"Systems Thinking" and Me: Never the Twain Shall Meet

I just read a major article on Bill Clinton's new approach to philanthropy. It is profit-based. (Stuff, to get imbedded in day-to-day life, has to be based on sound economics.) I applaud that. The problem I had was that Clinton's principal associate is Ira Magaziner, the same "intellectual" who was the schemer-in-chief behind "Hillary care" in 1993.

Years ago, in my McKinsey days, one of my bosses was bemoaning the help we were getting from an "economic genius." He said, "Tom, consider a matrix. One axis boils down to 'simplifier' vs 'complexifier.' The other is 'smart' and 'dumb.' Thus we are dealing with a 2X2 matrix. The analyst-from-heaven is the 'smart simplifier.' The analyst-from hell is 'smart complexifier.' He is, in fact, worse that the 'dumb complexifier,' who you can simply ignore, and the 'dumb simplifier' who might actually be of help." I can't help but think (Huh? I'm quite certain) that Magaziner is the poster child for "smart complexifier."

I'm also told that Mr M is a devout advocate of "systems thinking." Well, I'm not.

The first thing I wrote that got national attention was an Op Ed in the Wall Street Journal in June 1981. (It appeared 5 days before my Dad died, which was sad, because rightly or wrongly he would have been beside himself.) The article got me in deep doo-doo with my McKinsey colleagues. It was called, "Ideas. Plans. Actions." Planning was the rage, as it mostly still is—and it was-is McKinsey's bread & butter. My article claimed that "planning" was highly overrated. The best performers, I said, seesawed back and forth between "ideas" and "actions." That is, they had a "big idea." (Or a small one, for that matter.) Rather than think it to death, they immediately got the hell into the field and experimented with some element of it (a prototype). They watched what happened, adjusted, and then quickly ran another experiment—in the meantime the "big idea" also was trimmed or expanded to fit the incoming "real" data, the results of those experiments. As far as I'm concerned this approach, rather than a "planning-centric" approach, is the best (bold assertion) route to success. By the by, another definition of "my" approach is the Newtonian "scientific method," wholly dependent on ideas shaped and reshaped by actions—my studies of Nobel laureates in the sciences, for example, suggests (and not oversimplifying by much) that the winners "do more experiments faster." (Among other things, this was what my summer neighbor for a few years and winner of a Nobel for the first successful organ transplant told me of his situation, giving me heightened confidence in my beliefs.)

I am an unabashed fan of MIT Media Lab guru Michael Schrage—particularly his book Serious Play. His principal axiom: "You can't be a serious innovator unless you are ready and able to play. 'Serious play' is not an oxymoron; it is the essence of innovation." And, in turn, the heart of his serious play is ... fast prototyping: "Effective prototyping may be the most valuable core competence an innovative organization can hope to have." His intriguing connection, which makes all the sense in the world to me, is that true innovation comes not from the idea per se, though it guides the work, but from the "reaction to the prototype." In fact, in a surprising number of cases (the majority?) the collective responses to a host of fast prototypes reshape the original idea beyond recognition—or lead one down an entirely new path.

Years and years ago, while working in the UK, I delightedly heard a Cadbury exec call his approach to product development "Ready. Fire. Aim." It was love at first sound. (Mistakenly, Ross Perot is often given credit for this—though I acknowledge it captures his successful mode of action.)

Here is a sampling of my favorite quotes, from trustworthy sources, on the topic:

"How do I know what I think until I see what I say."—C.K. Chesterton

"We made mistakes, of course. Most of them were omissions we didn't think of when we initially wrote the software. We fixed them by doing it over and over, again and again. We do the same today. While our competitors are still sucking their thumbs trying to make the design perfect, we're already on prototype version #5. By the time our rivals are
ready with wires and screws, we are on version #10. It gets back to planning versus acting: We act from day one; others plan how to plan—for months."—Bloomberg by Bloomberg

"This is so simple it sounds stupid, but it is amazing how few oil people really understand that you only find oil if you drill wells. You may think you're finding it when you're drawing maps and studying logs, but you have to drill."—The Hunters, by John Masters, wildly successful Canadian Oil & Gas wildcatter

"Experiment fearlessly"—BusinessWeek, in a Special Report, on the premier innovation strategy of the best innovators

"The secret of fast progress is inefficiency, fast and furious and numerous failures."—Kevin Kelly, founding editor, Wired

I won't arrogantly proclaim "Case closed"—though, secretly (not), that's what I feel based on over a quarter century of pretty intensive study.

There is lots to learn from "systems thinking"—but the heart of the matter for me will always be to cast the plan aside for the moment—and get into the lab (field) and try something concrete. Only then will you begin to learn about the practicality (implementability) of your Grand-Grandiose Design—uh, system.

(NB: The principal objection to my approach is that we end up with a not so pretty cobbled together design. True. But there is a term for that: "Welcome to the real world." Or Speaker Tip O'Neill's "Politics is the art of the possible"—all effective implementation is the product of smart corporate or non-corporate politics, as much as that idea offends purists. Magaziner's approach in '93 might well have been "perfect"—though most of us think the opposite, but its result was overcomplexity, total failure to implement—and loss, after 50 years of hegemony, of the House by the Democrats.)

Fed Up.
But ...
(My Own Fault.)

Yesterday I was doing an interview with a journalist from Flanders. At one point he asked me about something I guess he'd found at Wikipedia, a reference to an article titled "Tom Peters' True Confessions," relative to In Search of Excellence. The callout, repeated on the cover of the magazine, was "We faked the data." It's my own fault that such a line ended up in print—though I could live without the guy who concocted it.

A few years ago, as I was working with Fast Company co-founder Alan Webber on the article, we were talking about In Search of Excellence, and the selection of companies for the book. In Jim Collins' Good to Great, he claims he started with a list of the top 1,000 companies (or some such) and, applying some hurdles (see below, re "hurdles"), came up with his sample. I said to Alan that we'd not done such a purported "scientific" thing. Instead, we'd gone around to McKinsey colleagues, academics, corporate types we knew, and so on, and asked about companies they thought were doing exceptional stuff (e.g., one of our neighboring firms was HP, then a fresh-caught $1 billion company—we put them on the list because they had a lot of out-of-the-ordinary practices, especially by 1979's standards). Thus, we were "unscientific" by some measures (scientific by the standards of "exploratory research," which this was) in developing a list of candidate companies. However, after we had our roughly 100 "nominees" we subjected them to steep long-term financial hurdles described in the book, and we were forced to prune the list to the final 43. And that's the story of our methodology, take it or leave it. Since our goal, demanded by our client, Siemens, was to find "interesting" "good" companies to analyze, we thought this was as good a way to go as any other—though there were, of course, a hundred ways we could have gone.

At some later point, Alan and I, in a rambling discussion, got onto the topic of "lies, damn lies, and statistics"—statistics, weird as it is, are a major hobby of mine. That's when I said something like, "Of course we know all this [Jim's way or ours] is to some extent phony baloney. That is, if you try enough variations of plausible, tough long-term financial hurdles—e.g., 10 years or 20 as the baseline—you can significantly influence the outcome." And that, of course, is true, as any business analyst of any seniority knows—change an assumption by a dab here and a smidgen there, and a questionable project looks like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow—Defense acquisition projects being one glaring example. I suspect it was this latter discussion that may have influenced the headline writer.

So it goes, and thence it's my own damn fault. I unhesitatingly acknowledge that in the social sciences it's not too hard to reach varied results depending on the measures you decide to use. But that's a country mile from "We faked the data." So you can take that explanation, or leave it, but there it is.

Tom's Essential in Taiwan

That's Leadership, Talent, Trends, and Design, appearing this week in Taiwan. The publisher is Commonwealth Publishing Group, and we'd like to thank them for making available Tom's (and let's not forget that Marti coauthored Trends) Essentials Series.

Cool Friend: Bill Raeder

Today, Bill Raeder joins the ranks of our Cool Friends, not as an author, but as a publisher. Since 1975, he has served as managing director, executive director, and finally president of National Braille Press (NBP). He is about to retire, and he's going out with a bang. This past July, NBP achieved a major milestone by publishing the Braille version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows at the same time as the printed one, and at the same price. (Imagine all the people who worked on it without giving away the plot?) Perhaps a more noteworthy legacy he will leave behind: The mission of National Braille Press is to promote the literacy of blind children through Braille to empower blind people to engage in work, family, and community affairs. You can read more in Bill's Cool Friends interview here.

We're assisting Bill and the National Braille Press by announcing their Hands-On Gala, on October 26, 2007, in Boston. Jay Leno will be Master of Ceremonies and J.K. Rowling will make an appearance by video. To become a corporate sponsor or simply make a donation, please contact: Tanya Holton, National Braille Press, 6l7-266-6160 x15, tholton@nbp.org; or Jennifer Stewart, 6l7-266-6160 x36, jstewart@nbp.org.

Event: ASIS

ASIS International bills itself as the world's largest association for security professionals. Tom is speaking to several thousand people at their Las Vegas Convention. Slides are linked below, and there's something new. Tom has provided an exposition—an expansion of the bullet points from the PPT—in an accompanying MSWord file. Let us know if that works as an explanation of his talking points that the slides sometimes only hint at.

ASIS, Las Vegas, NV, and accompanying MSWord Bullet Points

The Mighty Marvelous Mittelstand Rules:
SBI/Success By "Ichironomics"

Who is the Number One exporter in the world?
Who has (probably) the highest wages in the world (not CEO "wages"!)?

If you answered that it was a nation of 83 million folks in Western Europe—namely Germany—you'd be correct.

Why?
If you answered Siemens you'd be wrong.
So, too, BASF—wrong.
Or Commerzbank—wrong again.

If you answered "Mittelstand firms" you would be spot on!

But I'm getting ahead of myself ...

Last week's BusinessWeek featured the best companies to go to work for as a fresh-caught college grad. Deloitte was #1 (I'm a Deloitte fan, especially their program for retaining women and getting them into senior leadership roles, but best in the U.S.?). The likes of Google was on the list, too. But, to me, personally, not a damn company on the list ought to be on the list—that's a little heavy-handed, but not by much.

Why, oh frigging why, is it always the Gargantuan Companies (because they are the magazines' advertisers??) on such lists (repeat, this week's Fortune has a biggie on the best leader development programs—100% monster institutions again) and not any of America's wonderful middle-sized companies?

About a year after In Search of Excellence appeared (October 15, 1982), my partners, Bob LeDuc and Nancy Austin (my coauthor on A Passion for Excellence) and I decided to launch a series of 4-day intensive workshops on implementing the main ideas in Search. We called them "Skunks Camps" (after Lockheed's renegade "Skunkworks"—look it up in Passion, or on the Web), and held them 100 miles south of home (Palo Alto), at a lovely spot on the Pacific called Pajaro Dunes.

Considering the firms in Search, 100% Big Dudes (who else would McKinsey guys feature?), it was obvious to us that our participants would be, say, VPs or EVPs of Fortune 500 companies.

Nope!

We had a few F500 denizens—mostly from Search companies such as 3M and J&J. The rest? American "Mittlestand":

Frank Perdue, and son Jimmy, of Perdue Farms. ("It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.")
Tom Malone, president of the stellar textile firm (and, arguably, inarguably to me, America's quality leader) Milliken & Company.
Don Burr, founder of People Express.
Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza.
Stew Leonard, and son Stew Jr, of Stew Leonard's.
Hal Rosenbluth of Rosenbluth International, the pathbreaking travel services firm.
John Fisher, the acclaimed IT guru from a much smaller Bank One of Columbus.
John McConnell of the steel's Mittelstand star, Worthington Industries.
Bob Buckman of the Memphis specialty chemical firm, Buckman Labs—Bob almost single-handedly invented what we now call (and genuflect to) "knowledge management."

And so on.* (*Some "troubles," for sure, at Stew Leonard's and People Express—but absolute pathbreakers at the time, 1984.)

Me?
I fell in love with these guys!!

Talk about a tough audience! No bullshit tolerated—and if they heard something good, it was launched 3,000 miles away in the likes of Salisbury, MD (home of Perdue), the day after it was discussed at Pajaro Dunes. E.g., Frank P liked Tom Malone's description of Milliken University, about the first of the corporate "universities," and got up the next day at 4 a.m. PST, called Salisbury, and launched Perdue University.

Hence, I've had a soft spot for the likes of these folks since 1984—and as time has passed I have come to appreciate the likes of them, and the likes of the techie start-ups from "the Valley," too, as the true engines of our economy.

And, to this day they are unsung!

I was so taken, that on the advice of the fellow who headed our European operations, Lennart Arvedson, I decided to explore this odd German phenomenon, called the Mittelstand. To make a long story as painless as possible, a year or so later I could be found in Germany on a three week TV shoot—for a program on this "Mittelstand phenomenon." It was by far the best show I've ever done, among a dozen or so, though the "obscure" topic meant less attention than for most of the others.* (*You'll find the stories in print in my Liberation Management.)

These Mittelstand firms tend to ... DOMINATE (exactly the right word) ... high-end niche markets. The three we featured in our show "The Mighty Mittelstand: The 'Secret' to Germany's Leadership of the World in Exports" (yes, they led then, too—including, amazingly, textile exports!) were:

Playmobil (part of Brandstatter Enterprises), the peerless toy makers; Trumpf, the high-end machine tool superstar; and Rationale, supplier of tippy-top high-end cooking equipment (the "combi-cooker") to most of the high-end restaurants in the U.S. and Europe.

Each tallied a few hundred million dollars in revenue, and all three were growing nicely. Oddly enough, to this day I think I'm the only American "management guru," prominent or otherwise, who has studied these firms—I guess when people see the astounding German export figures, they assume it was Siemens or BMW or the tooth fairy, and leave it at that.

The point of all this is to insist that there are thousands of Fab Firms out there that are really worth working for when one exits university—focused on product, surviving only by continuous innovation, manageable in size, meritocratic to a fault (they can't afford not to be), and providing incredible opportunities to get ahead quickly. The chief problem is, the youngster has to find 'em; they aren't among the Gargantuans who make it easy by showing up with donuts at the college employment center.

Oh dear, I do love, love, love Canada's London Drugs (beating the hell out of their new opponent, Wal*Mart, with 4X Wal*Mart's sales per square foot) and Canada's Cirque du Soleil; Connecticut's $50 million+ Basement Systems (the basement mold and dampness removal superstar; founder Larry Janesky's book, Dry Basement Science, is edging up to 150,000 copies sold—no kidding, I carry it around with me as an icon to what's possible, anywhere and everywhere); Ralph Stayer's Johnsonville Foods; David Kelley's IDEO, the premier product design and innovation consulting firm; the late Harry Quadracci's Quad/Graphics; Dennis Littky's exciting The Met/Big Picture schools; Maxine Clark's supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Build-A-Bear; Rick Semler's seriously cool Brazilian powerhouse, Semco; Derby CT's Griffin Hospital (home of the fantastic, patient-centric Planetree Alliance); and every damn one of the firms featured in Bo Burlingham's Small Giants: Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead of Big.

Yup, these are my stars, home to many of the best leaders I've met in business, unsung engines of German and American economic prowess—and noticeably, to me, AWOL from the likes of the BizWeek and Fortune "bests" lists.

Publisher Rich Karlgaard took me over the top on this in his "Digital Rules" commentary in the current issue of Forbes (October 1). He beats up Michigan ("Tackling the Michigan Problem" is his title) and praises to the sky the likes of Minnesota and Washington. Consider Spokane:

"Spokane, like Minneapolis-St Paul, refuses to bet the economy on one or two industries. Rather, it practices what one city booster calls 'Ichironomics.' Like the Seattle Mariners' center fielder, Ichiro Suzuki, we try to hit singles and doubles. We want to improve the overall conditions for small businesses, not chase the large employer."

"Ichironomics"—love it. Wonder how you translate that into German?

(NB: Mr Suzuki has 227 base hits, and he's batting a stratospheric .351, going into the last week of MLB's regular season—in 2004 he broke the all-time record for hits in a single season, with a staggering 262.)

(Above: bougainvillea, blooming right outside my hotel—what's not to love about my spiritual home, California?)

Perceived Effort

I'm not going. Nonetheless ...

"They say" that I help them because I condone-certify-applaud their excesses in pursuit of ... innovation, a business start-up, etc. Thank you! I say that the late sports super-agent, Mark McCormack (once voted the most powerful man in sports), condoned and certified me in one of my excessive habits.

McCormack said there are times, and not necessarily that infrequently, when it is wise to travel 5,000 miles for a 5-minute meeting. It was a tactic I started using instinctively years ago, when I was working in Washington, in 1974, on drug abuse issues; the fact that I could say, "Look, I was with Ambassador Moynihan in Delhi just three days ago and he assured me that ..." was, well, a show-stopper. Without fail! (And worth a 25,000-mile roundtrip in 96 hours.)

I'm not going, this time, as I said at the top of this post. Because a tough situation mostly cleared itself up, or at least went sub-critical. But I changed my plans just yesterday, so that I'd arrive in L.A. from Sydney, doubtless exhausted after 14 hours in the air, at 10 a.m., then take off from LAX two hours later for a 1,500 mile one-way trip, be at my destination about 6 hours, then head back to L.A. and immediately go on to Las Vegas for a difficult speech.

But the point here is that I did not hesitate (and it wasn't a critically ill family member or some such personal crisis), and it's something I end up doing at least a couple of times a year. And the power is, as in the D.C. example, literally beyond measure—and almost without fail. Some part is substance, but it's overwhelmingly psychological. The fact that someone would make an "insane effort" (e.g., travel, exhausted, thousands of miles for a 25-minute audience with whomever) almost always breaks a logjam, and sometimes leads to a solution on the spot.

(Incidentally, this timeless tool is arguably more important than ever—in this age of electronic communication, the personal touch has become more valuable because of its rarity.)

100 Ways to Succeed #96:

Make a Public "Insane Effort" Upon Occasion;
Consider It to Be an "Extreme Weapon" in your Success Arsenal

When an issue is of the utmost importance and at a standstill or in freefall, proactively look for an opportunity to "make a statement" through a gesture that indicates great pain and engagement and urgency on your part. Often, this comes in the form of "5,000 miles for a 5-minute audience" with a key participant.

(Is this Machiavellian? Sure, to some extent—but the fact is that you actually must care to do this. The "insane gesture" simply acts as proof that you'll go to any length to make progress.)

Ciao, Sydney

I love Sydney. I ended my stay with a 2-hour powerwalk in one of my favorite venues anywhere in the world—the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain. Above you'll see one of the gardens' century plants in bloom—they can grow several feet in a day when they explode from their dormancy. (I thought one was an intruder years ago, when it appeared instantly outside the window of my San Francisco house.) Below "the mother of all trees."

????????????

I found at a bookstore here Flip: How Counterintuitive Thinking Is Changing Everything—from branding and strategy to technology. On the front cover was an endorsing quote from one Warren Hart. It read like this: "EDWARD DE BONO MEETS TOM PETERS ... ESSENTIAL READING."

My question (and I eagerly await your answers) is: What the hell does that mean?

(FYI, neither De Bono's name nor mine is in the Index.)
(FYI, the book looks pretty good—I shall at least skim.)

Mr Chairman

I never expected to be blogging Alan Greenspan's autobiography, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World. (I never expected to read it, frankly.) But I am thoroughly enjoying it—and for me it's actually a page-turner. The book is divided in two—the personal bit, and essays on basic principles of Capitalism, a global world that is mostly beyond the control of the Fed, and the like.

Most of the press has featured Greenspan's less than complimentary views of the Bush White House. That may well be, but not only is that not the page-turner part for me, but I am simply skipping it.

The surprise and delight are that the book is wonderfully written and hence moves along with style most unusual in autobiographies. But my true interest is the more general parts; that is, how Greenspan came to acquire his free market views (Ayn Rand was an important influence), and then the details of his deeply held beliefs about Capitalism and the like.

For me, this is a superb book—and it will be my companion on tomorrow's loooooong flight from Sydney to LAX. It beat out another book worthy of superlatives—Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton. The Hamilton biography is, yes, another page-turner; the drama (exactly the right word) surrounding Hamilton's establishment of the economic order that is in many ways with us today is as tense as any thriller—in fact, it is the ultimate thriller. It is also perfect to accompany Greenspan—their views are very much in accord.

Mr Secretary

The Financial Times (09.18) had an article on Hank Paulson; in the newspaper the accompanying picture is Paulson with France's economy minister, Christine Lagarde. I had the oddest sensation. I realized how content I was to have Secretary Paulson running our economic policy. I rarely (never?) get that sensation when reading the declarations of a public figure. To the extent that anyone can keep a steady hand on the economic tiller, I think Paulson is the pick of the litter. (I felt the same way about Robert Rubin—maybe it's a Goldman Sachs thing—partially, it is indeed that.) I hardly endorse every action that comes from Wall Street, but Paulson's long track record is such, in a very tough environment that requires the utmost ballet skills, that he will deal with issues with conservatism and flair—and guide us as best as anyone can. Yup, I just felt mostly okay amidst the current volatility—courtesy Hank Paulson.

Anita Roddick

For the next couple of months, or some undetermined period, we will have, as you can see at the top of the right column on this screen-page, a small memorial to Anita Roddick. She challenged all of us to consider our business, of 1 or 1,0001 employees, a force for positive, broad-based social change, while also contributing to traditional capitalist growth through investable profits and job creation. The right thing is also the profitable thing—a message and method to which I, as well, have devoted my career.

(The memorial also links to this excellent article in the Telegraph, which reports on an interview recorded shortly before she died.)

Third Speech in Three Days in Australia

viagra pfizer online

Tom spoke this morning (Australian time) to the Australasian Agency Principals' and Sales Managers' Workshop 2007, at Sanctuary Cove in Queensland. The convention is a gathering of the CEOs of Australia's leading realtors. As he has done in the past two weeks at Redmond, WA, with key Microsoft vendors, and in Sydney, with retail consumer electronics execs, he tells us, he "took the realtors to task for far too meek a response," as he sees it, to the "stupendous, mind boggling women-boomers-geezers opportunity." We are late in posting, because Tom was unable to get on the Web for several hours.
Download the slides here:
Realtors' Workshop, Queensland

Event: Flexirent

Flexirent supports retailers with financing, training, and a variety of other services, and it's the market leader in Australia. Flexirent's largest client, Harvey Norman, is also a principal participant in the event where Tom is speaking. HN is the leading electronics retailer in the country. Greetings to all our Australian friends! We hope you and Tom enjoy his visit. Slides are here.

Event: Australian Institute of Management

Tom is speaking today to Australian Institute of Management members at the AIM Management Convention in Sydney. The theme of the event is: "A Celebration of Management: The Drucker Legacy." Among others, Doris Drucker is attending, speaking, and absorbing Sydney with no jet lag drag—at age 96. (She's an active tennis player, too—as for Tom, the jet lag, he tells us, has flattened him!) Slides are here.

Competing To Achieve Excellence: You Are Your Only Competitor!

Fact is, and I'm not happy about this, I got into a bit of a verbal tussle with my client over some "word issues." It was a meeting of HR execs, and the topic was the, yes, the "war for talent." Now I've used the term—and God only knows I believe that in this age of "intellectual capital" top talent is arguably more important than ever. (Whoops, I actually think that's 86% bullshit; top talent has always been the difference—e.g., the quality of the sea captains in the Royal (British) Navy, circa 18th and 19th century, comes quickly to mind.) But I digress. The point is that the discussion at the meeting in question was warfare-ish to a significant degree—how to quickly nab the best people from the grasp of the competition, etc. I doubtless exaggerate, but to stick with the ancient Navy theme, it was like building tools to create the best Press Gangs for "recruiting" sailors from the pubs of Liverpool in 1790.

Well, I think that's all (98%) wrong. I contend that the bedrock of finding and keeping and co-creating with great folks is not about clever tools to induce prospective "thems" to "shop [live] with us," but a 99% internal effort to create such an exciting, spirited, entrepreneurial, diverse, humane "professional home" that people will be lining up by the gazillions (physically or electronically) to try and get a chance to come and live in our house and become what they'd never imagined they could become!

I.e., it's not an externally directed "war to snatch talent from the other guy" by "being more aggressive than the competition"—but an internally directed competition against ourselves (and our outrageously strong beliefs about people) in which we aim to create an unimaginably attractive workplace. Think Apple, BMW, Cirque du Soleil, Wegmans. And back to the Royal Navy, the Brits built a model of Excellence that had no parallels in its sphere in human history—it was a model about what could be that had never been before, and it was "the other guys" who were forced into the externally aimed "competitive," inferior, reactive, copyist mode.

"All this" led me to spend the day after the speech (while traveling to Sydney) creating and heavily (!) annotating a 36-slide Special Presentation, The Case for Internal Focus: "Brand Inside" Rules! For those of you bugging me to annotate more heavily, all yours—it was good fun, actually!

The Dreamy Enterprise

Ken Blanchard is a very close pal—we were for a year more or less roommates in a fraternity. Moreover, I deeply respect his work and its intellectual integrity and its ability to connect with busy people. Those who denigrate it are often de facto snobs who criticize it because it is clear and uses short words. (But then I'm the kind of guy who thinks you can learn more management-leadership from The Little Prince, which I bought and re-read Sunday, than 95% of Biz Books, doubtless including my own.)

All that said ... I admit that I have trouble with management books presented as parables.

Usually.

While at SFO before leaving for Sydney, I thumbed briefly through "one of those" parable books—and was, to my utter amazement, captured in a flash.

Okay, I'm gonna say it—I think Matthew Kelly's The Dream Manager is magnificent. Furthermore, I think that if you, Mr/Ms Manager-Executive,* don't "get it," you've got a big-time problem. (Well, that's harsh, unnecessarily so, but it does seem like patently obvious "stuff" ignored 89% of the time—and I'm being generous.) (*I almost dropped the "Ms," but thought I'd be accused of bias. Fact is, I think women "get" this sort of thing better than men—which, of course, is why they are typically better managers. Axiom #1: Humane workplaces make more money—believe it. Axiom #2: Humane workplaces are not "soft"; in fact, accountability is usually higher where people are treated well—believe it.)

Herewith, a couple of quotes from The Dream Manager, which may give you a flavor of the main argument (these are also on the slides in the "show" I just offered up in the prior Post): "An organization can only become the-best-version-of-itself to the extent that the people who drive that organization are striving to become better-versions-of-themselves." "A company's purpose is to become the-best-version-of-itself. The question is: What is an employee's purpose? Most would say, 'to help the company achieve its purpose'—but they would be wrong. That is certainly part of the employee's role, but an employee's primary purpose is to become the-best-version-of-himself or -herself. ... When a company forgets that it exists to serve customers, it quickly goes out of business. Our employees are our first customers, and our most important customers."

From the Streets of Sydney (More Accurately, The Rocks)

I've been writing pretty voluminously about Design for some 20 years. I have slowed down recently as it has become "in" and my work as prod-provocateur is largely done. While my ego would like me to take some credit for Design's march up the priority scale, the truth is that the accolades go mostly to the likes of China and Wal*Mart, the Mighty Duo. As the market for low cost stuff turned one thing after another into a commodity, Design won the "only thing left" to differentiate product after product.

(The recent overuse of the term "experience" has at once supported Design consciousness—and hurt it. I'm among the lot that frequently uses "experience" rather than "design." "Experience" is cool—and, indeed, potent as a differentiator. "Design," per my peculiar definition, comes directly from the genes—it's very basic, hence very, very potent.)

To skip steps, I was at one of my favorite bookstores (i.e., specialist in great stuff and weird stuff—The Gas We Pass: The Story of Farts) in the world, Ariel, at The Rocks in Sydney. Through jet-lagged eyes, I stumbled upon Design: Intelligence Made Visible, by Stephen Bayley and Terence Conran.

Oh, what a wonder!!
I'm hooked on design all over again!!

My mushy head took me back to my first trip to Beijing, in 1986, not that long after China began its (short) march to capitalist powerhouse. I was immediately struck by the bright clothing—very, very bright. The older (45+??) generation was still a sea of gray Mao jackets—but, oh, the youngsters!

Color!
Color!
Color!

It struck me, not a novel observation, I'm sure, that, given the chance, people universally moved to "stuff" that was energetic, and had a touch of style. Of course, 20 years later, China is home to a burgeoning set of the very cool.

And it strikes me again—with Bayley and Conran—that Design is, in the most fundamental terms, what makes us human! (Yikes, a potent assertion—did I write that?) You may not agree, but think about it. In fact, for one thing, I've noted that design-insensitive guys (like me) spend as much time in hardware stores deciding on which hammer will grace their garage or basement wall as many women might spend selecting a sweater. (Sexist? Tough.)

So, we're "doing" design more—and that's good. But, are we really using it strategically—has it gotten into the culture and soul of the enterprise, Sony style, Apple style, Deere style, OXO style, FedEx style? That's what I'm going to start yapping about. It's a bit like the "women's stuff" I'm obsessed about. It ever so rarely gets beyond "program"—and becomes a (very profitable) "way of life." (And "way of life," to be crude, is "where the loot is.")

My favorite three quotes from Bayley-Conran so far: viagra without a prescription usa

"You know a design is good when you want to lick it."—Steve Jobs
"Design is first and foremost an attitude."—Roger Tallon

And:

"It's futile to pretend that industrial design or styling has any other function than to support marketing."—Ford executive*

(*I still own a small office building in Palo Alto. My tenant is BMW. I think I'll run this last one by them the next time I'm in the Bay Area.)

(Proof, of sorts, of the power of this book: Though available at amazon.co.uk, I'm going to drag it from Sydney to Brisbane to Sydney to LA to VT in the next 6 days. Why? I need to lick it a little, Steve.)

Cool Friend: Barletta

Our old friend Marti Barletta is back for her third appearance among the Cool Friends. She barely needs introduction here, but let's see ...

... she's the author of Marketing to Women.
... she's the coauthor of Trends, one of the Essentials Series, with Tom.
... she's the founder and CEO of The TrendSight Group, "the premier provider of Marketing to Women insights and ideas."
... she's a cofounder of the Women Gurus Network.
... she's a recognized authority on targeting your business to those who spend almost all the money, that is, women, and her recent focus has been on an especially well-heeled group ... PrimeTime Women™. She's even trademarked the term.

Erik talks with her about her newest book of the same name, PrimeTime Women™: How to Win the Hearts, Minds, and Business of Boomer Big Spenders, and you can read her Cool Friends interview here. You might also like to visit her blog, TrendSightings. Welcome back, Marti!

Boomer Social Sites

In July 2006 when we spoke with Cool Friend Robin Wolaner, she told us she was working on a new venture but all she would tell us was that it was an Internet product. Well, seems she's started a boomer social site called tbd.com. As in To Be Determined. According to a New York Times article about her site and other social sites for the older crowd, she came up with the idea "when I was sitting around with friends and we said, 'We're not going to hang out at the AARP site. What is there for us?'"

The To Be Determined name makes sense for the boomer cohort as well. According to research in Marti Barletta's latest book, PrimeTime Women™ (see most recent interview with Marti here), 59 percent of women 50 to 70 years old feel that their greatest achievements are still ahead of them. So, yes, their lives are still to be determined.

We send our best wishes for success to Robin and the rest of her team at TeeBeeDee.

Event: Microsoft

Still on the West Coast, Tom visits Redmond, Washington, to speak to—who else?—Microsoft. The weather in the Seattle area should be spectacular this time of year, if it's not too cloudy. Did Tom see Mt. Ranier? Let us know, and tell us how the event went, also. You can download the slides here:
Excellence. Always. Microsoft, Redmond, WA

With the Greatest Sadness ...

viagra for men canada I have just read on the Web of Anita Roddick's death. While I was hardly her great friend, we were pals and spent many hours over the years chewing the fat about most every topic under the sun. She was passionate about so many worthy causes, and used her business and strength-of-conviction for the greater good in a way that can genuinely be called "peerless" in the exact meaning of that word. In my sphere of business, she was a practitioner and vociferous champion of doing business in a way that contributed enormously and directly to society; her causes went from environmentalism to the creation of a "supply chain" that lifted hundreds of thousands out of poverty.

My best personal memories are of her appetite for life—and her constant challenge to me, in a pointed, no nonsense way, to use my bully pulpit to champion the causes which she and we held dear. She was a "for profit capitalist" who used her commercial power to enhance the life of so many, and, indeed, the planet itself.

At just 64, she departed, alas, much too soon.

I Left My Heart in San Francisco

Speaking to Taleo today—an SF-based software company that provides sophisticated stuff to abet Talent acquisition, development, productivity enhancement, and retention. E.g., it takes about $100,000 to recruit an employee, and $500,000 to find and train a replacement. (LONG and FINAL versions of slides attached.) Above and below you'll see a couple of slices of my favorite city in the world (along with London). An "Uncle Vito's" "restaurant" is as SF as the Golden Gate—though I can assure you that San Franciscans didn't name the street—see the sign—after the current resident of the shack at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Below is one of the premier reasons for my love affair with San Francisco—incredible diversity; not so many cities with dispensers of the Philippine News, I'd judge.

Churn, Baby, Churn!

The U.S. of A. created 500,000 new jobs in Q4 of 2006, according to Barron's (09.10). Not bad at all. One imagines a raft of firms starting or expanding to give us those jobs. Well, sorta—but mostly "no."

To get to a net of 500,000 we actually created 7,700,000 new jobs—and lost 7,200,000. Now that's a whole different kettle of fish! America's longterm economic strength is hidden here, or not so hidden—we are an insanely dynamic economy, growing and shrinking with near reckless abandon, but the net is a job creation record that is peerless in, and the envy of, the developed world.

More later.

Event Slides: Taleo

Tom starts up his Fall schedule in San Francisco, where he's speaking to Taleo, a SF-based software company primarily focusing on a variety of issues involving Talent acquisition, development, productivity, and retention. Let us hear from you if you attended the event. And, if you'd like to get the slides, you can do so here:
Taleo, San Francisco
Taleo, Long Version, San Francisco

To Get Out of Bed.
Or Not Get Out of Bed.
That Is the Question.

Labor Day is done. The leaves in VT are turning (see above). And I'm about to get rolling on the Fall Season—off to SF-SEA-Australia at the end of the week. But part of my summer's end hangover is my still nagging concern re "What's it all about?" Hence, yet another little "thought paper" is attached. Before one (me) can "get on with it"—the details of coping—one (me) must be clear as to why it's worth the candle, whatever exactly the candle is. That's what I'm trying to play with here. The language is frightfully ponderous at points, with far too many adverbs, adjectives, run-on clauses. But the point is that I'm trying to boil "all this" down—the usually overlooked "big stuff." So here we go ...

Breaking All the Rules in School?

Those of us who are struggling with the challenge of making our enterprises "Future Winners" are wrestling with an almost impossible paradox—how to be well enough organised so that we can reliably produce an output, and yet leave space for our people to "screw around vigorously" in the interests of doing the best work of their lives!

A revolution is what is called for, so it's heartening to see that some of our schools are getting in on the act! Just take a look at the pioneering Thomas Deacon Academy in Peterborough, UK, where they are abandoning many of the familiar planks of the school structure—playground, break times, school bells, and registers—in favour of much more flexibility; mixed-aged tutor groups, 90-minute lesson periods, time out when it's needed, pupils taking responsibility for themselves. You can read about it in this recent Observer article.

There are echoes here of another pioneering educational project in the USA, The Big Picture. This fabulously successful experiment was co-founded by an old friend of Tom Peters, Dennis Littky. The Met School began its life in a tough neighbourhood of Providence, Rhode Island, and has now spread to over 30 more locations across the country. It's certainly an education system, but one that caters to the individual learning needs of every pupil through completely re-imagining the way pupils' learning is organised.

What examples have you seen of organisations that have shifted away from conventional wisdom in the way they structure work? More to the point, can established organisations ever really take on this kind of revolution, or does it have to be new start-ups that set the pattern for the organisation of work in the future?

Excellence!!!

Clay Buchholz! A no-hitter in his second start in the majors! The first rookie in Red Sox history to do it. The 21st rookie in major league baseball to do it. The third rookie since 1900 to throw a no-hitter in his first or second start. The 17th no-hitter ever by a Red Sox pitcher. The first since Derek Lowe's in 2002. And he's 23 years old. Wow!

This happened last night, September 1, 2007. You can read all about it at Boston.com. Congratulations, Clay!

P.S. We'd love it if all of you would post your congratulations to him in our comments.