Relationships: A Competitive Advantage

I was eating lunch with an executive of a hotel company, in a restaurant located at one of his company's hotels. He was talking about competitive threats, describing how companies in his category are constantly copying each other's innovations. I said, "If I were your competitor, I could walk into this hotel and easily copy your physical product. I could study your service standards, and copy them too. What I could not copy are the personal relationships you have with your customers. Those relationships would be impenetrable to me."

In an age of interchangeable products and easily duplicated services, customer relationships have become one of the most powerful competitive advantages available to a business. Do you agree?

[read more]

Back "Home"!

I do love London and feel fully at home; I've been coming over here since serving a summer stint as a midshipman in the Royal Navy in 1965. I gave two speeches at the London Business Forum today, and have another two ticketed tomorrow. How I made it through, I don't know. Though still suffering bigtime from jetlag, I nonetheless stayed up, tracking every pitch in Game 4 of the World Series—Jonathan Papelbon's capper occurred at 4:08 a.m. Greenwich time, just 37 minutes before my wake-up call. It's a long way from my new Kubota in Tinmouth, VT, to the shop windows of London being dressed on Sunday—see above.

London Business Forum

The PowerPoint slides that Tom prepared for the London Business Forum are linked below. He provided us with the final version—the one he used in his presentation—and a long version for those of you who want to see more.

Day 1:
Excellence. Always. London Business Forum, Final, 29 Oct
London Business Forum, Long Version, 29 Oct
Day 2:
Excellence. Always. London Business Forum, Final, 30 Oct
London Business Forum, Long Version, 30 Oct

Podcast by Tom

Karen Salmansohn does a weekly podcast at Lime.com/radio. She calls it "Be Happy, Dammit," and Tom's message fits right into her theme. So, you can listen to 11 minutes of Tom's "Extreme Success Advice" by going to Lime.com and choosing his 25 October 2007 Be Happy, Dammit Podcast. Thank you, Karen!

COOL Friends!

Forget the Merry Pranksters and Jack Kerouac. Brett Farmiloe and Zach Hubbell are traveling across the country in an RV—with a mission. They are looking for people who are passionate about their work. They're hoping that by finding passion-filled professionals (and not-so-professionals), interviewing them, and publicizing their stories, they'll inspire those who haven't yet found an occupation that vaults them out of bed in the morning. Along with Jay Whiting and Noah Pollock, they are driving the Pursue the Passion RV all over the U.S. If you see it, honk your horn, and maybe they'll interview you. (Only for the next few days—their trip ends in Tucson next week.) Their website is Pursue the Passion, and we turn the tables by interviewing the interviewers here. Read the Cool Friends interview with Brett Farmiloe and Zach Hubbell.

North Mississippi Medical Center Rules!

I'm in Tupelo, Mississippi, today, courtesy the North Mississippi Medical Center. Among (many!) other things, NMMC is a 2006 recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award—the "Nobel Prize of Enterprise Excellence," as one observer put it.

Now, NMMC is stepping boldly forward with an innovative health education program aimed at children in general and childhood obesity in particular. (Our HHS secretary described it as a problem that is worse than terrorism.) Called "HealthWorks," and modeled after a pioneering program invented by Memorial Hospital of South Bend, Indiana (skip the Notre Dame football quips, please), the program aims to rock the world—and, God knows, we need it.

I am speaking to several groups here, from the medical center and the community at large, and despite the cold (Tupelo is colder than Boston today), having a great time—Southern Hospitality matched with Olympian Aspirations of Excellence.

[You can get the PPT presentations with the links below.—CM]
North Mississippi Medical Center
Excellence. Always. Tupelo, MS
Excellence. Always. Tupelo, MS, Long

Sorry!

Last week included a round tripper to Korea. Tomorrow at 4 a.m. I'm off for a month. The weekend in Vermont was perfect—such will not be the case when I return. So, I recovered from jet lag by hitting the fields—and continuing my landscaping from dawn to dusk. (More or less.) In any event, that dented the Blogging time. Sorry.

My Hunch

While the Rockies and the Red Sox are battling in the World Series, halfway around the world the Airbus A380, courtesy Singapore Air, will make its first commercial flight.

Here's betting that when aviation history is written 25 years from now the Boeing Dreamliner will be more or less forgotten—and the A380 will get its own chapter.

I can hear the howls now—and I won't be around 25 years from now to pick up-pay off the debt, or if I am hanging in, unlike Peter Drucker, I damn well won't be prattling on about management.

In any event, hats off to recently maligned Airbus and the service fanatics at Singapore Air!

Go, Coach!

I must admit that, though a fanatic football fan, I find that most coaches' books leave me cold. Not so the recent offering from legendary Michigan coach Bo Schembechler: Bo's Lasting Lessons (with John Bacon).

Consider: "I can't tell you how many times we passed up hotshots for guys we thought were better people, and watched our guys do a lot better than the big names, not just in the classroom, but on the field—and, naturally, after they graduated, too. Again and again, the blue chips faded out, and our little up-and-comers clawed their way to all-conference and All-America teams."—from the chapter, "Recruit for Character"

I'm also 97.23% behind this one: "I've always believed eye-popping innovation is not as important as perfect execution." (Not a bad reminder in these days when it seems as though there is but one word in the manager's dictionary—innovation. Have we already forgotten Larry Bossidy's Execution?)

Lick-worthy!

Steve Jobs offers us this definition of terrific design: "You know a design is good when you want to lick it." (From Design: Intelligence Made Visible, Stephen Bayley & Terence Conran)

My "lick-worthy" candidate: my Western Digital 160 gigabyte external hard drive. It is sleek and black and austere—and though I haven't licked it, I have indeed fondled it.

(And hats off to Mr Jobs and company for stupendous earnings reported the day before yesterday. The company has been loved for "cool" and excoriated for not doing as well financially as Microsoft, a direct result of Steve's often unpleasant "I want it my way" mantra. Now Microsoft and Dell have a bushel of problems—and no obvious solutions since innovative leaps have not been their forte. Apple has stuck to their absurdly high new-product standard for decades, except in Jobs' absence, and, despite barbs and arrows and bad spells, it has paid off. Moreover, if innovation is your forte, when trouble arises your "fallback" is your forte.)

(Is my tribute to Jobs-innovation contrary to my tribute to Coach Schembechler-execution? Sure. So what? Scott Fitzgerald: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Bob Waterman found that one, and we used it as a chapter epigraph in In Search of Excellence. In Thriving on Chaos, I claimed that the #1 trait of a successful leader is "managing paradox.")

More.
(Design.)

Hats off ... again. Target's print ad: "Smart. Simple. Surprising. Great design from A to Z." (Literally, an illustration of an object—Ziploc is "Z," God bless them—for each letter in the alphabet.)

No-No.
(As You Know.)

In Korea last week I had a long discussion with a BigCo CEO about the Japanese and Chinese (and Koreans). While I think I passed the implicit test, I was reminded of the obvious: We far too often spout utterly useless words like "European" or "Asian." Maybe the Chinese and Japanese and Koreans share skin tint to some extent, but otherwise they have about as much in common as America and Albania and Afghanistan. Well, that's hardly the case, but you know what I mean.

Implication: Eliminate the use of terms such as "Asia"—as in "the Asian management style." Eliminate: as in zero, none, never, naught, zip.

And You?

"Foundation" is an intimidating word that brings to mind Bill Gates or Ross Perot. But how about Catalino Tapia? He came to the U.S. from Mexico 43 years ago, at age 20, with $6 to his name. He held a series of jobs, and eventually started his own gardening business. He owns his home in Redwood City, CA, south of San Francisco, and recently his son graduated from Berkeley's law school (Boalt Hall). In 2006, he started a non-profit corporation, Bay Area Gardeners Foundation. With a dozen immigrant gardeners on the board, the foundation this year awarded nine college scholarships @ $1,500 each.

Marvelous!
I guess you don't have to be Bill Gates, after all!
And you?

(The above story courtesy the San Francisco Chronicle, 10.15.07—I grabbed a copy last week on my way to Korea.)

Individualism in Business

"There's no 'I' in TEAM, but there is a 'Me' if you look closely."—Ricky Gervais

At the risk of starting another sport blog-spat, I want to start by saying that I watched the English rugby team beat the French group and reflected on how often it is we see groups beaten, who, at least on paper, "shouldn't be." On the pitch, they are beaten by a team effort because they can't collaborate. My thought here is that, in the absence of a strong sense of collective aspiration, individualism kills collective effort, which, in turn, spoils the result. Is there any learning here for business leaders? We all talk the talk on the importance of good teamwork. But just how prevalent is it in our respective organisations?

We seem to live in an age of increasing comfort and selfishness. Most of us are fortunate enough to be hovering nearer the top of Maslow's hierarchy than the bottom. Yet we live in a society that seems to value celebrities more than teams. Prima donnas more than grafters. Individualism more than cooperative effort. The media try hard to turn team efforts into the individual virtuoso performances. Count how many post match/event interviews are spent with the interviewee shying away from the accolades and reminding the reporter that it was a team effort? Are we witnessing the sound-biting of performance? Is the neat icon/success package the only good story? Is great teamwork poor press?

It seems increasingly rare to find a true business "team." (Dys) functional reporting groups appear to be much more common. The more senior the group, the less likely they are to be collaborative. The old adage of "No one wins on a losing team" does not seem to be true in the boardroom.

What are the drivers of this willing acceptance of mediocrity? Do we trade results for an ego boost? Does a need for control force us to inhibit the threat of collaborative effort? Did we get to be senior managers for being individualistic? Will we only collaborate when there are more serious threats than most of us face every day? Will individual interest and greed always win ... ??? Investing in process and systems improvement feels more reassuringly tangible than investing in talent, it seems. An SAP R4 ERP system feels more likely to deliver ROI than "teamwork development." Even though the stats on ROI for ERP implementation are frightening, they are more tangible than the "soft" stuff.

Are managers just unaware how much better their organisations could be performing, so that they consequently fail to pay attention to the development of the team?

Should I buy SAP or invest in my team? Please give me some investment advice!

New Master: Now 3,500 (or so) Slides

Tom continues to tweak his master set of PowerPoint slides. As he uses it, he finds subjects that need more explanation, finds places that need resequencing, etc. There is a lot of duplication in the master set, but that gives you insight into how Tom does what he does. He can get to a particular section of the Master and copy a series of slides to serve his purpose when his topic is Innovation, or Talent, or Execution, or any of his other important themes.

The links for downloading are always in the right-hand column of this page, but I duplicated them below for your convenience. These take a while to download!
Part One: Context, Excellence
Part Two: Innovation
Part Three: PSF, the Value-added Ladder, Solutions, Dreams
Part Four: "New" Markets, Women, Boomers & Geezers
Part Five: People, i.e., Talent
Part Six: Leadership
Part Seven: Key Lists (Irreducibles, Sales, and more)

Gorillas and Chocolate

What does a drumming gorilla have to do with chocolate? Well, the UK's mega-chocolate business with the salmonella-blemished brand, Cadbury, have certainly made a connection, given the iconic status of their current TV advert, in the UK at least. If you haven't seen the advert yet, Cadbury have posted it on the web after a million-plus hits on the various versions posted on YouTube.

At a seminar we presented this week, our client's marketing director asked his audience of twenty or so business-to-business bankers the above question at the start of his presentation on their brand. After several brave attempts from his audience, the presenter explained the answer he had got from Cadbury's advertising agency when he asked them how they had sold the drumming gorilla approach to Cadbury at their first pitch.

Their first point was that TV viewers these days won't and don't accept their viewing being interrupted by ads. They either don't watch them, or, worse, switch channels. So, to have any impact, the advert itself had to be entertaining. Secondly, this advert was focused on restoring the Cadbury brand reputation, not their chocolate. It shows a gorilla taking great pleasure from playing the drums, Phil Collins-style. Having got the audience's interest, and a full eighty or so seconds into the ad, they get to the tag line about the joy of eating Cadbury's chocolate.

This may be ho-hum stuff for many of the aficionados of this blog, but the advert (and the explanation thereof) certainly grabbed the attention of that seminar audience. It helped them think afresh about how their work brought their bank's brand to life in their dealings with staff and clients.

Has the approach worked? Well, it got my attention when I first saw it, and I bet I know what the last advert on Saturday night will be just before the whole English population watches the Rugby World Cup final—come on, England!

Women to Save Pier 1?

I was perusing my online newsletter from Workforce.com when I came across a couple of interesting articles. One about a 4-year study of Fortune 500 companies providing evidence that "Firms with More Women on Boards Perform Better Than Those That Don't." "We have established a correlation between diverse boards and strong corporate performance," says Kara Helander, vice president, Western Region at New York-based Catalyst.

I, then, read an article about Pier 1 Imports' financial woes and their plan to correct their downturn by cutting healthcare costs. The plan includes cutting employees' hours to disqualify them for health benefits (very Wal*Mart-like). Pier 1 CEO Alex Smith is calling it a "cost-efficiency mission." Sounds to me like a nice way to say, "Hey employees, we're screwing you, but keep up the good work because you're improving our bottom line." According to the article, "Pier 1 Imports soon will learn whether cutting health care benefits for the very employees who deliver what the company calls its signature in-store shopping experience will help resurrect the failing retailer or exacerbate its multimillion-dollar losses."

I could go on and on discussing why I think this is a tragic solution to their problem, but given that I just read the Catalyst study, my first thought was, "Huh? I wonder if there is a correlation between their performance and the number of women they have on their Board?" So, I googled Pier 1. Imagine that ... the Board of Directors is made up entirely of men! I'm completely flabbergasted! Pier 1?! All Men?! What are they thinking??? They might do well to heed this statement from the study: "It makes sense that companies with more women on their boards would perform better than those that don't because these companies probably have a better handle on their customer base," says Dale Winston, CEO of Battalia Winston, a New York-based executive search firm.

Recall this passage from Tom's Re-imagine! "All you have to do is look! LOOK AT A DAMN PICTURE OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS IN THE ANNUAL REPORT ... hopelessly unrepresentative of the market being served ... I am not championing "quotas" ... I am championing a board whose composition mirrors the market (diversity) and technologies (youth) that represent our biggest challenges." Do you think Pier 1's customer base is made up entirely of men? Given that I shop there, I can say with 100% confidence the answer is NO!!! Perhaps I'll send some enlightened inspiration to Mr. Alex Smith (a copy of Tom's book perhaps?) so instead of disenfranchising his staff, he can re-imagine a strategy to revitalize Pier 1. I'd love a happy ending ...

Event! World Knowledge Forum

I had the privilege today of speaking at the opening plenary session of the 8th annual World Knowledge Forum in Seoul. My fascinating position in the lineup was immediately after Colin Powell, who keynoted, and immediately before Philip Rosedale, founder-creator of Second Life/Linden Lab. (I had to wonder if I was just a space bar between the two.) In any event, the meeting has a lineup that rivals that of Davos—and it's a lot more fun to be doing this in Seoul, where, despite the looming nuclear neighbor to the north, there is an "Asian optimism" missing in the rest of the world. I was lit up by the whole thing. But my afternoon actually topped my morning—my 3rd and last speech of the day was to several hundred students. Such groups lift the heart—but they're also stressful; young women and young men will not tolerate the bullshit that their elders, unfortunately, often become immune to. Back to VT tomorrow—long flights but worth it.

(Incidentally, I'd be hard pressed to adequately express the warm feelings I have for General Powell. He is, through and through, a remarkable person—and a million million miles from being full of himself, unlike many of his peers with whom I've had similar dealings.)

Event Slides: Seoul

You can get the PowerPoint presentation from the 4th Annual World Knowledge Forum in Seoul here, and the presentation to the Students here.

15 October 1982

Tom called me from the road to tell me this story. He's celebrating an anniversary. On the 15th of October, 1982, he received a small package from New York at his Palo Alto office. When he returned from a meeting in mid-afternoon and opened the package—there it was—two copies of his first book, from an initial print run of 5,000. Beside himself with delight, Tom fondled the book—and headed off to Cupertino with the second copy to give it to a senior executive at Apple, a little computer company with about 200 employees.

And now, exactly 25 years later, Tom is still out on the road, "spreading the word" about "MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around," "A Bias for Action," and other more or less eternal truths. On this 25th anniversary to the day, Tom is making the 10,000-plus-mile trip to Seoul, where he will present, along with General Powell and the President of Korea, among others, at a major event aimed at vaulting Korea's innovation skills to another level.

Happy Anniversary! to Tom and In Search of Excellence.

Cool Friend: Alex Kjerulf

According to our new Cool Friend Alex Kjerulf, the Scandinavian languages have a word, arbejdsglæde, that means "work happiness" whereas the Japanese have the word karoshi, meaning "death by overwork" (We're hoping you feel particularly Scandinavian today). Alex is the author of Happy Hour is 9 to 5: How to Love Your Job, Love Your Life, and Kick Butt at Work and he spoke with Erik Hansen about why happy workers are better for a company's bottom line. He mentioned strategies for leaders who want to create a happier workplace as well as things we can all do to make ourselves happier. Read the Cool Friends interview or visit Alex's blog, PositiveSharing.com.

Event Slides

Tom is in Minneapolis, where, he reports, the temperature has gone from the 90s to the 30s in the space of a week. He is speaking to the gurus of packaging, AICC, the Association of Independent Corrugated Converters, "an association of independents for independents" in the corrugated industry, providing services to help its members strengthen their bottom line. If you were there, let us hear from you. If you want the slides, you can get them here.

Exceptions to Every Rule

You can be assured that this Blog will not distract readers with movie reviews. Nonetheless, I must break the implicit rule and report that I cannot remember when I laughed as hard, often to the point of choking, as I did last night while watching Death at a Funeral. Part of the joy was that the entire audience was in near hysterics for all 90 minutes of the performance—and we doubtless spurred one another on.

'Nuff said.

Deloitte!
Again!

Deloitte & Touche just took honors as the #1 place for college grads to go to work. And D&T has long won my honors for its successful, Herculean efforts to retain top women performers who had been leaving in droves—see Deloitte's WIAR/Women's Initiative Annual Report (PDF).

Now, courtesy yesterday's Wall Street Journal, we learn that Deloitte is pioneering again—this time in altering work practices in recognition of the role that women leaders and professionals play at Deloitte's client organizations: " [Deloitte partner in charge of the project Cathy Benko] started exploring the issue while researching ways to retain and attract female employees. She teamed up with TrendSight Group, a Winnetka IL consulting firm, and after interviewing senior women executives and Deloitte employees, they concluded that the same discovery process women use when doing personal shopping applies to purchasing business services."

From this sprung a half-day workshop that, after initial skepticism, is being well received by men and women at Deloitte—and clients. Benko agrees that there is a fine line between improving communication approaches to women and appearing condescending, but the overall merit of the idea is sound and worthwhile, as women become almost dominant in the middle ranks of corporations where so many commercial purchasing decisions, adding up to trillions of dollars, are made.

(Full disclosure: Marti Barletta is founder and chief of TrendSight Group—I have relied on her research for years; she was in fact coauthor of Trends, part of a set of four small books, called "Tom Peters Essentials," that I released in 2006. Marti is also a Cool Friend.)

Against All Odds:
So What?

Columbus, whose astonishing accomplishment we Americans are celebrating today, was a loooooooooong shot—and he brought home a winner. My dearly beloved Stanford, a woeful example of a Division 1A football team, went to Southern California as a 42-point underdog to the #1 ranked Trojans—and brought home a winner, snapping SC's 35-game home winning streak in the process. North Carolina's Appalachian State, otherwise known as "who they," went to Ann Arbor at the start of the season to face #5 Michigan—and brought home a winner.

British explorer-madman Jason Lewis pedaled up the Thames and across the Meridian Line at Greenwich on Saturday, thus completing a 13-year, 46,000 mile circumnavigation of the globe using only his own power—bicycle, 26-foot pedal boat, kayak, and inline skates.

At a Saturday evening party on the Farm, leaves at VT peak, I gave a friend fighting a severe illness one of my newly acquired Appalachian State T-shirts. I told him I called it my FTO T-shirt. (F^&* The Odds.)

Long shots are long shots—but they do come in. To my mind, the essence of life is trying stuff you "have no right to try." Consider this Wilde-ism (Oscar): "To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

Amen!
Happy Columbus Day!
(Canadian pals: Happy Thanksgiving.)

Who Woulda Thunk I:
For Shame On Waterman and Peters!

Bob and Tom are idiots! Neither of them, in 1982 in In Search of Excellence, predicted that in October 2007 there would be a Vanity Fair ad for Louis Vuitton featuring Mikhail Gorbachev sitting in the back of a limo with his Vuitton bag at his side.

Who Woulda Thunk II:
Built to ... Last?

Headline, Wall Street Journal, 3 October 2007: "Wal*Mart Era Wanes Amid Big Shifts In Retail: Rivals Find Strategies To Defeat Low Prices; World Has Changed"

Sentence #1: "The Wal*Mart Era, the retailer's time of overwhelming business and social influence in America, is drawing to a close."

(You know my biases ... I'm not surprised. "Lasting" is a chimera.)

The Basics I:
"Old Fashioned" Service Never Gets Old ... Or Out of Fashion

Susan gave me my 65th birthday present early, while the days in VT still have a hint of warmth and the sun sticks around for a while at least. It is a magnificent (!!!!!!!) Kubota 4-wheeler—aimed at feeding my growing passion for landscaping on the mountainsides here in West Tinmouth.

I showed it off to a good friend, and I mentioned the wonderful support Susan had gotten from the Kubota dealer. He seconded the story, as he does business with the same guy. "I still can't believe it. I bleed green [Deere's color] and I've left them behind. [He has enough Deere equipment to fill a freighter—and has had for years, and then more years.] But the fact is that when I call the Deere dealer with a question, I'm lucky if he bothers to get back to me in the next two days. Finally, after the pattern was clear and then some, I'd had enough. A pack of wild horses couldn't get me to reverse course."

So Deere makes utterly superb equipment and innovates constantly—not an ounce, or gram, of doubt about it. But today, as always, the basic "soft" service from the company or its distributor-dealer/s makes or breaks the relationship, given some decent alternatives, in which category Kubota fits and then some. canadian generic viagra healthcare

No news in this story—except for the always Big News that, whether it's your father's world or Web 2.0 world, it's the basics (e.g., of returning phone calls) that make you or break you.

(NB: People come from hundreds of miles away to purchase from the good-guy dealer in question.)

[Photo credit Susan Sargent, for the great photo of Tom and his Kubota, above]

The Basics II:
All You Need Is Love,
Not Tom Peters or Gary Hamel

I have recently come across reviews of two books that sound pretty good: Mass Career Customization, by Cathleen Benko and Anne Weisberg, and The Future of Management, by my friend Gary Hamel.

The premise of both is that the nature of work and job satisfaction and careers is changing—so much so that Gary insists we must re-invent the whole idea of "management." There's no way I could be critical, since I have been preaching from the same pulpit for over a decade—my "invention," if that's what it was, of "Brand You," and touting of the Professional Service Firm "model" of work is testimony to my intimate involvement in this issue.

But, as I ponder it all, I'd have to take strong exception to Hamel and Benko and Weisberg and Peters—especially the notion that management must be "re-imagined." Nothing wrong with what we said—except that it misses the Foundation Principle, which presumably dates back thousands of years.

In a nutshell, it doesn't mean a thing to talk about "mass career customization" or "brand you"—if the Guiding Axiom is anything other than an Abiding Respect for and Belief in one's Fellow Human Beings.

"Respect" and "appreciation" and "trust" are not exactly novel ideas—but they are precisely what's often-mostly absent from the workplace of the past or present or, doubtless, future.

You know by now of my immodest admiration for General Ulysses S. Grant and Admiral Horatio Nelson. Nelson's respect for his sailors and officers was manifold—biographer after biographer use the same word, "love," to talk about Nelson's relationship with his men, and vice versa. As to Grant, his humanity is illustrated graphically by this quote from the diary of a Confederate private, following a bloody defeat:

"The [Union senior] officers rode past the Confederates smugly without any sign of recognition except by one. When General Grant reached the line of ragged, filthy, bloody, despairing prisoners strung out on each side of the bridge, he lifted his hat and held it over his head until he passed the last man of that living funeral cortege. He was the only officer in that whole train who recognized us as being on the face of the earth."

You may say I'm exaggerating, but I give you my word that I'm not when I say that I tear up whenever I read this passage. Nelson wished to "annihilate" the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar; U.S. Grant was known as Unconditional Surrender Grant. That is, both were tough as nails and then some—but they also deeply respected their fellows, friend or foe.

Add, as well, these gems to your "keeper quotes" list:

"It was much later that I realized Dad's secret. He gained respect by giving it. He talked and listened to the fourth-grade kids in Spring Valley who shined shoes the same way he talked and listened to a bishop or a college president. He was seriously interested in who you were and what you had to say."—Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Respect

"I wasn't bowled over by [David Boies] intelligence. ... What impressed me was that when he asked a question, he waited for an answer. He not only listened, he made me feel like I was the only person in the room."—Lawyer Kevin _____, on his first, inadvertent meeting with David Boies, from Marshall Goldsmith, "The Skill That Separates," Fast Company

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

"Either love your players or get out of coaching."—Bobby Dodd, legendary football coach. (Vince Lombardi reportedly said, "I do not need to like my players, but I must love them." Couldn't confirm those exact words from Google, but did find many examples of Lombardi on loving one's players.)

"I have always believed that the purpose of the corporation is to be a blessing to the employees."
—Boyd Clarke

"The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated."—William James

"We behaved as if we were guests in their house. We treated them not as a defeated people, but as allies. Our success became their success."—"How One Soldier Brought Democracy to Iraq: The Mayor of Ar Rutbah" (MAJ James Gavrilis/USA Special Forces)

"No matter what the situation, [the excellent manager's] first response is always to think about the individual concerned and how things can be arranged to help that individual experience success."—Marcus Buckingham,
The One Thing You Need to Know

I don't suggest that you blow off Hamel or Benko or Weisberg, or Peters, but I do suggest that you put First Principles first. Read and ingest these books before you turn to the nouveau "with it" ones:

Servant Leadership—Robert Greenleaf

The Human Side of Enterprise—Douglas McGregor

The Manager's Book of Decencies: How Small Gestures Build Great Companies—Steve Harrison

viagra alternatives in india The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything—Stephen M.R. Covey and Rebecca Merrill

Re-imagine management? Not by my lights. Instead, put the eternal but seldom practiced verities first and create a workplace that is constructed on a base of trust and respect and decency and commitment to personal growth and one another, and, yes, love.

The Basics IIA:
All You Need Is Love,
Not Tom Peters or Gary Hamel

I ran on so long in that last post that I obscured the basic point. Clever "human resources" programs that take into account the "new realities" concerning Gen X or Chinese competition or Web 2.0 are not the basis for creating "competitive advantage through an excellent workforce." The "great secret" to "people excellence" is "treat people with manifest respect and appreciation and trust, and give them a chance to express the best in themselves and dramatically broaden their horizons"—and "the rest" will take care of itself for Gen A or Gen B or Gen X or Gen Boomer.

Systems Thinking, Luck, and a Great Comment

In response to "Systems Thinking II: My Summer Vacation," there were a number of fascinating Comments. For only about the third time since we started this blog, I am reprinting the comment in full.

(NB: Re Paul's riff on luck, I was utterly delighted to see that my "bible," Fooled By Randomness, is on the BusinessWeek bestseller list—and I have the smallest hope that I had the smallest bit to do with that—I've never mentioned any other book so often in this blog.)

From Paul: "Chetan, I disagree with your assessment. I don't think we can recognize, with any degree of accuracy, the full 1st order consequences of a major action such as war, much less the second order consequences, or "consequences of the consequences", as you termed it. To believe that we are that capable is epistemic arrogance. Bush's administration likely DID try to anticipate 1st and 2nd order consequences, only they anticipated the ones they wanted to see. Others anticipated less optimistic consequences, and time proved them to be right. It does not mean they were any better at it—I believe a high degree of luck was involved.

This is exactly why I asked Tom if Grant would still be his hero had he lost. Is Grant a great general because he won the war, or did he win the war because he was a great general? Has Bush's war policy failed because he is a poor strategic planner, or is Bush a poor strategic planner because his war policy failed?

This is precisely why action is so important. We have far, far less ability to predict outcomes than we think we do. Much deliberation is needless, and I think the outcomes are more random than we realize (yet we trick ourselves into thinking it worked out because we planned it that way). The most we can hope for is to get out there, "thrash around", and see if something good happens. If something doesn't, keep moving. online canadian pharmacy generic viagra

I absolutely believe hard work and skill play their role, too, so don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that a lot of what we attribute to those two actually belongs to luck as well.

Read Arrian's account of the Battle of the Granicus. Alexander rushes into battle against the judgment of his wise old general Parmenion. You will see that Alexander comes within inches of death in his very first battle! Had he been killed (which he easily could have been), would we then consider him a poor, arrogant general, rather than one of the best of all time? What a role luck plays, then!

Perhaps your experience in war has been much different than mine, but in my experience we constantly tried something, saw if it worked, and kept at it if it did, abandoned it if it didn't.

I have no doubt you are intelligent, but to think that the development of nations like India and Pakistan could have been foreseen in any reliable way is a shortsighted mistake that many intelligent people make. I do not agree that the Brits merely "thinking about it" a little longer would have made a lick of difference. Things may have turned out differently, but they would have equal chance of being worse as they would better."

IMHO.

Posted by Paul Knepper on October 3, 2007

Who Has the Problem,
Me or "Them"?

Case I:

So I read a good column (as far as it goes) by a good friend. Joe Nocera's "Talking Business" column in the September 29 New York Times was headlined: "The Worst Investors? Humans."

He writes about a bushel of demonstrated human irrationalities that lead to counterproductive investment behavior. But never once—so damn typical!!!—does he touch on the issue of gender differences in investment strategies. Yet, significant research shows that there are gender differences, that they revolve around irrationality, and that women, the rational ones, the less emotional ones, out-invest men.

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

Or consider a Jane Bryant Quinn column in Newsweek ("Stop Treating Women Investors Like Idiots!"): "Why all this focus on women and our lack of investment guts? A far greater problem, it seems to me, is trigger-happy speculation, mostly by men. The kind of guys whose family savings went south with the dot-coms. Imagine a list of their money mistakes: Shoot from the hip. Overtrade their accounts. Believe they're smarter than the market. Think with their mouse rather than their brain. Praise their own genius when stocks go up. Hide their mistakes from their wives."

I'm not arguing that the case is open and shut, though I think it is, I'm simply wondering why it never occurs to men to examine gender differences???

Case II:

As I write, I'm in High Point NC at the semi-annual monster furniture (home furnishings) show—85,000 in attendance.

Re gender, the statistics are solid as a rock: Women buy upwards of 90% of home furnishings.

So I picked up a freebie in the Sheraton lobby, October's issue of Home Furnishings Business: Strategy for the Furniture Retailer.

Page 12, "Home Furnishings Business Retail Advisory Board Members."

Total advisors: 6.
Total male members: 6.
Total female members: (Do the math yourself.)

But ...
Halleluiah!!
Improvement is on the way!!

Page 14, Contributors (to the October issue).

Total contributors: 9.
Total male contributors: 8.
Total female contributors: (Do the math yourself, but, statistically speaking, an infinite difference.)

Redux: Who's got the problem, me or "them"?
(Could well be me, often is.)

Systems Thinking: Mea Culpa!

Not enough sleep? A brutally painful (beyond OD-ing on Advil) back? Reading too much about maniacally action-oriented U.S. Grant ("almost inhuman disinterestedness in ... strategy"—Josiah Bunting, from Ulysses S. Grant). For whatever reason, in a Comment on a Comment re systems thinking, I called it "gentrified bullshitting."

My apology.

I more or less believe it—but I surely shouldn't have said it so crudely, and it surely wasn't personal.

A Warehouse Full of Hats Off ... To the Ones Who Never Yawn!

On the Road was 50 in September. I wish I'd said it, for I surely believe it:

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn."—Jack Kerouac

Happy Days!
(For Me.)

Last week I wondered, in a Post, why one would want to work for any of BusinessWeek's best companies for college grads—or, rather, best VERRRY BIGGGGG companies. Musta been listenin' over at Dow Jones. (Just kidding.) Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal, in a special section on small business, headlined with "Top Small Workplaces 2007."

Hooray!

Included: Alaska Wildland Adventures. Gentle Giant Moving. Cowden Associates. (Accounting, definitely not "Big Four.") Guerra DeBerry Coody. (Advertising-PR.) Healthwise. (Health info provider.) NRG Systems (Wind-measuring equipment—from Hinesburg VT.) Phelps County Bank. Etc.

The WSJ sub-head: "What Makes a Great Workplace? Among other things: having employees who feel empowered and convinced they have a future at the company." (See tomorrow's Post.)

Thanks, WSJ—you made my day!
(And I'm thinking of applying for a job—Hinesburg isn't that far away, and I'm a bit of a windbag.)

Systems Thinking II:
My Summer Vacation

This summer was the summer of brush clearing.
And more.

It started as simple exercise. After a day or two, scratches from head to toe, and enjoyment, I set myself a goal of clearing a little space to get a better view of one of the farm ponds. That revealed something else. ... to my surprise.

At a casual dinner, I sat next to a landscaper, and we got to talking about our farm and my skills with clipper, saw, etc.

In particular, she suggested that I do some clearing around a few of our big boulders. Intrigued, I set about clearing, on our main trail, around a couple of said boulders. I was amazed at the result.

That, in turn, led to attacking some dense brush and brambles around some barely visible rocks that had always intrigued me—which led to "finding," in effect, a great place for a more or less "Zen garden," as we've taken to calling it.

Which led to ... more and more. And more.

(Especially a rock wall, a hundred or so yards long, that is a massive wonder—next year I'll move up the hill behind it—I can already begin to imagine what I'll discover, though my hunch will be mostly "wrong," and end up leading me somewhere else.)

(Yesterday, 4+ exhausting hours clearing around another rock-boulder—that just a month or so ago I could never have imagined messing with.)

To make a long story short:

I now have a new hobby—this winter I'll do a little, but I also plan to read up on outdoor spaces, Zen gardens, etc; visit some rock gardens-spaces close by; and, indeed, concoct a more or less plan (rough sketches) for next spring's activities—though I'm sure that what I do will move forward mostly by what I discover as I move forward. (This is at least a 10-year project—it could readily go on past my ability to cut down trees of size.)

I proceeded by trial and error and instinct, and each experiment led to a greater understanding of potential—the "plan," though there was none, made itself. And it was far, far better (more ambitious, more interesting) than I would have imagined.

I was able to do much more than I'd dreamed—overall, and project by project.

Not that it matters, but my "skill" has skyrocketed—though I've kept to my promise of only hand tools; that's the spirit of the affair, and the slower pace reveals more, among other things.

Along the way I managed to lose about 10 pounds—while eating garden grown stuff like a pig.

"Systems thinking"? It would have killed the whole thing.

Is "everything connected to everything else"? Well, duh. But I had no idea how everything was connected to everything else until I began (thank you, Michael Schrage—see my last Post) "serious play."

Systems Thinking III

I guess I have a prejudice that comes from my restless nature—and my great mentor at Stanford, the late (alas) Gene Webb—who was one of the world's most prominent "experimentalists" in the social sciences.

My colleagues and I (about 5 of us) in my PhD class, were, oddly, all engineers. At some point we became smitten by the emergent systems literature—bread and butter to the engineering mind.

Our charts and graphs linking this to that and the other became evermore complex—and we became evermore hooked on our "understanding of this and that." (One of the legendary systems gurus was on the Stanford faculty, and we worshiped at his egocentric alter.)

Along the way, my thesis slipped farther and farther behind schedule—though I was still in love with the central idea. (And my "finances"—what a joke—became more and more of an issue.)

One late fall afternoon, in 1976, over a good bottle of Zinfandel, my advisor-mentor-best friend (Webb) unloaded on me in a way that is still memorable, 32 years later:

"For C-sakes, quit drawing those f-ing maps and run some experiments, quick and dirty, and see if anything you are babbling on about actually works or makes the slightest bit of sense in the real world as we know it. And after you've done your real work, then you are welcome to write your 'complete theory of everything.'" (That was close to the actual script, minus many more f%^*s and about 25 minutes of elaboration.)

He hit me at the right moment—my growing frustration with whether or not I was actually moving forward, or just engaging in mental masturbation ("thought experiments" to the pure of heart), was already festering inside my systems-besotted brain.

At any rate, the experiments began the next week, the dissertation topic remade itself time and again, my true sense of connectivity grew in the process, and an original theory evolved along the way, too (a PhD requirement); I finished the work, won high honors at Stanford—and a few prizes.

Save a few forays, I found myself well clear of systems thinking—and on a path to "discovery through action," or some such.

I've hardly "lived happily ever after," but the process definitely affected some of my milestone work, such as In Search of Excellence. To a significant extent, the book was a smash to the jaw of "paralysis of analysis," systems thinking, business-strategy style circa 1980—and the basis for, among other things, our Basic #1 in the book: "A bias for action" (which we learned from the best, such as 3M and GE).

Enough said.