Appreciating Talent

We hear all the time, "talent is important," "our people are important," or "our greatest assets are our people." We know that talent is the center of organizations. Without talented people, an organization will not be successful, can't grow, won't have great ideas, and will not be able to execute its strategy. Are we really appreciating and caring for the talent that makes things happen in organizations?

In a recent newsletter from the National Association of Women Business Owners, I read a report of a poll they'd done asking respondents what kind of praise was offered at their workplaces. Here are the results [newsletter is not available online—CM]:

28% said verbal.
2% said monetary.
3% said tangible rewards or incentives.
43% said a combination.
24% said praise isn't often awarded.

Though the sample was not statistically determined, this is a telling result. If we want higher levels of engagement from our talent, then 24% is an unacceptable number of workplaces where no recognition of good performance is customarily made. How hard can it be to acknowledge talent for work that is excellent? Could it be that in 24% of organizations polled, there is no excellent performance to be recognized? I wonder. What are your thoughts? Is excellent work recognized or rewarded in your organization?

Notes from the Amalfi Coast: Girls Rule! Stop unnecessary hospital deaths! Read this book!

[Links to the articles Tom mentions are below.—CM]

Nearly half of all millionaires are now women (24 April 2007)
Why today's women want a girl (25 April 2007)
Lifeline for 1m hospital patients (25 April 2007)
The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb

It's How You Tell 'Em!

The UK's Guardian newspaper is in the middle of presenting a truly fabulous mini-series of the best speeches of the 20th Century. Here is the list of speeches, that are being presented daily from 21st April – 4th May:

Winston Churchill, We shall fight on the beaches, June 4, 1940
John F Kennedy, Ask not what your country can do for you, January 20, 1961
Nelson Mandela, An ideal for which I am prepared to die, April 20, 1964
Harold Macmillan, No going back, February 3, 1960
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, March 4, 1933
Nikita Khrushchev, The cult of the individual, February 25, 1956
Emmeline Pankhurst, Freedom or death, November 3, 1913
Martin Luther King, Jr., I have a dream, August 28, 1963
Charles de Gaulle, The flame of French resistance, June 1940
Margaret Thatcher, The lady's not for turning, October 10, 1980
Jawaharlal Nehru, A tryst with destiny, August 14, 1947
Virginia Woolf, A room of one's own, 1928
Aneurin Bevan, We have to act up to different standards, December 5, 1956
Earl Spencer, The most hunted person of a modern age, September 6, 1997
[Some have audio; others don't. And to date, the first seven are available; the rest are to come.—CM]

You can read transcripts, as well as listen to the actual speeches at www.guardian.co.uk/greatspeeches. I've just listened to the Winston Churchill speech, which took place shortly after the Dunkirk Landings—it really conjoured up the spirit of the moment in a chilling way.

What do you think of the list—which do you think is the finest of them all, and is there any one that you would have added to that list?

Cool Friends: Women Gurus Network

Once upon a time, in December 2004, there was a gathering of about 100 of Tom Peters' closest friends and associates, in Manchester, Vermont. At this gathering were Sally, Marti, Robyn, and Susan, four very accomplished women. And they talked. To the group, to each other, at lunch, and after meetings. They realized that they all had valuable expertise. And that each in her own right had an impact on the world. "What if we banded together?" they said. "How much more impact could we have if we formed a women's network?" Thus, the Women Gurus Network was born. We talk to three of the founders, Sally Helgesen, Marti Barletta, and Susan Willett Bird, in our new Cool Friends interview.

Built Not to Last

I recently came across some interesting nuggets in the Fast Company archives (a treasure trove of ahead-of-their-time business articles) on the necessity of "creative destruction." Some sound bites ...

In "The Death of Corporate Permanence," Adam Hanft says, "The free market tells us that bankruptcy can be a good thing, in the way that the death of an old tree allows younger ones under its oppressive canopy to grow ... We've experienced what can only be called the Death of Permanence; what remains to be seen is the way the new Economy of the Evanescent will influence our business and even personal interactions."

In the article "Built to Flip," Christina L Darwell says, "Increasingly, successful businesses will be ephemeral. Instead of being built to last, they will be built to yield something of value—and once that value has been exhausted, they will vanish."

In the same piece Gary Sutton adds, "The problem with Built to Last is that it's a romantic notion. Large companies are incapable of ongoing innovation, of ongoing flexibility. Companies that are built to last forever usually find out too late that the world has changed right under their noses. ... Nothing lasts forever, and one attribute of sustainability is knowing when your time has come."

Exciting stuff (to me anyway). [Note from Cathy: You might recognize these as quotes Tom himself has used. It's no surprise to us that a long-term denizen of Tom Peters Company picked the same ones.]

But these quotes raise a few questions. Many readers of both this website and Fast Company are entrepreneurs, small business owners, and consultants who live in the service economy. But what about the manufacturing world? For those of you who are Change Agents in the industrial sector, how do you sell "Destroy to Create," "Cherish Impermanence," and "Make a Quick Exit"? How does "destroy it before your competition does" go over in manufacturing environments that take pride in their history and longevity? Let's talk.

Leaders Take Breaks

Item #45 in The Leadership50 from Re-imagine! states: Leaders take breaks. And Tom is taking his own advice. He's off walking in a foreign country. Not New Zealand; he's already been there. We don't know where. Maybe he'll return with pictures and stories; maybe not. So at least until the end of April, there won't be any posts from Tom as he's left his computer behind. In the meantime, folks from the Tom Peters Company will be blogging occasionally. Yes, we know it's not the same as Tom, but Tom's off recharging his batteries, because he's got a lot of traveling to do in May.

Event: Yellow Pages

Tom was in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, on Thursday, speaking to a group sponsored by Yellow Pages. He had no Internet connection at his hotel, so I am just bringing the PPT to you now. Let's just say he wasn't staying at the Four Seasons this trip. If you attended the event, we'd love to hear from you in the comments. And if you'd like to get the slides, you can do so with the link below:
Yellow Pages, Santo Domingo

Event Slides

Today: 19th Annual Buyouts Symposium East, New York City. These are the private equity folks, large and small—geniuses all today; tomorrow? TP: "The 'last word' is there is no 'last word.'" Message: Revenue Matters Most; you cannot "costcut your way to greatness"!

[You can get the slides through the link below.—CM]
19th Annual Buyouts Symposium East

How Much Is Too Much?

Billy Bragg was coming through my car speakers singing, "A virtue never tested is no virtue at all." That pretty much summed up the two coaching sessions I had just completed. Both of the leaders I have been coaching have been identified as high potential candidates for the executive team. They are highly principled men with a track record of superior results, including building a wonderful high-performance, high-satisfaction team. But, both are now receiving feedback that they have micromanaged, and that they've become very controlling with their team. The only significant change they could identify was the ever-increasing workloads and the reduction of their workforce in the name of efficiency and cost control. At the same time, there has been pressure on them for ever better performance from their team. In their minds, they have not enough people and no room for error. Their virtue as leaders had been tested, and they both felt they had failed the test.

I don't consider myself to be soft on performance demands. It is a highly competitive world, which does demand that performance, and the accompanying workloads, be increased. But I wonder how organizations are determining when enough is enough? In my more cynical moments, I have come to believe they push it until it breaks. In my days of manufacturing management, we could study a machine and produce a pretty reasonable and predictable capacity factor. My question for this group of bloggers is simple. How does your organization determine a human being's "capacity"? Do you also see the effectiveness of leaders changing under high workload pressures? I would love to hear from any of you that have responsibility for determining optimal employment numbers. How do you do it? Are we at a place where too much on the plate is leading to leadership's virtues being tested?

The Tale of the Toothache

"Think, then act" is the Mantra of "the strategy boys."

I've long been an "act, then think" guy.

"Ready. Fire. Aim."—Ross Perot. "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?"—E.M. Forster. "Innovation is the reaction to the prototype."—Michael Schrage, Media Lab, MIT, innovation guru.

As you might guess, I loved this quote I found on the "Thoughts" page of Forbes (04.09.07):

"'I think therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches."—Milan Kundera

The Non-indifferent War of Words

From a Comment to the Indifference debate:

LaVonn Schlegel: "Indifference is a horrible, insidious disease that can destroy."

Wow!

Excellence! Everywhere!

I am in a daze!

I received a gorgeous book, Crawl Space Science: What to Have Done ... And Why, by Larry Janesky. The book has sold 115, 000 copies! Larry runs Basement Systems Inc., of Seymour, CT. The book is graphically brilliant (he gives credit to Re-imagine!), easy to use, astoundingly informative—and I got it just as Susan and I were in the midst of discussing a new use for our moldy basement.

Professionally, there is simply nothing I love ... LOVE ... more than Excellence in "impossible" places!!!

(Recall my recent riff on Jim Penman's Jim's Group—2,600 franchisees in Australia, NZ, UK. Cleaning. Dog washing. Handyman. Fencing. Paving. Pool care. Etc. Etc.)

Why, why, why do the likes of me and Jim Collins and Ram Charan keep using, almost exclusively, large, publicly traded companies as exemplars? Laziness? (Exception, touted here before: Small Giants: Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead Of Big—by Bo Burlingham.)

Go, Larry!
Go, Jim!
Go, Bo!

[NB: Did I mention that Larry's business has grown like Topsy, with revenue now topping $50,000,000!]

Cheeky Rebelliousness

Walter Isaacson, on Albert Einstein, from his new book, Einstein: His Life and Universe: "His slow development was combined with a cheeky rebelliousness toward authority, which led one schoolmaster to send him packing and another to declare that he would never amount to much."

Three loud cheers to "cheeky rebelliousness"—a trait shared by approximately 99.99% of those who make it into the history books.

(Alas, many of those who might, these days, make it into the history books have been dosed early and often with Ritalin.)

Showtime!

My Brand You mantra includes the necessity to realize you are always on stage. Hence I loved this headline from Time (04.16.07): "Acting Like a President: Most politicians who make it to the White House have also become masters of the art of performing."

Reminds me of a favorite quote I often use in my presentations:

"It's always Showtime."—David D'Alessandro, Career Warfare

Gender! Gender! Why Do We Always Overlook Gender?

Time has an essay this week [04.16.07] titled "The Age of U-Turns: Flip-flops get a bad name, but often the best course is to reverse course," by Bruce Grierson, where he writes about his book U-Turn. The author contrasts Western and Eastern thinking. Westerners ignore ambiguity: "To Western thinking, the world is linear; you can chop it up and analyze it." Eastern thinking is illustrated by a comment made by a Chinese student: "The difference between you and me is that I think the world is a circle, and you think it's a line."

The author praises the Eastern approach—which is at least worthy of examination and consideration. I applaud that, remembering my days at McKinsey when I sometimes was tarred with the ultimate brush of opprobrium: "You think in circles, Tom." Though it didn't help my standing with my betters, it was exactly what I thought of myself. Partly because my PhD mentors at Stanford were the likes of Gene Webb, Karl Weick, and Jim March, who tried to take the idea of organization beyond bloodless org charts and sterile strategy documents.

But that's not really my point here. Instead I am bridling at the fact that Grierson's flavor of linear "Western thinking" is really about ... MALE Western thinking." (Try to find a female philosopher in the Age of Greece! Fat chance!) FEMALE thinking, based on relationships rather than competitive spearthrowing in the bush, has always tended to the "circular." Research, among other things, shows that women see ten sides to an issue—where men see but one.

There's lots to say here, but my point is a simple one: Why must the "sample," in a book like Grierson's, always be male-centric?

Arrogance! Stupidity! (Both?)

For both amusement and instruction, you simply must read "Wal*Mart's Firing Of a Security Aide Bites the Firm Back." (Wall Street Journal, 04.09.07; p. A1; subscription required) It's more like spy fiction than what I'd call reality. It describes in gory detail the lengths to which WM goes to keep secrets secret. Wiretapping and microphones in the walls are the least of it.

There are two funny things about the article:

(1) It's simply funny.

(2) The goal of secrecy is stupid. I am reminded of the following marvelous quote from the strategy guru" of the 70s, Russell Ackoff: "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." (from Henry Mintzberg, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning)

Much more could be said (I have), but for the sake of this Post, I rest my case.

More on Indifference from Tom

Darci, from her Comment: "... and pursue my passion. It was a leap of faith and there was no safety net to catch me if I failed."

Darci, here's the way I look at it. We all "fail" in the end. "Fail" as in finish, finito, die. (I am not talking religion here—we may indeed go to a better world, or a worse one, but we will not be amidst this one.) So if, to quote an old joke, "We might as well go for it, boys, none of us is going to get out alive": Well, then, to me, the only ... TRUE FAILURE ... is a failure to ... Engage Fully, 100% of the time.

(My casual reading of Aristotle, and I'm no student of philosophy, is that, for instance, "happiness" is complete engagement, not some bemused state; "leisure" is an opportunity to grow in new ways, not a chance to veg out; etc.)

And another thing: Indifference makes you sloppy, sloppy in general. You can call it "studied indifference," or "purposeful indifference," or whatever you want, but if your goal is stupefaction on the job, it'll spread like a virus—even to home life.

And another thing: Jerks.* Jerks, as we see it, are all around us! Always have been, always will be. Get over it! I think it was Tip O'Neill who said, "Politics is the art of the possible." (Hint: Politics = Getting things done. Period!!!) When I talked to my wonderful new friends at Johns Hopkins last week, I applauded their idealism, and I told them that I prayed they'd never lose it. On the other hand, to bring about social change, I reminded them, meant politics in the morning, politics at lunchtime, and dreaming about politics at night. Getting things done means engaging in the fray, and every serious change is despised by the regnant majority—both sides often see the other as jerks. (Of course, there are simply awful human beings at work—so deal with it positively/make it or them your ally in change ... or quit. One mark of a "jerk" is self-interest taken to an extreme. Whoops, that's true of everyone who succeeds; I don't mean they are unable to build a team, but think of the Presidential race: To enter it is all about self interest in equal measure with a desire to change the world.) (*Re "jerks," consider, perhaps, the words of Philo of Alexandria, quoted in this space before: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle." TP: "Everyone, as in everyone, deserves an equal measure of respect." Credo, anon. organization change consultant: "Don't belittle.")

NB: A.C. Grayling, The Meaning of Things: Applying Philosophy to Life

ARISTOTLE ON HAPPINESS: Eudaimonia ... well-doing, living flourishingly. Megalopsychos ... "great-souled," "magnanimous." More: respect and concern for others; duty to improve oneself; using one's gifts to the fullest extent possible; fully aware; making one's own choices.

ARISTOTLE ON LEISURE: pursue excellence; reflect; deepen understanding; opportunity to work for higher ends. ["Rest" vs. "leisure."]

Engage.
Fully.
Energize others.
Respect others.
(Decency rules.)

Live in the moment.
This moment.
(There is no other.)
Excellence.
Always.

Exception Noted

As you'll see, Tom takes exception to the practice of indifference. We decided to pull his comment to Darci's earlier post titled "Passion or Indifference ... You Choose" and put it on the front page. The following is Tom's comment:

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man."—George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman: The Revolutionists' Handbook

I never did buy Bob Sutton's "be realistic" act. Now I see exactly why.

Of course "Life's a bitch and then you die." But last week I reported on two experiences that make a mockery of Sutton's "Great God of Endured Indifference" routine. AGAINST ALLLLL ODDDDs, and after 72 years (1848-1920) of brutal & demeaning struggle, women won the right to vote. And at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health I bathed in the stories of alum who ... AGAINST ALL ODDS ... AND MOCKING "REASONABLE" EXPECTATIONS ... AND BELITTLED BY PYGMYS ... had saved millions of theretofore un-cared-about lives. Muhammad Yunus won a Nobel Peace Prize for his microlending miracles—powered by women in a strict Muslim (Bangladesh) society.

Get the hell out of an "impossible" situation? Sometimes it's the only answer. (Been there, done that—McKinsey, circa 1981.) "Practice indifference"? Bullshit. Bullshit. And ... BULLSHIT. Speaking as an about-to-be-65-year-old: LIFE IS TOO BLOODY SHORT TO SPEND ONE DAMN MOMENT OF INDIFFERENCE!!!! (And you'd better believe I've worked for my full share of certified nincompoops.)

Passion or Indifference ... You Choose

Below is an excerpt from Bob Sutton's article "Nasty People" on the CIO Insight website. I'd suggest you read the whole column and also watch the video of Sutton's P.O.V.:

A woman from England, for example, lamented, "I endeavor to lead by positive example, raise issues to the powers that be and provide constructive help to the people who work under me on how to deal with the jerks in our midst. The problem in my organization, however, is that jerkdom is so institutionalized and rewarded I can't see any way out." My answer was that if senior management is unwilling to change, and some kind of internal political action is impossible, her options were to keep treating the symptoms in herself and others—or perhaps best of all, to look for another job.

As I think about it now, I would also add that, although thousands of books offer breathless prose about the virtues of having deep commitment to, and passion about, your workplace, there are times when self-preservation requires the opposite response. There are times when the answer is indifference, when the wisest course is to go through the motions, learn not to care, and just get through the day until something changes on your job, or something better comes along. Yes, it is better if you have the power to change a bad situation, or leave it. But we all face bad situations we must endure; none of us have complete power. Indeed, I am starting to believe that, as a management professor, part of my job is to teach people when indifference is more useful than passion.

My colleague Chris Nel recently posted a blog "Purpose beyond Profit," which addresses the idea that people in large corporations too often aren't inspired and have no sense of purpose.

[read more]

Crossdress Nation (And Harry Burn's Mother)!

In the end it was, to be precise, Harry Burn's mother who made all the difference. A suffragette, she wrote to her son, age 24 and Tennessee's youngest legislator, saying, "Don't forget to be a good boy and help Mrs Catt ..." He did, tipped the scales on a 49-47 vote, and brought, effectively, to an end a struggle that in its most open form had lasted 72 years, 1 month, and 5 days. With Mrs Burn's urging and Harry's courageous vote on 18 August 1920, some 26 million American women were franchised in one fell swoop.

But that gets ahead of the game. Above you will find a picture of a 64-year-old male wearing a white wig and a black dress. In fact, a shamefaced 64-year-old. Said 64-year-old, M, purports to represent the spirit of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, rightfully called the Mother of the American women's rights/women's suffrage movement.

But that gets ahead of the game ...

It was a simple costume party in Dorset, Vermont, at the home of our friends Jill and Dave Sands, on March 31, this past Saturday. The idea was to dress as someone you admire—and be prepared to respond to questions as the admired personage would have responded. I thought it would be great fun, and therefore took it seriously. Franklin? Churchill? Nelson? John Paul Jones? Monty Python? No problem, I had them all pegged. And a satisfactory costume would hardly be a challenge (e.g., Churchill, cigar & brandy; Nelson or Jones, folding telescope or bits of my mildewed, 40-year-old Navy uniform).

That was 5 weeks before the party. And now was now—31 March 2007. And now, following Susan's "sartorial" guidance and that of a close friend who is an eminent women's historian, I was encased in a white wig and long black dress, courtesy a Boston costume shop, and, though tripping over my hems again and again ["Welcome to our world"—Susan], ready to go—and, courtesy a dozen books hastily ingested on a dozen plane trips, ready to respond to questions and declaim, among other things, on Mrs Burn, her young son Harry, Carrie Chapman Catt, and, of course, the angry, tenacious firebrand, Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

I was indeed shamefaced—shamed, after a dozen years loudly and doggedly championing change to women's still diminished role in business and government, that I was almost totally ignorant of the astounding history of the American women's rights movement. And worse yet, of the gruesome details of women's status in our society only 100 years ago—that makes the use of the loaded word "slave" entirely appropriate, beyond question, as I see it. It was no coincidence that the American's women's movement, effectively launched in Seneca Falls, New York, on July 13, 1848, grew in tandem with the abolitionist movement in America.

On the other hand, the last 5 weeks have been an absolute ball! There is simply nothing but nothing that I enjoy more than sinking my teeth and heart and soul into a new historical topic. I did indeed devour a dozen books from the original, and always controversial, works of Mrs Stanton to middle school books on the life of Susan B. Anthony. In particular I learned from:

In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, by Elisabeth Griffith; Ladies of Seneca Falls, by Miriam Gurko; and Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States, by Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick.

*I learned of the fateful luncheon meeting in Seneca Falls in July 1848 that was hosted by Mrs Stanton and attended by 5 "ladies" including Lucretia Mott, one of the subsequent superstars of the movement, the convention that followed 6 days later, the first of its kind—and the brutally negative and demeaning reaction thereto. cheap wholesale viagra

*As I said, I read with my mouth often seemingly open, about the total (as in Cap T Total!) absence of rights of American women and, almost as important, the contempt with which their so-called frail and vacuous and largely useless selves were held by males one and virtually all, from the ignorant to the most learned. And I learned—concluded—that, as I said before, women were de facto, and de jure, the equivalent of slaves, denied fundamental and trivial rights alike, and even a modicum of respect.

*As an orator myself, I learned of the critical role of powerful women orators in the women's rights movement, especially the Grimke sisters, the first women to speak in public to an audience with men—and the brutal and demeaning response thereto.

*I learned of the stream of small steps forward (some minor property rights established by New York state—subsequently reversed); and the first granting of the vote, in the Territory of Wyoming in 1870 by a "legislative" vote of 6 in favor, 2 against, and 1 abstaining (on 07.23.1890, Wyoming became the first state to grant the franchise to women—bravo).

*I learned of the unabated viciousness and bitterness and "dirty trick" tactics unleashed by male legislators and media barons and "men on the street" of all classes that attended the 72-year struggle, from the 5-person luncheon/cabal at Seneca Falls on 13 July 1848 to Nashville and the enactment of the 19th amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America on 26 August 1920.

*I learned of the role of "demented" [my word] optimism and matchless relentlessness that marked the movement—909 political campaigns, mostly failures, between 1868 and 1920, according to Carrie Chapman Catt (campaigns at state party conventions to include woman suffrage planks—277; campaigns in state legislatures to get suffrage amendments before voters—480; campaigns before 19 successive Congresses of the United States; etc.).

*And I learned that I was hardly alone in my own ignorance of the history of the American women's movement, and hence my de facto diminishment (ignorance is never an excuse) of the role and lot of women in our so-called egalitarian democracy. Typical of our "modern" approach to women-in-American history was the "towering" Oxford History of the American People, by the "towering" historian Samuel Eliot Morison; he honors the 19th amendment with two (count 'em) sentences in a section of his book with the exalted title, "Bootlegging and Other Sports." There is a monument to Morison on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston that I routinely pass as I powerwalk; in the future I shall snort derisively and turn my head from his bronzed gaze upon passing this contemptible male chauvinist pig (ironically there is a monument to women's rights pioneers about two blocks further along the Commonwealth Avenue mall—I shall accordingly genuflect).

*"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." (Incidentally, it was not until 1956, a scant half century ago, that the number of women voting equaled the number of men.)

I dwell on this story because it describes a personal journey away from ignorance that was, well, a blast—and, I believe, important. (I shall campaign, starting in 2007, for far greater attention to the history of the women's movement—still woefully skimpy; and not corrected by the recent "feminist" movement.) I also dwell on this story because innovation, including social innovation, is the "business" theme nearest and dearest to my professional heart—and the most important business issue of this, and, frankly, every era. It is my longstanding argument that all innovation is irrational, non-linear, and anything but the product of plans and focus groups; it is instead about anger to the point of rage that eventually boils over (from suffrage to the PC); "a little band of brothers" (whoops, the 5 great sisters of Seneca Falls and a slew of successors); willingness to suffer vicious smear attacks and unspeakable opprobrium of both a professional and personal nature, passion (!!!!!!!!); relentlessness (!!!!!!!!!—72 years, 1 month and 5 days from lunch at Seneca falls to ratification of the 19th amendment by Tennessee, the 36th state to do so; and those 909 political campaigns); tolerance for setback upon setback upon setback (Churchill: "Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm"); and the strokes of luck such as the willfulness of Harry Burn's blessed mother.

All the above made the sacrifice of wearing a wig and a long dress for 5 hours seem like small beer!* (*Hmmm, should I have gone as Harry Burn's mother?)

My hero, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, per Elisabeth Griffin, In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton:

"She was defeated again and again and again, but she continued the struggle with passionate impatience."

"She had survived her husband, outlived most of her enemies, and exhausted her allies. Her mind remained alert, her mood optimistic, and her manner combative." [ECS 80th birthday celebration, attended by 6,000 people]

More to Come

It's a "twofer."

As you saw from an earlier Post this week, I spoke at the remarkable Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. As in the case immediately above, I was put to shame by my ignorance as I "read in" to the event. The Hopkins story is peerless—and has resulted in successes since 1916 that are responsible for millions upon millions of lives saved and more millions upon millions of years added to people's lives. Healthcare (or, rather, health—there's an enormous difference) has become a recent professional obsession of mine; and the fire was fuelled by this Hopkins opportunity. Wellness, prevention, mass public health, and family practice are my hot buttons (in addition to the hapless state of acute care safety). I intend to fatten my public health library in the months to come—my newfound JHU friends have agreed to mentor me. And a new "Tom Campaign," as my colleagues sometimes call it, is in the offing.

Purpose beyond Profit

[Chris Nel wrote this piece for the April 2007 Tom Peters Times newsletter, and it got such a great response that we decided to reproduce it for our blog readers.—CM]

As an adult, I have lived and worked in three types of organisations. In the military as an officer, in a large corporation as an area then regional operations manager, and now in a small consulting firm as ... well ... a jack of all trades! Only one of the three, in my experience, has suffered significantly from a disabling lack of clarity of purpose ... I believe there is a link between this and the fact that most large corporations "Fail to achieve their potential."

As the father of a three-year-old boy, I dread the day he announces that he wants to invest his talent, time, and energy into—a large corporation. I believe that "large" is doomed to mediocrity not due to size, but because of the inherent inability of "large" to generate a strong sense of common purpose in the organisation beyond making money for its stakeholders.

[read more]

Event: Johns Hopkins

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health was the first of its kind in the U.S. Over the years its research and the application thereof have saved literally millions upon millions of lives around the world. I am honored to be part of their Leadership Series.

[The links for the slides are below.—CM]
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Leadership Series
Bloomberg Leadership Series, Johns Hopkins, Long Version