to Be Great," you know that recent research shows that "the lack of natural talent is irrelevant to great success." It all comes down to "practice and hard work."

On which side of this debate do you stand?

Mindless Business

Recently, Tom told us about an upcoming book, Mindless Eating, by Brian Wansink. The book is now out, and it's very interesting. Key themes—The amount we eat is usually not determined by how full we are, but by how much food is put in front of us. And, we usually underestimate how much we've eaten. (I highly recommend the book. The stale popcorn story at the beginning is worth the price of admission.)

Can't help but relate this to business—How often do people, out of inertia, keep working on the thing that's in front of them, without questioning whether it's worth continuing? And, would they then underestimate the amount of time that's been sucked up by a stale project?

Leapfrog Measures Safety

You have to be intrigued by a group that calls themselves "Leapfrog!" The Leapfrog Group is an organization that focuses on promoting health care quality and safety. They have created an assessment to determine the safety readiness of hospitals across the country. According to a recent press release, "Fifty-nine U.S. hospitals have been named to the first Leapfrog Top Hospitals list, based on ... results from the Leapfrog Hospital Quality and Safety Survey, a national rating system that offers a broad assessment of a hospital's quality and safety. The survey results from over 1,200 hospitals ... reveal significant findings ..."

Part of the survey has revealed that 9 out of 10 hospitals have implemented procedures to avoid wrong site surgeries. In our language, that means they assure operating on the right part of the body! Hmmm, do you wonder what the rest of the hospitals are doing?

The Leapfrog Group publishes and updates hospital data regularly, and it can be viewed by consumers at no charge on their website, www.leapfroggroup.org.

See if your hospital has made the top fifty-nine list: Leapfrog_Top_Hospitals_2006_list.pdf

Comments Housekeeping

To cut down on spam attacks we have a limit on the number of links you can include in a comment. And that limit is one. So if you've tried to include more than one link in a comment it goes into comment purgatory. From which we can save it if we find it. But the better alternative is to just limit your links to one and then your comments won't get held up. Thanks for your understanding.

Cool Friend: Pipher

A clinical psychologist with a background in anthropology, Mary Pipher has written seven books, including three New York Times bestsellers: Reviving Ophelia, The Shelter of Each Other, and Another Country. In her Cool Friends interview, we discuss her latest, Writing to Change the World. Upon reading the book, Tom had this to say:

Call me hopelessly naive, but I believe there is no excuse for any variety of "business writing" that should be crafted any less carefully or aim any less high than a great novel or great inaugural address. After all, we do aim—day in and day out—to change the world via our human collectivities called enterprises. Right?

You can read Mary Pipher's Cool Friends interview here.

Thirty Years. 1976-2006. Sell. Sell. Sell.

I'm a Robert Louis Stevenson kinda guy: "Everyone lives by selling something." I've been a traveling idea salesman for 30 years, since the foreshadowing of the Peters-Waterman "excellence thing" at McKinsey/San Francisco in 1976. That's a lot of miles. But Zig Ziglar would approve: I love the "product." I am compelled to sell. (I'm in Milano on a sales call as I write—at 4 a.m.) A lot of miles ... because I think these ideas matter. They represent a more liberating way to work-live than is the norm. And they are the most likely path-to-profit. To figure out why I'm still on the road, 10 days before my 64th birthday, I made a list, in no particular order, of the "products" in my salesman's bag:

* "Hard is soft. Soft is hard." Social stuff, Emotional stuff = Good stuff.
* Mess = Normal = Reality. Rationality = Delusional. Non-linearity = Life 101. (Design accordingly!)
* Failure = Normal = Good. ("Reward excellent failure. Punish mediocre success." "Fail faster. Succeed sooner." "Fail. Forward. Fast.")
* If "they" agree with you—then you're on the wrong path.
* Do > Think. Act > Talk. Action bias!! EXPERIMENT!! R.F.A./Ready. Fire. Aim.
* Decentralization = Holy writ = More independent tries.
* Implementation-Execution-the "Missing 98%."
* Strategic planning, limits thereto. Severe.
* Pitiful performance of Huge Companies. Need C.D.O./Chief Destruction Officer.
* Severe limits to scale advantage. Mega-mergers = Bad = Stupid.
* "Built to last." Why??? Instead: Built to change the world.
* People first! People Power!
* Best "roster" wins! HR (should) rule!
* WOMEN'S WORLD!!!!!!! (MARKET. WEALTH. LEADERSHIP.)
* Aesthetics! Beauty! Grace! (Design primacy.)
* EXCELLENCE. ALWAYS.
* MBWA!!!!!!! (Managing By Wandering Around.)
* Don't over-complicate. (MBWA, Product, People, Action ...)
* Educate for Risk-taking, Creativity, Independence.
* B.Schools suck. Teach all ... except what's important. D.School = Cool.
* Healthcare's Big Three: Quality. Prevention. Wellness.
* R > C. (Adding Revenue > Cutting cost.) C.R.O./Chief Revenue Officer. Sell! Sell! Sell!
* Free markets work! Free trade works! Rise of India-China = Good thing. Fight back with Excellent Performance: Add "insane" amounts of value! Become a "Lovemark"!!
* Brand You. Self-reliance!! Mastery!! Liberation!!
* Survival = PSF/Professional Service Firm "mindset." Goal #1: Enable clients to become successful beyond their dreams!
* Fun! ("Cool" is Cool.)
* Service-obsessed!/Experience-obsessed! (Object: "Raving fans.")
* Passion-Exuberance-Enthusiasm. "Hot" Language! WOW! Insanely great!
* The "right thing" is the profitable thing.

(La Scala above: What else?!)

Event: Milan

HSM's World Business Forum is in Milan today, and Tom sent us the flower stall picture to complement his photo of La Scala above. Nice. If you would like to download the slides, you can do so here:
HSM World Business Forum, Milan, Italy

Henry Mintzberg Is Crazy

That's what the Frankfurt journalist said. (Okay, more or less.) A radical. On the fringe. I know Henry Mintzberg. And he is not crazy. Michael Porter? The late Peter Drucker? They're my candidates for crazy.

I agree with Henry Mintzberg almost 100% of the time. Did in 1970. Do so today. The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning is probably my favorite management book of the last 25 years. (I've offered up other "bests" over the years—but Rise and Fall has influenced me personally more than any other.)

I read Peter Drucker's The Effective Executive while a U.S. Navy lieutenant in the Pentagon in 1968. I liked it. In a madcap environment, his idea of setting aside an uninterrupted hour a day for planning seemed a great idea. Twenty-eight years later it still seems like a good idea—maybe someday (I'm only 63) I'll get that hour.

In the meantime my life wanders on, chopped up and ...

Chopped up and ... decidedly non-linear. You see, Henry Mintzberg and I are avowed "non-linearists," purveyors of the idea that managing (or, even more so, "leading") is a non-linear affair. I'm not sure of HM's mentors, but I am a direct descendent of Herbert Simon, the only management academic to bag a Nobel Prize. (Economics, 1978.) Simon coined the word "satisficing." He said managers behaved, under the pressure and force of reality, in a non-rational, non-linear, best-they-can, on-the-run fashion. Simon often collaborated with James March, an emeritus Stanford professor—and one of my mentors. March, my great colleague Gene Webb, and Karl Weick were my teachers of the non-linear way called reality. It's no coincidence that the first book Jim March assigned in the first class I took from him was One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. In general, good fiction is a better descriptor of organizational life than most non-fiction. I was reading only yesterday about David Cornwell (aka John Le Carré); the author compared Cornwell's and George Smiley's messy realism with the linear (good is immediately distinguishable from evil, etc.) world of Ian Fleming and James Bond.

Michael Porter's world is Bond's world, in a way. Think logically, develop a plan ... and succeed. My world (and Herb Simon's) is about doing the best you can in the midst of near chaos and madness—and hoping things work out in a mostly satisfactory fashion. (Looking at the shabby performance of the lion's share of mammoth companies, such a "satisfactory" rarely sustains. Dirty reality intervenes.)

The point of all this, relative to the German reporter's comment about Mintzberg, and implication about me, is that we are not "nutters." We come from a clear academic lineage—and are simply recent manifestations thereof. We both have contempt for the rationalists among us. (Mintzberg, amazingly, may be a more vociferous critic of Biz Schools than I am.) Our "advice," such as it is, comes from the premise of the ineluctable mess with which we (and our institutions) are permanently surrounded.

"We are in a brawl with no rules," according to former Xerox chief Paul Allaire. To which I say there is but one answer ... S.A.V. (Obviously: Screw Around Vigorously.) The deep philosophy behind this flippant phrase: To deal with a mess and to remove a little of the surrounding ambiguity demands acting, not talking—so one can see how the messy world reacts to your experiment.

To make a convincing argument would take 500 thousand words. Ah, through 15 books and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of columns and articles and Posts I have tried to do just that—describe messy reality and offer a few practical suggestions for dealing with it. In the meantime, you'll find, naturally, a PowerPoint attached: "The (Necessary) War on Linearity: One Engineer's (Unusual) Life's Work." The principal "chapter" thereof is titled, what else, "Think vs. Do." (I'm also including a PPT that is a condensed version of the "Think vs. Do" chapter.) The last "chapter" is titled "Worth the Hassle." It summarizes the areas that have interested me, and in which I've tried to be helpful, over the last three decades or so. There it is, my non-linear life. A far cry from my Civil Engineering roots. Damned reality, anyway.

"We are now allowed"

I was conducting a workshop yesterday with hotel industry salespeople. We were discussing how to have meaningful encounters with customers, and had arrived at a section of the workshop that focused on getting beyond the facade of business roles ("salesperson" and "customer") to see each other as unique, special people.

One participant commented: "We are now allowed to talk about things beyond business, to ask about our customers' personal lives, so we can get to know them as people."

I loved how she articulated that. Her belief—which I share—is that we have arrived at a point in time where genuine human encounter in business is more valued than ever. It is accepted and expected to go beyond the strict bounds of business to create meaningful business relationships.

And, of course, this means that it is not only appropriate to seek to know a customer as a real person, it is important for the person who is selling to reveal his or her humanity. Salespeople playing the role of salespeople is out. Salespeople being themselves is in.

Site News II

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Outsourcing Surgery

Thursday on ABC News, I watched a special on Outsourcing Surgery in India. At a hospital in India, some Americans are finding a solution to having surgeries that aren't approved by their health insurance. One woman flew 30 hours to have a 30-minute surgery at 1/3 the cost in America. Because her condition was considered "pre-existing," she was not covered by her health plan. Her condition made it painful to walk and sit for any length of time, and she was in constant pain—not how we should want people to live their lives. But she worked for a small company, and the insurance wouldn't cover it. Her employer, however, kept searching for a different solution to help her fix the situation. The answer was PlanetHospital.

PlanetHospital takes care of all the details, meets the patient at the airport, and takes them right to the hospital. Even though this particular patient arrived during late hours, the hospital received her and prepared her for surgery. The hospital in India supposedly has lower infection rates when compared to the U.S. Interestingly enough, India is in the process of building more medical facilities closer to the airport.

Surgery, anyone?

Frankfurt

Tom sent us the photo above from Frankfurt, where he's speaking at the World Business Forum presented by HSM. You can download the PPT presentations for the event here:
HSM World Business Forum, Frankfurt, Final
HSM World Business Forum, Frankfurt, Long Version

Oh Boy ...

Yes, I know Jeff Skilling. (I've never hidden that fact.) He worked directly for me on a study for Frito-Lay in his early days at McKinsey. And, yes, he is as smart and clever as advertised. And, yes, I still think the nub of the "Enron model" makes sense. Hey, at every turn today (think eBay) the idea is to reduce the abiding friction in every sort of market transaction; and that was Enron's guiding idea.

Here's a quote from an AOL posting a few minutes ago on Skillling's 24-year sentence: "The former CEO's arrogance, belligerence and lack of contriteness under questioning made him a lightning rod for the rage generated by the collapse of Enron in 2001."

All true. Skilling, not Lay, created a "culture" of swashbuckling that I'm not unfamiliar with given 30 years' residence in Silicon Valley. But the swashbuckling got out of hand—and I'm not surprised at that in a Skilling venture. And then "out of hand" drifted, then plunged toward illegal, then egregiously illegal (think California).

It's easy to say that if JS had curbed his arrogance-belligerence he'd at least be facing less jail time. But then he wouldn't be the Jeff who got in trouble in the first place.

So, with Grasso last week and Skilling this week, perhaps it's mostly done.

I know Jeff, and thence I am sorry about his future, such as it is. Alas, I fear it was deserved—and I am even more sorry that Kenny Boy Lay won't be in the cell next door.

NB: With some degree of regularity, comments at this Blog rail about Sarbanes-Oxley. Well, fine ... but rail against Skilling & Fastow & Rigas & Rigas & Ebbers & Grasso. Don't lay it off on Congress. Congress is by design (we call it the Constitution) late to act—and then moves, inevitably, to over-correction. It will ever be thus.

Eastern Flyway Magic

Back "home" (Annapolis, where I grew up) for a wedding this past Saturday. Spent the preceding and following nights in Oxford, MD, heart of the "Eastern Shore" (of the Chesapeake). Little sleep due to the deafening sound of Canadian Geese headin' south. The Eastern Shore flyway is one of the most important eastern migratory stops—and the migration is an amazing and moving sight to witness. In a couple of weeks, I think, there will be millions of our feathered friends parking here.

The picture above is "morning in Oxford on the Tred Avon River;" below is an oyster boat, with tongs, berthed at Tilghman Island. (A couple more pics are at Flickr, including one of the rare bits of humor, from an Eastern Shore political poster, surrounding the upcoming election.)

The Morning After, But There Ain't No Pill

I am lethargic with depression. The bombardment at home, and now as I travel, in Europe, of news from every political and military as well as civilian quarter that apparently signals the final unraveling of the Iraq "adventure" is, literally, mentally debilitating.

I find each additional loss of a soldier's life to be almost physically unbearable.* It seems there is no good, or even half good, exit strategy; and no positive scenarios attendant to sticking around.

(*And why does such a statement not include the monthly thousands of innocent Iraqi deaths? For shame—on me.)

Part of my almost clinical depression is the nightmarish parallels to the Vietnam War in which I fought, and which we lost—though, frankly, I think the stakes are much higher this time. Much higher, at worst borderline apocalyptic.

Whichever political party wields the gavel as of 8 November is confronted only with Hobbesian Choices.

Here's the content of a slide I use from Blair advisor Robert Cooper's 2004 The Breaking of Nations:

"This is a dangerous world and it is going to become more dangerous. ... We may not be interested in chaos but chaos is interested in us."

How prescient.

(NB: Much to the chagrin of my closest friends, and upon deep reflection, I supported the war initially. What was I smoking ...)

No Pictures!

When I got back from my seminar in Barcelona, the dusk was approaching. I quickly changed and hit the streets—in search of Gaudi. I did the "male thing" ... and refused to ask for help. Hence, both I and my Sony DSC-11 zeroed out.

Alas.

(Guess I'll have to come back. Which is a great idea.)

A Scold

Despite Jet Lag Majoris, I had an absolutely delightful time on Wednesday participating in Catalonia's annual day of homage to innovation. Once more the reception was overwhelming. And the "new friends" role ballooned. I felt so good, in fact, that my "feisty gene" kicked in.

For instance, I rejected the conventional idea that for a modest-sized geographic area to be successful there's a need to attract Giant Enterprise. To the contrary, I argued for entrepreneurialism and a central role for medium-sized enterprise.

I also questioned the need to depend on "leading edge" industries. Significant participation in such industries is a plus, no doubt—but once again, it is the excellence of enterprise that matters most. There is, as I see it, almost no such thing as an "old industry"—most every industry is ripe for new approaches. Think, for example, Wal*Mart, discount retailing and Bentonville-Rodgers AK.

Warmed up, I took on the European issue of declining or stagnant populations. I extolled the historically immigrant-DEPENDENT U.S. approach to growth. I surprised myself with my vehemence. "Who better an entrant than someone with the nerve to leave their roots behind, and swim across a river while dogs bared their teeth on the desired bank?" The issue is hyper-controversial, and I am hardly urging blanket amnesty for millions upon millions. Yet it is true that America's surprisingly sustained vitality is spurred mightily (mostly?) by new waves of those who "want it more" than the stagnant scions of the past. Hey, such untrammeled hunger is what rightfully scares us about the Indian surge. Moreover, waves of new & different "immigrants" are the only possible route to that rarest of corporate accomplishments—renewal. It surely is the trick of tricks at the likes of PepsiCo and GE.

Still on a roll, I questioned the future of the EU, taking that easiest of targets—the French. It's not the degree to which the Airbus fiasco reveals the problems of "picking 'national champions'" that bothers me. Instead, it's the absurd idea that anyone could compete today with a 35-hour work week. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. Yet it is true that the relatively vigorous UK is about to go to the mat (again) over the proposed universal EU restriction on work weeks over 48 hours. The Brits chose earlier to use the "opt out" option—but the EU apparently has the votes to nullify their opt-out and force them to comply. I also decried the power of the exponentially growing army of faceless, largely unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels busily churning out thousands of pages of competition-restricting regulations each and every day-year. Is Europe attempting to copy India's notorious "license Raj"?

And then I came home.

Ticket to Oslo for Lee Scott?

You are surely aware of my thrill at Muhammad Yunus' Nobel. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed John Tierney's International Herald Tribune (Wednesday) piece, "Shopping for a Nobel." Tierney questions the impact of micro-lending, and suggests, tongue only halfway in cheek, maybe less, that the Prize should instead have gone to Wal*Mart: "Has any organization in the world lifted more people out of poverty than Wal*Mart?" he asks.

Read it for yourself. It's worth a chuckle—and a moment or more's serious contemplation.

NB: I find the economics prize typically to be a farce. I can better understand what the physics winner has been up to than the econ winner—and I'm reasonably well trained in economics. But my simpler point is: Why don't the economics prize judges look at the likes of Grameen and Muhammad Yunus? I hereby nominate MY for Nobel #2, next year's economics prize.

I Love You Ann, Redux

I defended repetition of message last week, assuming the issue is important and the implementation is still lacking. Hence my latest paean to the late Ann Richards. Remember: "Pissed off at a glitch? Fine. But be nice. Very nice. Very, very nice. The person on the other side of the counter [etc] is the Only Human Being on Earth, at the moment, who can help solve your problem. Or not."

Barcelona airport. 4:30 a.m. Biiiiiig computer glitch, courtesy United—and the elves are sleepin' in Chicago. Biiiiiig Glitch, "unexcusable" ... and I am weary weary weary. (And I have a veeeery short fuse in general, and particularly when weary at 4:30 A.M. 3,500 miles from home.)

So I did 1 minute of "practiced breathing" ... "did a Maxi-Ann." I had, I reminded myself, but one desire: in a busy airport, I wanted a very "unfair share" of the Lufthansa agent's time. With total concentration that would have made a neurosurgeon proud, I launched a Maxi Charm Offense—accepting my fate and musing on the tech-driven perils of our current age, "especially since your employer is giving you the short end of the stick courtesy understaffing and the like." [The syrup nearly flooded the airport.]

This is not, not, not a "Tom Story." This is, is, is an "Ann Story." Both you and I are, in the end, capable of a WMP* charm offense (*Weapons of Mass Politeness).

The "bottom line" ... I got that blessed Unfair Share of the agent's time, and then some; with tenacity, she did indeed untangle the Gordian Knot; we sympathized with one another on "the sorry state of human affairs"—and, unbidden, I will send a note commending her effort.

I am obviously asking your indulgence for "another Ann story"/ "another airline story." My justification, of course, is that it's in fact a fundamental saga of human nature—and, crudely, the difference between success and failure ... in an airport at 4:30 A.M., or when attempting to ice an order for another Boeing Dreamliner.

NB: Perhaps you'll recall the Henry Clay quote I offered up a few weeks ago: "Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart."

Bingo!

15 Words

The "right" 15 words can reframe a major issue. And I found 'em, for me, relative to one of my "Top 10" strategic business concerns. New (and damn good) book from AARP boss Bill Novelli, 50+: Igniting a Revolution to Reinvent America. Stop the clucking, already. Of course it's institutionally self-serving. But that doesn't keep it from being damn good.

And here is the turn of phrase I love: "People turning 50 today have more than half of their adult life ahead of them."

That's it!
Listening, you teen-obsessed weenies [oops, marketing "geniuses"]?
Trillions upon trillions of bucks.
Lots and lots of time.
And energy.
And: Eager to spend.

Repeat: MORE THAN HALF!

Photo from Another Quarter

Mike Neiss sent us this photo just to show us that winter is coming fast to his part of the world. We love it, so we're posting it here. Taken in South Haven, Michigan, on the Lake Michigan shore. Lighthouse 862. And, yes, there's snow. In October.

Slides: CIDEM

Having moved on from Istanbul, Tom is in Barcelona today speaking at Catalonia's Annual Innovation Conference hosted by CIDEM. (If you know Spanish, you can click on the link and get the full story. If you don't, you can click on the link and get a fair idea.) The slides for the event are available here:
XAlways, CIDEM

Take Care

My old friend Hal Rosenbluth is up to something ... very good. Or at least I think so. He built his travel services firm, Rosenbluth International to a progressive giant with in excess of $3 billion in revenue, then peddled it to American Express. Now he's taking on healthcare. His vehicle is Take Care. Take Care establishes walk-in mini-clinics in retail establishments. The likes of CVS, Wal*Mart, and Target are on the implementers' list. With generous funding aboard, over 1,000 locations should be up and running by the close of 2007.

Nurse practitioners staff the centers, a charge of $25–$50 is the norm, and a series of common tests and the likes of flu shots are the product. As at his travel firm, Hal is utilizing the most advanced software, including artificial-intelligence systems to be part of a featured self-diagnostic process.

I am still appalled at the lack of health care availability at a reasonable price for many Americans, including children. But, without being a radical on the topic, I'm also intrigued at the way the market is responding. A couple of weeks ago the Wall Street Journal did a front page piece on how members of high-deductible plans were responding. Most have, as hoped, become far more involved in healthcare decision-making than before. Web-based information and the likes of Take Care are also part of the burgeoning portfolio of options.

Shortcomings and abuses will be part of the shakedown process, though they could hardly be worse than the current system that features such things as ambulances aimlessly circling cities with acutely ill people aboard—as they seek an ER willing to take them.

Good show, Hal. May a hundred hundred flowers—imaginative experiments—bloom! Though, as I said, deeply distressed by holes in our system, certainly this portfolio of experiments is preferable to a centralized government-run system fecklessly controlling 20% or so of our economy!

Stats of the Week

China's reserves are set to surpass one-trillion dollars, America is to top 300,000,000 citizens—and non-married heads-of-household have surpassed married headed households. Each is an important landmark. Joel Kotkin's marvelous piece in the Wall Street Journal, "400 Million Americans" (October 17 in my international edition) is well worth reading. I've known Joel for a long time, and he has again provided a very wise and timely analysis of a pressing issue.

Life on the Road

Heathrow. Lounge. 6A.M. 15 October 2006. "Couldn't get any better than this."—yeah, right.

Slides: Istanbul

We have a photo to accompany the slides post today. Tom's in Istanbul, so there's a wealth of photo subjects. You'll find more of the pictures Tom took at Flickr.

If you would like to download the slides for the event, you may do so here:
XAlways, Istanbul, Final
XAlways, Istanbul, Long

Masters

In his blog post "Not. Yet. Done." of October 11th, Tom gave his reasons for putting the cause of Women back at the top of his agenda. Greatest among them: "The Degree of Market-Wealth Control by women is going through the roof." Which he says with the backing of the Economist: "Forget China, India and the Internet: Economic Growth Is Driven by Women," and the Financial Times: "For a number of observers, we have already entered the age of 'womenomics,' the economy as thought out and practiced by women." This renewed emphasis is reflected in a new Women++ PPT, that he introduced on the 11th and offers in an updated, expanded form here. He also folded the new women's issue slides into the XAlways Master, now 1419 slides long.

Glory Hallelujah!!

I danced around the kitchen! Though alone at 6 a.m., I pumped my arms skyward again and again! "Yes! Yes! Yes!" (Susan finally came downstairs to find out what the hell was going on.)

Simple. Muhammad Yunus has just been declared the winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

Yunus is the father of microlending, one of the most potent tools of ours or any other times. Microlending was long dismissed by the powers that be (the World Bank among them) as being a peanuts idea. Big Loans for Big Projects was the ticket. Yup, big loans for big projects was the ticket for a few good things ... and an unimaginable amount of corruption.

Yunus started Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. A typical first loan is $15. After many a trial and many an error, Grameen ended up granting over 90% of its loans to women. (Women = Reliable. Men = Unreliable.) Lending primarily to women in a Muslim country was, to say the least, no mean feat. Yet Yunus persisted.

A few Yunusisms, from his marvelous 1999 book, Banker to the Poor:

"It's not people who aren't credit-worthy. It's banks that aren't people worthy."

"Conventional banks ask their clients to come to their office. It's a terrifying place for the poor and illiterate. ... The entire Grameen Bank system runs on the principle that people should not come to the bank, the bank should go to the people. ... If any staff member is seen in the office, it should be taken as a violation of the rules of the Grameen Bank. ... It is essential that [those setting up a new village Branch] have no office and no place to stay. The reason is to make us as different as possible from government officials."

"The Grameen loan is not simply cash. It becomes a kind of ticket to self-discovery and self-exploration."

And this from a Client's husband:

"There is one thing [I don't like about Grameen]. I used to enjoy beating my wife. But the Group came to me and argued with me and shouted at me. Who gave them the right to shout at me? The borrowing group threatened they will get really mean if I beat my wife again."

I stumbled across Yunus & Grameen about 5 years ago. I went bananas! The story, of course, is amazing. Moreover, it dovetails with all of my Primary Biases:

Small can be beautiful & powerful!
People first!
Trust!
Women rule!!!!!!!!
Giant forests from tiny seedlings!
Self reliance!
Community based!
Self/Small group management!
Banish the bureaucrats!
Keep it simple, stupid!
Hands on!
Etc.
Etc. generic viagra online uk

I poured over Yunus' book, Banker to the Poor; and also became immersed in David Bornstein's The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank (University of Chicago Press). As usual, I put together a wee slide show, which we include here as it was in 2001 (with slight 2006 additions).

Glory Hallelujah!!

Yes!
Yes!
Yes!

Cool Friends: Taylor and LaBarre

Bill Taylor and Polly LaBarre are our new Cool Friends. Both of them had long careers at Fast Company (Bill was co-founder), and both have lots of experience writing and speaking on strategies, innovation, and personal success. Together they've written Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win. Early readers, they tell us, called the book In Search of (a New Kind of) Excellence. I think this book is one you'll want to get for yourselves. There are more references to Tom in the interview—take a look to see what they are.

Here's the Cool Friends interview, and, of course, there's a website devoted to mavericks at work, and a blog. Taylor and LaBarre also have their Manifesto for Mavericks at ChangeThis.

Blocking & Tackling

People are always looking for a silver bullet to help their businesses. Silver bullets can be great, but so often companies don't succeed due to poor execution of basic things. They try to throw the bomb but forget to block and tackle.

So I loved seeing a fact in a New York Times Magazine story on Mike Oher, a star lineman at University of Mississippi who had a rough childhood. The second highest paying position in the NFL, after quarterback? Left tackle.

The "Simple" Tools of Behavior Modification

Bob Waterman and I had only one chart in all of In Search of Excellence. It's on page 221, and it reports the work of MIT's Tom Allen on space and communication. The compelling chart we appropriated shows that if you and I are separated by 5 yards or less, the odds of us communicating at least once a week are nearly 100%. At 10 yards of separation, the odds plummet to about 9%; and said odds are almost constant at 3% if we're 30 to 100 yards apart. Among other things, such research led me to argue that the management of physical space is one of the most powerful tools that a boss has. There's a ton of evidence, including my own research, that demonstrates, for instance, that intermingling project teammates from various functions is an astonishingly potent device for increasing project effectiveness. (Incidentally, I believe this is just about as true in the "virtual-electronic communication age" as it ever was.)

Which—of course—leads me back to diets. Cornell researcher Brian Wansink's book, Mindless Eating, has just appeared. He claims we make about 200 dietary decisions a day. The self-manipulation of the most trivial ones can lead to perhaps a 200 calorie a week reduction—which adds up to a delightful 10 to 20 pounds a year.

These "trivial" tactics include using smaller plates and keeping the serving dishes (seconds!) in the kitchen rather than on the table. Reminiscent of Tom Allen's work, briefly reported above, Wansick tested the results of office workers with jars of Hershey's Kisses on their desks, versus candy located 6.5 feet away and not visible from anyone's desk. The six-and-a-half degrees of separation and invisibility led to a 63% reduction in kiss consumption!

There is a lot of evidence accumulating on the topic of obesity that touts such wee changes as the most powerful interventions. At Sprint's new HQ, for example, planners put the parking lot a quarter-mile from the office. (There is a van, but it is annoyingly infrequent.) The elevators in the low-rise building are irritatingly slow. The food court is as far away from the centers of frequent gathering as possible.

There is no limit to the application of this "simple" behavior-modification stuff. From project-team effectiveness to weight loss, such measures pack what could be called a matchless punch.

Words to Savor

Here are five great (per me) quotes I've recently come across and committed to PowerPoint. FYI:

"Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart."—Henry Clay

"The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time. The last 10% takes the other 90% of the time."—Richard Templar, The Rules of Management

"Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go."—William Feather, author ("Eighty percent of success is showing up."—Woody Allen)

"If it feels painful and scary—that's real delegation."—Caspian Woods, small biz owner

"Seek honest, minimalist management. Look for companies run by a team that explains things clearly and briefly. ... You can tell a lot about the firm by reading an annual report or two. If management can't explain the business in plain English, move on to another firm. If you see phrases like 'creating knowledge-based value in emerging markets' ... someone is trying to pull the wool over your eyes, you lazy Fool. Run."—Seth Jayson, "Stocks for the Lazy Investor," The Motley Fool

No Comment(s)!

Some of you accuse me (unjustly, of course) of being un-necessarily hard on Big Mergers. Hence, I offer "no comment" on yesterday's page 1 Wall Street Journal headline:

"After Sprint and Nextel Merge, Customers and Executives Leave: Combining Wireless Giants Multiplies Their Problems as They Slip Behind Rivals"—Headline, p1, WSJ, 10.11.06

And "no comment" again on this feature in the 16 October issue of Fortune:

"The (Second) Worst Deal Ever: Boston Scientific paid too high a price to snatch Guidant from Johnson & Johnson. The story of the biggest blunder since AOL/Time Warner."

Newfound Girl Power

(Translating Soon into Woman-power)

Sunday's New York Times reviewed Dan Kindlon's Alpha Girls. I bought it yesterday, the same day I offered a long Post on the Women-Boomer-Geezer thing. One of my key points was that "womanpower" ("womenomics," per one observer) is going through the roof. Kindlon adds to that stunning tale. He argues that girls are no longer being kept on as short a leash as in the past. Among many other interesting points, Dads are taking the lead in pushing girls to the fore and urging them to take no guff from boys. Frankly, 10 years into intensely studying "all this," I am mesmerized by this notion of rapid, exponentially increasing womanpower. Here's Kindlon's opening paragraph:

"Not long ago I was talking with a group of girls at Greenfield High, in northern New Jersey, about Mary Pipher's bestselling book, Reviving Ophelia. ... The girls' reaction to Ophelia was one of confusion. They disagreed with the book's premise—that girls are robbed of vitality and self-esteem as they enter adolescence. According to Pipher, our sexist society causes girls 'to stifle their creative spirit and natural impulses, which ultimately destroys their self-esteem.' 'Who are the girls in this book?' asked Sarah, a Greenfield sophomore. 'I mean, I feel sorry for them, but they're pretty much losers. We're not at all like them.' From what I could see, she was right. The girls I met were vital. They appeared more confident than many of the boys. They had not 'lost their voice.' ... They neither feared competition from boys nor the consequences of out-performing them."—Dan Kindlon, Alpha Girls

Ouch!

Where do I get off offering weight loss advice? Dunno. I've fought the Forces of Heavy for decades. At the moment I'm in a "less worse than usual" hiatus. And I'd like to keep it that way.

All advice on weight reduction is suspect—that is, there are three, if not thirteen, sides to every suggestion. Nonetheless, I came across the following somewhere or other, and it's been devastatingly effective (though, indeed, counter to much conventional wisdom). Namely: WEIGH IN EVERY MORNING!

Yup, water retention, or some such, is up one day and down the next. Sorry, if the base over the span of a few days is up, it means your weight is up. Obviously, the "demoralizing" counterargument is the most persuasive. I agree that it's often demoralizing. But, for me, if I don't do "it" every day, then I often find myself rationalizing why I "can just wait another few days" before hopping on the scales.

As I said, for what it's worth. (And it's been worth a lot to me.)

Not. Yet. Done.

I had a great time in Copenhagen last week. I talked to senior European banker clients of Affinion. They are the masters of the likes of Loyalty programs. As occasionally happens, I scrapped my speech halfway through. I decided to "go long" (boy football metaphor—sorry) on risk. I decided to pummel one topic. Period.

And that topic was Women-Boomer-Geezer market potential. As I said: Period. I claimed (and I believe) that a loyalty program for women, for instance, has to start from a fundamentally different premise than one for men. One basic idea-differentiator: Men are "transaction oriented"; women are "relationship oriented."

I insisted that anything short of Fundamental Strategic Re-alignment around the women-boomer-geezer opportunity was, well, stupid. Stupid. Negligent. Whatever.

I've changed my "women's thing" lately—added a third leg to my argument's stool. In the past I've featured (1) women's purchasing power and (2) the attendant need for women's increased leadership role.

The implicit idea is that companies are not doing enough to orient themselves—big time—toward this under-appreciated market. Fine enough. And true.

But a much bigger point is that the Degree of Market-Wealth Control by women is going through the roof. As the Economist put it in a Special Survey in April: "Forget China, India and the Internet: Economic Growth Is Driven by Women." In short, (1) women have taken two of every three new jobs for decades. (2) The pay-for-same-job differential is falling. (3) Women are occupying more and more senior roles. (Over 50% of managers, in the United States.) (4) Most senior Boomers are men—and about to retire by the million. (Within a few years, 10,000 additional men per day eligible for retirement.) Women will fill most—the overwhelming majority—of those slots. (5) Boys, soon to be men, are rapidly falling behind women in the education race. (6) Etc.

Hence the "third leg" of my stool is Rapidly Growing Women's Control of the World Economy.

Perhaps "Womenomics"?

Consider this from Aude Zieseniss de Thuin in the Financial Times, 10.03.2006:
"One thing is certain: Women's rise in power, which is linked to the increase in wealth per capita, is happening in all domains and at all levels of society. Women are no longer content to provide efficient labor or to be consumers with rising budgets and more autonomy to spend. ... This is just the beginning. The phenomenon will only grow as girls prove to be more successful than boys in the school system ... For a number of observers, we have already entered the age of 'womenomics,' the economy as thought out and practiced by women."

Amen!
Amen?

I've attached two Special Presentations. The short one is my new "section opener" on the women-boomers-geezers issue. The long one is the Whole Deal, the entire women-boomer-geezer section from the Master Excellence Always presentation.

Why the title "Not. Yet. Done."? Consider this invented exchange between me and an Amazon.com reviewer of the Trends book in the Tom Peters Essentials series:

Amazon Reviewer: "Trends is old news!" (1 of 5 stars!)
TP: "Repeating it doesn't make it 'old.' It ain't old if it hasn't been implemented!"

The reviewer's part of the exchange is the real thing—my response is the contrived bit. But it is exactly the point. Yup, I've been ranting about "all this" for a decade. But the results are disappointing—and then there's that "Third Leg" argument that the enormity of this opportunity grows by the day.

To summarize, in shorthand (one slide from the Short presentation):

1. Women's CONSUMER GOODS purchases.
2. Women's COMMERCIAL GOODS purchases.
3. WOMEN ARE THE MARKET. Not an "initiative."
4. Women-owned BUSINESSES (absolute #s, acceleration of startups, relative growth).
5. Women's "brand" of LEADERSHIP SKILLS.
6. Women's DRAMATICALLY INCREASING-COMMANDING WEALTH—absolute, relative. (Jobs. Longevity. Education. Entrepreneurial. Decline of BOYS. Retirement of MEN/Senior MEN.)
7. DEMOGRAPHIC TSUNAMI. WOMEN. Women as solo HEADs-OF-HOUSEHOLD. THE WOMAN-BOOMER-GEEZER LOOOOOONG-TERM GLOBAL PHENOMENON.
8. SPEED of "change." Mother of all "megatrends."

Columbus Day+

Susan and I spent the Columbus Day weekend about 1/3rd of the way up the gorgeous Maine Coast—in particular Monhegan Island. (It was my first trip up the Maine Coast—more to come!) Picture appended—plus VT leaf season to which we returned! (Additional pictures are at Flickr.)

Information overload?

As many of you know, Edward Tufte is a leading expert on visual presentation of information. I attended his one-day course last week. A couple of highlights:

"There is no such thing as information overload, just bad design."

"Clutter is not an attribute of information, it is an illness of design."

"To simplify, add detail."

"Pitching out corrupts within."

Thoughts on those comments, or any other thoughts on Tufte?

More Bikes

We posted a bike photo on Wednesday from Copenhagen, but then Tom took another, and we like this one so much that we're giving it a blog entry of its own. In addition, here's a link to the large sized original.

House!

I watch damn little TV, even on the road. But now I'm building my travel schedule around episodes of House. Love the show! Love the stories! Love the pace! Love Hugh Laurie!

But the "guru" is never far beneath the surface for me. "House" is the best explication I've ever seen of the Scientific Method. It is insanely sophisticated. Below you'll find a list I just stripped from a PPT Slide I created on "House":

Newtonian!!!!! (Experimental method is sacred!!!!!!!)
Acknowledge, even revel in what we don't know
Crystalline clarity of reasoning
Intuitive leaps (often wrong, but acknowledges that error is the key success driver—e.g., Brilliant Failed experiments)
Breathtaking speed! (Fast tries. "Fastest 'O.O.D.A. Loops' win"—John Boyd)
Action! Action! Action!
Test! Test! Test!
Failures acknowledged instantly (as important as success; next try starts immediately without fanfare)
Carefully controlled experimentation—Hypothesis tests (e.g., stop all drugs, add back one at a time)
Problem-centric, not patient-centric (Life = Puzzle-solving)
In a (life or death) rush, yet orderly about the scientific process
Aggressive risk taking (What's the alternative?) (Can appear reckless to others)
Exudes inspiring confidence (especially when the success odds are low)
Sky high staff standards
Doesn't suffer fools lightly (especially bosses)
Hates ... routine/paperwork/problems that don't enhance his medical understanding
Students as scientific peers (but demands loyalty)
Constant, impromptu mini-Brainstorm sessions (Thinking = Cool)
Calm though life and death at stake (no matter what, must view-measure results of experiments as cleanly as possible)
Egocentric (but allow data to sway—or reverse—opinion)
Impatient!
Tenacious! Relentless!
Curious!
Obsessed! (rotten at "work-life balance")

Fact is, I believe insanely in virtually all the above. "Try something!" has been my principal rallying cry ("strategy") for 4 decades! You'll find a wee Special Presentation on this attached.

The (Low) Price of Revealing "Secrets"

"Secret plans" are a hot topic given the godawful mess at HP. Yup, go to any length to preserve those secrets!! I've been less than a champion of the generic practice of strategic planning for decades. For a long while it was my signature stance. Perhaps my top Bizbook (along with Execution) in the last 20 years is unequivocally Canadian Guru Henry Mintzberg's The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. I just re-read part of it, and came across the following quote (so apropos in the wake of the "HP thing"). Russell Ackoff was arguably strategy guru #1 in the pre-Michael Porter days:

"Recently I asked three corporate executives what decisions they had made in the last year that would not have been made were it not for their corporate plans. All had difficulty identifying one such decision. Since all of the plans are marked 'secret' or 'confidential,' I asked them how their competitors might benefit from possession of their plans. Each answered with embarrassment that their competitors would not benefit."—Russell Ackoff

Once again, you'll find this as a Special Presentation attached. (And you'll also find a related Special Presentation on Patricia Dunn and Enron-Skilling juror Freddy Delgado.)

A Few "Talent Lessons" from the Arts

Been meaning to publish this for a while. If we are in an Age of Talent, then we can turn to guidance from arenas where the Big Idea of Talent has been standard fare for eons. Namely, the likes of the arts. I put together a single PPT slide called "A Few 'Talent Lessons' from the Arts." You'll find the content (pretty self-explanatory) below—and then another tiny Special Presentation. To wit:

Each person hired and developed and inspired and evaluated in unique ways (23 contributors = 23 unique contributions = 23 pathways = 23 distinct personalities = 23 sets of motivators)
Attitude/Enthusiasm/Energy paramount!
Re-lent-less!!!!!!!!!!!
"Peculiar" = Requisite (Each expected to make unique/"peculiar" contribution)
"Practice is cool" (Practice stars = Performance stars. See George Leonard's Mastery; Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit)
Team and Individual "performance" equally cherished
Aspire to EXCELLENCE = Obvious (Excellence = Cool)
Ex-e-cu-tion
Talent = Brand = Duh
"The Project" rules
Emotional language Okay
"Bit players"? No! (All = Vital)
Standard = B.I.W. (Best. In. World.)
Different events = Different rosters (Duh.)

Needless (??) to say, the above is quite a few miles from standard HR practice.

New Master

You know that Tom is always working on his slides collection. The latest: He added the "Re-imagine! Manifesto," also known as "tomAto, tom-ah-to" (it's a collection of "us vs. them" contrasts) to the end of his Master Presentation. Get the finished (for now) product here: XAlways Master, 1339 slides strong.

[By the way, "Tomato" is also available on the Free Stuff page as a PDF.]

Leadership for the "I-Cubed Economy"

According to my recent research, we have entered what experts call the "I-Cubed Economy" ... which stands for INTANGIBLES, INNOVATION, and INFORMATION. Knowledge assets (what people know and put into use), collaboration assets (who people interact with to create value), engagement assets (the level of commitment and energy of people) and time quality (how quickly value is created) are the four factors of production in this "Intangible Economy" according to Wikipedia. "They" also say this new era calls for new leadership ... "post heroic" leadership which is based on "bottom-up transformation fueled by shared power and community building." Organizations that apply this leadership approach are referred to as "leaderful" and assume that all of us have leadership qualities that can be pooled and drawn upon as needed.

Here's where this conversation gets juicy ... in a world that changes so rapidly, the gap between what we know and what we do has to close ... leaders can't just know that command and control leadership doesn't work ... they actually have to DO a different kind of leadership ... NOW! The problem, as I see it, is that we lead from our rearview mirrors. We learn to lead from those who lead us, in an environment that supports old business practices and in cultures that reinforce old values and belief systems. If we learn from those before us ... are we not, in fact, followers? And, if we want to be great leaders, doesn't it make sense that we look to our "followers" to learn how to lead? Imagine a future and live into it, rather than trying to just improve upon or change the past? We spend a lot of energy trying to capture and apply best practices ... but, in a world with so much change ... what is the shelf life of a best practice anyway?

Event: Affinion

In Copenhagen, Tom is speaking on the topic of customer loyalty to European bank execs on behalf of Affinion. There are two slides presentations for the occasion:
XAlways, Affinion
XAlways, Affinion, Long

Jingoism?

Jingoism is unattractive, or worse. But competitiveness is a good thing. We Americans have a lot on our economic platter as we strive to compete effectively in a wildly altered world. So I must admit that from afar (Copenhagen as I write) I chortle a little that the Americans are 5 for 5 in the Nobel winners announced to date. (My alma mater Stanford bagged 2 of them.)

[Tom's photo above from Copenhagen—bikes and more bikes!—CM]

Cool Friend: John Wood

Our new Cool Friend is John Wood. He's been featured here before when Shelley wrote about Room to Read, John's WOW! Project. Now he's written a book to let others get an inkling of how it can be done or how to become part of their own world-changing effort: Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur's Odyssey to Educate the World's Children. You can read his Cool Friends interview here. And, if then you'd like to read more, you can visit his website linked above, or go to fastcompany.com. His office sent us a bunch of pictures of John in action, as you can see. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the interview where we've posted more of them.

Thud.

Some combination of American and America West lost my luggage between Puerto Rico and Phoenix. Two days later it's still M.I.A. That may be why I'm cranky. But it's not why I literally teared up Friday afternoon (0929) as I began to speak to a techie customer gathering sponsored by Hexaware.

My raw emotions erupted because of one sentence I had just read in USA Today:

"I do not accept personal responsibility for what happened."—Patricia Dunn, former Chairman, Hewlett-Packard, sworn testimony before the United States House of Representatives on 28 September 2006.

Forty autumns ago in Vietnam, a careless enlisted surveyor in my detachment was badly injured while we were out in bad-guy land trying to site a prospective landing strip. The sailor was in the wrong place at the wrong time for the wrong reason. Frankly, what he did was stupid. But as we Navy sorts with legal command responsibility say, "It happened on my watch. Therefore it's my problem." The rumor spread throughout the battalion that the kid was careless. I proactively went to my Commanding Officer's hut, entered unbidden, stood at attention, and told him bluntly, "I f^&*ed up, Captain." It was not a noble gesture on my part. It was as it should be: The preventable, as I saw it, accident had "happened on my watch." It was therefore & unequivocally my responsibility. Period. No question. Why the hell else would my Marine Corps uncle, Lieutenant General H.W. Buse, Jr, bemedaled survivor of Guadalcanal and Korea, have sworn me in as Ensign T.J. Peters, USN, 5 months before?

I moved to a youthful Silicon Valley in 1970, and stayed 30 years. I was around for the founding, among others, of Apple and Sun. On one or more occasions I heard Steve Jobs or Scott McNealy say, in effect or precisely, "When we grow up we want to be like Hewlett-Packard." Insanely competitive Scott was still saying it when HP became his principal rival. He was dismissive of HP's technology compared to Sun's—but still in awe of this seminal, defining Silicon Valley institution.

HP, in an ever crazier industry, made its full share of marketplace slips. But its character (HP's true "core competence") was our collective bellwether and fog-cutting lighthouse in a raging sea.

On September 28th that glorious era ended.

"I do not accept personal responsibility for what happened." —Patricia Dunn, chairman.

Some are comparing the HP leaks investigation to Enron and Worldcom. On the one hand, that's ridiculous. Tens of thousands of loyal employees were not left pension-free, for one thing. But on the other hand, the HP fiasco is worse. Enron and Worldcom were Johnnies-come-lately. While many of us admired their daring do, we sure as hell never thought of them as models of rectitude. That honor was left to HP and a tiny handful of others—e.g. Johnson & Johnson, UPS, Medtronics.

Bernie Ebbers reported to the Big House last week to pay for the Worldcom mess. He'll probably die behind bars. Also last week, Andy Fastow was formally handed his sentence for masterminding the Enron crookedness. And with a resounding thud, HP fell from grace—departed the thin ranks of Big Business at its best.

Accuse me of histrionics if you will. HP hasn't been "iconic" for a while now, I suppose. But, I contend, until last week, when the former Chairman denied responsibility and several others "took the Fifth," the certifiable end to a Dynasty of Character & Excellence had not occurred.

Thud.