FLASH!
FLASH!
FLASH!

FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION!
FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION!
FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION!
OLD YEAR'S RESOLUTION!

Call (C-A-L-L!) (NOT E-MAIL!) 25-50 (NO LESS THAN 25) people ... TODAY* ... to thank them for their support this year (2007) ... and wish them and their families and colleagues a Happy 2008!** *** **** ***** ******

*Today = TODAY = N-O-W (not "within the hour")
**Remember: ROIR > ROI. ROIR = Return On Investment in Relationships. Success = ƒ(Relationships).
***This is the most important piece of advice I have provided this year.
****This is ... Not Optional.
*****Trust me: This is fun!!!!
******Trust me: This "works."

Happy 2008!!!

Perspective, As the New Year Begins

A good friend of mine, Steve Millard, a true modern telecoms-data movement pioneer, among many other things, keeps me on his intriguing mailing list. Last night (1230.07) I got what follows. As a kid who, in the early 50s, was subjected to "get under the desk" drills in the face of Soviet nucs, perhaps this has special resonance.

But I think the issue is broader than that—fact is, what follows kept me up most of last night (Sunday 1230). In a hyper-rank-conscious society (the Soviets), one incredibly thoughtful Red Army Colonel may have saved the world courtesy one and only one thing—common sense.

My message, though, is not just a tribute to applied common sense. As the new year approaches, I'd urge you to use this story as a reminder of how precious and precarious life is. Last year I touted a wonderful book, The Manager's Book of Decencies: How Small Gestures Build Great Companies, by Adecco exec Steve Harrison. I suggest using this Big Story of impending Nuclear Holocaust to remember small gestures. That is, take the time, with family and friends and colleagues and, indeed, strangers on the street, to smile or say thanks or somehow or other go the extra inch to introduce humanity into your moment-by-moment routines. Do this especially when you are harried and "don't have a second to waste." Between this amazing story about you and me and Colonel Stanislav Petrov and planetary nuclear incineration, and Dickens' Christmas Carol (I re-read it every Christmas), we should be humbled—and moved to give serious thought to the ways in which we transit the world on any given day, at any given moment.

[What follows is the beginning of an article re-printed from dailymail.co.uk. See the original here, and more by author Tony Rennell here.]

"September 26th, 1983: The Day the World Almost Died," by Tony Rennell

Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant-colonel in the military intelligence section of the Soviet Union's secret service, reluctantly eased himself into the commander's seat in the underground early warning bunker south of Moscow.

It should have been his night off but another officer had gone sick and he had been summoned at the last minute.

Before him were screens showing photographs of underground missile silos in the Midwest prairies of America, relayed from spy satellites in the sky.

He and his men watched and listened on headphones for any sign of movement—anything unusual that might suggest the U.S. was launching a nuclear attack.

This was the height of the Cold War between the USSR and the U.S. Both sides packed a formidable punch—hundreds of rockets and thousands of nuclear warheads capable of reducing the other to rubble.

It was a game of nerves, of bluff and counterbluff. Who would fire first? Would the other have the chance to retaliate?

The flying time of an inter-continental ballistic missile, from the U.S. to the USSR, and vice-versa, was around 12 minutes. If the Cold War were ever to go "hot," seconds could make the difference between life and death.

Everything would hinge on snap decisions. For now, though, as far as Petrov was concerned, more hinged on just getting through another boring night in which nothing ever happened.
Except then, suddenly, it did. A warning light flashed up, screaming red letters on a white background—"LAUNCH. LAUNCH." Deafening sirens wailed. The computer was telling him that the U.S. had just gone to war.

The blood drained from his face. He broke out in a cold sweat. But he kept his nerve. The computer had detected missiles being fired but the hazy screens were showing nothing untoward at all, no telltale flash of a missile roaring out of its silo into the sky. Could this be a computer glitch rather than Armageddon?

Instead of calling an alert that within minutes would have had Soviet missiles launched in a retaliatory strike, Petrov decided to wait.

The warning light flashed again—a second missile was, apparently, in the air. And then a third. Now the computer had stepped up the warning: "Missile attack imminent!"

But this did not make sense. The computer had supposedly detected three, no, now it was four, and then five rockets, but the numbers were still peculiarly small. It was a basic tenet of Cold War strategy that, if one side ever did make a preemptive strike, it would do so with a mass launch, an overwhelming force, not this dribble.

Petrov stuck to his common-sense reasoning. This had to be a mistake.

What if it wasn't? What if the holocaust the world had feared ever since the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, was actually happening before his very eyes—and he was doing nothing about it?

He would soon know. For the next ten minutes, Petrov sweated, counting down the missile time to Moscow. But there was no bright flash, no explosion 150 times greater than Hiroshima.

Instead, the sirens stopped blaring and the warning lights went off.

The alert on September 26th, 1983, had been a false one. Later, it was discovered that what the satellite's sensors had picked up and interpreted as missiles in flight was nothing more than high-altitude clouds.

Petrov's cool head had saved the world.

He got little thanks. He was relieved of his duties, sidelined, then quietly pensioned off. His experience that night was an extreme embarrassment to the Soviet Union.

Petrov may have prevented all out nuclear war, but at the cost of exposing the inadequacies of Moscow's much vaunted early warning shield.

Instead of feeling relieved, his masters in the Kremlin were more afraid than ever. They sank into a state of paranoia, fearful that in Washington, Ronald Reagan was planning a first-strike that would wipe them off the face of the earth.

The year was 1983 and—as a history documentary in a primetime slot on Channel 4 [UK] next weekend vividly shows—the next six weeks would be the most dangerous the world has ever experienced. ...

[Read the remainder of the article at dailymail.co.uk.]

Cool News

Cool Friend John Maeda, formerly of MIT's Media Lab, was appointed the new president of Rhode Island School of Design, on December 21, 2007. You can get the details at BusinessWeek.com. Not surprisingly, the announcement at the RISD website looks great. John, we'd like to add our congratulations to all those you've doubtless received already!

Christmas (Cookie) Greetings

From 1984 to 1994 Tom had a weekly column, syndicated by the Chicago Tribune, which ran in about 100 papers. This Christmas column appeared, we think, in about 1988. Thanks to a blog reader named Dorothy Lyskowski, who sent us a scanned copy of the one she had saved all these years! So, our Christmas offering to all our readers:

Lessons About Life, Enterprise, from Baking Christmas Cookies

A couple of hours in a hot kitchen can teach you as much about business and management as the latest books on re-engineering or total quality management. That's my take, anyway, after a bout of Christmas-cookie baking. Here are 11 lessons for life (and enterprise), fresh from the oven:

1. Engagement. Watching others helps, but you've gotta get your hands dirty. I hadn't made cookies for years, so I observed a friend do a few batches. I thought I was learning something, and I suppose I was—but nothing really clicked until my hands were covered with flour.

Lesson (for trainers especially): Cut the lectures. Get folks involved in "real stuff" very quickly!

2. A plan. I'm not keen on planning in general, but a time-tested recipe is a godsend. First, it's roughly "right." More important, it gives you the confidence to get started.

Lesson: Any plan is a help; it gives folks the sense they aren't aimlessly flailing.

3. Art. The plan is an outline—not Holy Writ. Plans, including recipes, are made to be tinkered with—and eventually torn up. Cookie making, software design, and real-estate lending are art. And it's the artists, not the slavish followers of others' recipes, who land in the world's halls of fame.

Lesson: Blind devotion to any plan is downright dumb!

4. Trial and errors. Yes, I'd watched a master at work (or at least a pretty good cook), but in my first hour of hands-on work, with instructions close at hand, I made dozens of mistakes, large and small. And in business life, real life, and cookie-making life, error is the fuel that drives you.

Lesson: Don't "tolerate" mistakes. Embrace them!

5. The same mistakes. "Mistakes are OK," some concede, "but don't make the same mistake twice."

Rubbish! I made virtually the same errors, in something as relatively simple as cookie making, over and over ... and over.

Lesson: Nobody ever did anything (interesting) right the first, or 51st, time.

6. A sense of humor. I was awkward at the start. (And at the finish.) I turned the kitchen into a disaster area. Kids and adults made their day laughing at me (or so it seemed). Experimentation—the nub of life and business—depends on learning to laugh at yourself.

Lesson: Learning is precisely about making a fool of yourself—often in public.

7. Perseverance. An ability to laugh at yourself and suppress your ego is key—but so is steely-eyed determination. Sure it was "just" cookie making. But I did want to do it right.

Lesson: Winners want to do everything well, no matter how trivial; and that takes focus and unrelenting drive.

8. Perfectionism. Certainly, the kitchen was a mess. Yes, I was the object of ridicule. But to master one's craft requires nothing less than pain-in-the-butt perfectionism. Most see artists, and creative types in general, as scatterbrained. I'm sure there are scatterbrained artists (and bakers), but their work doesn't end up in museums (or cookbooks).

Lesson: Creativity and perfectionism are essential handmaidens.

9. Ownership. It was made clear to me: I was responsible for the Christmas Eve dinner cookies. There were no backups available—and a long ginger-cookie tradition hung on my frail (i.e., incompetent) shoulders. The monkey was ensconced squarely on my back. So I did the job.

Lesson A: No ownership, no passion.
Lesson B: No passion, no perseverance.
Lesson C: There is no half ownership.

10. Accountability. When I'd helped with some previous cookie making (the day before), I'd screwed up the baking time twice. Now I was on my own. That should have made things more difficult. But, to the contrary, I was so attuned to the task that I didn't come close to blowing it.

Lesson: Until you're engaged in all aspects of a job, you don't fully engage.

11. Taste. OK, I'll brag: I made good cookies. Greatness takes practice—and exquisite taste. I may or may not practice more, but I doubt I'll ever become to baking what Tom Clancy is to techno-thrillers.

Lesson: If we want great products, we need to find, attract, and retain great creators. Period.

If you'd like to get a copy to spread around, you can download one here as an MSWord file or in a PDF version.

Below ... a different kind of holiday photo. Tom sent it with this caption: "Nothing to do with the post, and I do not confuse myself with the King of the Beasts. But this is how I plan to spend my holidays." Source: His July trip to Botswana.

Service Sucks!
Not By My Lights (Um, Keyboard)!

Fact is, I made a small fortune in the mid-80s bitching and bitching and then bitching some more about customer service shortcomings. I was commonly referred to, from CA to Timbuktu, as the "king of customer service"—and given too much credit for putting this critical strategic issue on the map.

Therefore I applaud Steve Yastrow's post on Hilton's misbehavior. And applaud even more wholeheartedly the fantastic discussion responding to his Post—you'd do well to read all the Comments. (I did.)

Still ...

I got to thinking about all the sophisticated ideas stirred by the Post. And thinking about all the reporters who almost automatically ask me, "Why does customer service uniformly stink?"

Whoa, chummies!

Fact is, I think customer service is a pure marvel:

**On 21 December 2007 (today), a day before leaving the country, at 4 a.m., from my bed, in West Tinmouth, VT, iced in, wireless working, I readily finish my Christmas shopping. Sure, a lot of stuff can't make it by Christmas—but a lot can, enough to get the job done. (And the rest will arrive by the 27th or 28th, not bad by my shabby standards.)
**Last week at this time I was in Dubai, and woke up to the electronic news that a good friend and mentor had passed away. The memorial service was 72 hours later, in LA. Within the space of 20 minutes I had totally re-organized my 3-continent travel, made hotel reservations in LA, and was set to be where I wanted to be when I wanted to be there. (The email received about the service had of course included a map.) (Also, within a half hour, I'd arranged to meet a couple of good friends, one from England whom I hadn't seen for 10 or so years, at my hotel in LA to drive together to the service.) (Some elements of "customer service" are beyond the Web's power—despite my prayers, God decided to do his "blizzard thing," my travel plans imploded, and I missed the service.)
**Two interesting fellow speakers I met in Dubai and I are already at work on creating a mini-conference next Spring on the Web. (I'm almost certain that Spring will come, in spite of my VT picture above—if I light enough candles this Christmas at San Marco's in Venice.)
**Yesterday morning I read a squib on an unusual, older, out-of-print technical book that sounded cool. I'd ordered it 20 minutes later from some guy who lives in that most common of places these days—God Alone Knows Where. (Oh, and there's a 93% chance he'll come through.) (Another book I came across I decided not to order, thanks to 5 minutes perusing 10 or 15 peer-reviews at Amazon; the formal reviews—Publisher's Weekly, etc.—weren't worth a shit, as usual.)
**Talking to VT friends last week who recently finished building a small recreational house in Colorado. This summer they furnished the whole thing, good stuff for an insanely low cost, courtesy eBay—and on the trip out from VT had a jolly time collecting their acquisitions at various places where the eBay sellers lived. (Batting average with purveyors: 100%.)
**Guy who drove me from the airport to my hotel a couple of weeks ago had just started a wee business that involved very sexy recording equipment—in a 6-month period he'd acquired, from various addresses on the Web and after incredible Web research, about $75,000 worth of equipment, in mint condition, for a touch less than $10,000.

To be sure, one of my colleagues ordered her daughter a computer for Christmas, a big deal and total surprise. Delivery was absolutely, positively promised by today—when she checked yesterday, dear, dear Dell informed her it wasn't gonna happen. (Too bad she didn't consult with me earlier—I could have told her how much Dell service sucks; it's even worse post-purchase.) Susan's and my Christmas trip to Italy will be courtesy frequent flyer miles, and I don't need to tell you yet another tale of the pain involved in cashing in "customer loyalty" FF miles—on the other hand, it did work out in the end and enormously lessened our guilt about this indulgent trip.

So, yes, service horror stories, real "head shakers," abound. But as for me, circa December 2007, I am in "shock and awe" at what I can get done in the way of services (breadth and depth) that would have been unimaginable a scant decade ago.* (*And I do love it that a new Web service, boardfirst.com, will allow me, for $5, to automatically get "A" group reservations on Southwest for my insanely inexpensive post-New Year's Albany-BWI trip to see my 93-year-old aunt.)

Merry Christmas—my presents to you, dear close colleagues, will be arriving on time!

Must Watch!

Saturday. 8PM. The History Channel. The True Story of Charlie Wilson. (A couple of reviewers say the same thing: Charlie Wilson's unvarnished story is so good-amazing-bizarre that you don't need Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts to spice it up; this is the killer version.)

Christmas Giving:
Not Too Late to Do Good

Sure it's late, but here are a couple of suggestions:

OLPC. Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child program is a gem. At laptopgiving.org you can give a kid in a developing country a laptop for $200 or, for $399, do "Give One. Get One." You give a developing country child one, and get one for your child.

BoGo Light. About Two Billion people have no electric lights. Substitutes, such as kerosene, are dangerous and play havoc with the environment. Enter Mark Bent, inventor of a $25 solar-powered flashlight. BoGo is "Buy One, Get One." Go to BoGoLight.com, and for $25 plus shipping you get one—and he sends one to the relief group of your choice. You can choose pink or orange. Please choose pink!! Orange was the sole color, but men routinely stole them from women. Men are not so inclined to swipe the pink ones. In a tale reminiscent of the development of micro-lending, the guys use the lights to sit around and do nothing; women use the lights to teach each other to read, do family chores such as gather firewood, etc.

FYI, I am a participant in both programs, though I am not associated with either one other than in the role of Cheerleader.

Cool Friends: Pine & Gilmore

Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore are the guys behind the line that Tom has been using for years, "Experiences are as distinct from services as services are from goods," which is from their bestseller The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage. Their new book is Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want. Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore were the very first Cool Friends at TomPeters.com in 1999. At that time, they were putting the noun experience into the business lexicon in a big way, and they are currently doing the same for the adjective authentic. How do you know when something is really real? Read their Cool Friends interview to get their take on the subject, or go to their website, StrategicHorizons.com to learn more about their work. As I write, Authenticity is ranked #1 on Amazon.com among business books, in the category of direct marketing.

MVPs, 2007

For what it's worth, my heroes (& goats) of 2007

CEO: Carly Fiorina. HP, not IBM, became the first $100 billion infotech company this year. Primary reason? The highly contentious, and surprisingly successful, Compaq acquisition and integration. (And, God knows, I don't ordinarily cheer such acquisitions—though I did, in this case, from the start.) Tenacious champion? Carly Fiorina! HP is now seen as a "consumer powerhouse." Laughable idea a few years ago. Transformation agent: Ms Fiorina. HP is "cool" with scintillating designs. Laughable idea just a few years ago. Transformation agent? Carly. New and not so nerdy "culture." Architect? Carly Fiorina. (And said cultural transformation, frankly, makes Welch's work at GE and Gerstner's at IBM a cakewalk by comparison.)

Do I give Ms Fiorina uniformly high marks? No. Does her successor, Mark Hurd, get significant credit? Absolutely. But make no mistake, Mr Hurd is executing Ms Fiorina's bold strategy and working with her altered culture. Period.

CEO: Arnold Schwarzenegger. President Schwarzenegger has made a miracle in my beloved California Republic. Not only has he done "great stuff"—he's retrieved California's swagger and indomitable spirit. Go, Guvenator!

Company: Basement Systems Inc. Love it when there is a superstar performer in a mundane business. Founder-CEO Larry Janesky has built a $50 million ++, fast-growing enterprise in the biz of providing dry basements—that are free of nasty mold and available as another (big) room in one's home. (Also see Larry's bestselling Dry Basement Science.)

Company: Jim's Group of Australia. Ditto. (You can see my biases here.) Jim Penman has 2,500+ franchises worldwide, doin' the stuff that busy working families don't have time to do—such as walkin' and washin' the family dog! (Also see, downloadable at Jim's website, What Will They Franchise Next? The Story of Jim's Group.)

Companies: Germany's Mittelstand—middle-sized firms. These high-value-added, niche superstars make Germany the world's #1 exporter! (The hell with the Giants.)

Companies and People: Private firms, Millionaires next door. The "gurus" never talk about the private firms—that constitute over half the enormous U.S. economy, and outperform the Monsters in the process. Our "gurus" ("our" includes me!) likewise never talk about that ordinary fellow-CEO up the hill running a biz that does uncool things, dressing in uncool garb, going to Disneyworld on holiday—and sporting a bank account to die for.

Person: Muhammad Yunus. Okay, I'm late to the party, but I didn't do MVPs last year, when Mr Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize for inventing and executing the practice of micro-lending. More cheers still to the 94% women entrepreneur-borrowers (and payers back!).

Market: Me! Boomers. Geezers. By the tens upon tens of millions. Money at the ready. (Lots and lots of. And time to spend it.) And insanely underserved by one and almost all. Here's how I put it in my presentations: "We are the Aussies & Kiwis & Americans & Canadians. We are the Western Europeans & Japanese. We are the fastest growing, the biggest, the wealthiest, the boldest, the most (yes) ambitious, the most experimental & exploratory, the most different, the most indulgent, the most difficult & demanding, the most service & experience obsessed, the most vigorous, (the least vigorous,) the most health conscious, the most female, the most profoundly important commercial market in the history of the world—and we will be the Center of your universe for the next twenty-five years. We have arrived!"

Message: Wise up! Wake up! Get rich!

Goats: Bill Sharpe et other "quants." The super-sophisticated mathematically marvelous quants with their derivatives of derivatives of derivatives promised us the end of systemic economic risk. Whoops—they gave us sleepwalkers just the opposite. When a couple of folks in Podunk missed a mortgage payment, the skyscraper of cards imploded. Bill Sharpe was among the Nobel-winning economists who took us down this prickly primrose path. May the milk in their Christmas puddings be curdled.

Hero: Warren Buffett. Mr Basics wondered about the value of the dull & dreary underlying asset (Mo and Maureen of Podunk's capacity to pay down their "cutrate" mortgage), and warned us about the freaky financial instruments that sat atop such "assets." Chalk another one up for Mr Buffett.

Chief Imagineer: Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai. Just returned from Dubai. In my seminars I call its stunning development, on a desert flyspeck, the "single greatest act of human imagination in my lifetime." Congratulations to Sheikh Mohammed and his late father, Sheikh Maktoum.

Process & Simplicity: Checklists!! Complexifiers often rule—in part the byproduct of far too many "consultants" in the world, determined to demonstrate the fact that their IQs are higher than yours or mine. Enter Johns Hopkins' Dr Peter Pronovost. Dr P was appalled by the fact that 50% of folks in ICUs (90,000 at any point—in the U.S. alone) develop serious complications as a result of their stay in the ICU, per se. He also discovered that there were 179 steps, on average, required to sustain an ICU patient every day. His answer: Dr P "invented" the ... ta-da ... checklist! With the religious use of simple paper lists, prevalent ICU "line infection" errors at Hopkins dropped from 11% to zero—and stay-length was halved. (Results have been consistently replicated, from the likes of Hopkins to inner-city ERs.) "[Dr Pronovost] is focused on work that is not normally considered a significant contribution in academic medicine," Dr Atul Gawande, wrote in "The Checklist" (New Yorker, 1210.07). "As a result, few others are venturing to extend his achievements. Yet his work has already saved more lives than that of any laboratory scientist in the last decade." (I've attached a "Special Presentation" on this topic.)

Healthcare Providers: Planetree Alliance Members. The "Planetree Model" of "patient-centric" (ugly word, that) healthcare is the Real Deal. Asked to comment on the Planetree Alliance earlier this year, here's what I said:

"All sane persons agree that 'healthcare needs an overhaul.' And that's where the agreement stops. Healthcare issues are thorny, and system panaceas are about as likely as the sun rising in the West. But there is good news here and there—and great news courtesy the Planetree Model.

"In the midst of ceaseless gnashing of teeth over 'healthcare issues,' the patient and frontline staff often get lost in the shuffle. Enter Planetree. While oceanic systemic solutions remain out of reach, Planetree provides a remarkable demonstration of what healthcare—with the patient at the center—can be all about; and is all about, among Planetree Alliance members.

"I know this may sound ridiculous, but everything about the 'model' works. It is great for patients and their families—and is truly about humanity and healing and health and longterm wellness, not just a 'fix' for today's problem. It is great for staff—Planetree-Griffin is rightly near the top of the 'best places to work in America' list, year in and year out. And Planetree also works as a 'business model'—any effectiveness measure you can name is in the Green Zone at Griffin.

"For 25 years my 'gig' has been 'excellence.' Put simply, there is no better exemplar of customer-centered, employee-friendly excellence, in any industry, than Griffin-Planetree. The Planetree model works—and, in my extensive work in the health sector, I 'sell' it shamelessly, and pray that my clients are taking it all in."

(I meant it—every word.) (See "Special Presentation" attached.)

Healthcare Heroes: Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Dear God, what a history. As I said to the dean while visiting to make a presentation, "To make the alumni honor role, it seems, you must have saved a million lives or so"—and I'm not sure I was exaggerating. I'd add that the talk was my favorite of the year—I've never seen so many idealists under one roof! (Students, faculty, others.) By the by, hats waaaaaay off to Mike Bloomberg for his astounding support!)

Book: How She Does It: How Women Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Rules of Business Success, by Margaret Heffernan. America's 10 million++ women business owners and their impact on the economy remains our most under-reported business story. As Ms Heffernan puts it: "The growth and success of women-owned businesses is one of the most profound changes taking place in the business world today." Congrats to these gutsy heroes—by the million.

Book: Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams. We all can acquire literally millions of "business partners" with imaginative use of the Web. Collaboration on an almost infinite scale has arrived, for the wise.

Book, Instant Classic: The Black Swan: Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Black Swan told us about the likes of the sub-prime mess long before it happened. Most variation in outcomes (e.g., longterm profit or loss) is the product of a tiny handful of weird (outlier) events. NNT provides example after compelling example—and also illustrates the total impotence of traditional planning methods to cope with black swans.

That's it.

Transaction vs. Relationship

I've been a Hilton customer and a Hilton Honors member for years. You wouldn't have known it when I checked into Chicago's Palmer House Hilton last week.

As I left home in the north suburbs for day one of a two-day conference, I threw a change of clothes into the car. A late-afternoon snowstorm was forecast, and I wanted the option to opt out of a hellish commute home. At about 4:30 p.m., I exercised that option and booked the Palmer House on Hotwire.com for $93. That's a really low price for a great hotel. Unfortunately, they felt the need to remind me what a low price I paid.

[read more]

Pow-wow

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the second annual Author Pow-wow, hosted by 800-CEO-READ. This was an example of Tom's "Have Yous" list brought to life, vividly. 800-CEO-READ, a creative company that is serious about business books, decided it would be a good idea to bring together neophyte authors with the industry experts who can help them. A cynic (a.k.a. Jack Covert, albeit tongue in cheek) would say that they're tired of repeating themselves when speaking to individual authors, but it was obvious that their intention was to challenge their colleagues to seek excellence.

The invited experts weren't interested in stroking the authors' egos. Instead, seasoned professionals explained the ins and outs of business publishing and the speaking industry in ways that challenged common misperceptions. The presentations ranged from solid basics like revisiting core writing skills to the value of a good publicist and speaking agent to how to use the blogosphere to your advantage.

The message that rang loudest over the two days was the need for platform development—finding and honing ways to connect with one's audience. That seems like a fairly obvious branding message, but for people who have been focusing intently on written content, it requires serious gear-shifting to raise their heads from book writing and start marketing themselves. Most would-be authors think that if they can just land a good publishing deal, they can sit back and watch the royalties fill their bank accounts. That's very far from the truth. Publishers expect authors to not only submit a compelling manuscript but a public relations plan including an online presence (for more about this, see John Moore's post nicely excerpting Jeff Gomez's Print Is Dead).

It's clear that the folks at 8CR have an affection for mavericks. The event itself was held at the spectacularly inspiring Catalyst Ranch and the intensity with which people connected made clear how passionate we all are about sharing ideas. Have you planned an event that pushes your colleagues/employees/customers to the next level lately?

If you'd like to hear more about the event, check out the descriptions (numerous, but then, this was a conference about writing) from Kate, Barbara, Raj, Phil, Jose, Dan, Nick, David, Mike, Erika, and Kevin. For photos: Phil, Jose, 8CR.

[read more]

Event Slides: Dubai

As Tom said yesterday, he's in Dubai, where he spoke to the Institute for Human Resource Development. Quite an exciting end to the year's events. If you would like to get the slides presentation, the link is here:
Dubai Institute for HR

The Last Event of the Year! This slides entry puts to rest nine years of such postings (they pre-date the blog). And Tom's first PowerPoint file—from the day he made the transition from actual slides to electronic—is still available in the slides section of our website. See 1999 here. (Okay, maybe it's been eight years and a couple of months.) It could be fun to see how Tom's PPTs have evolved from the earliest days.

PowerPoints

Last week I offered two lists of 50 items each. You'll find them below in PPT format. Also, above, Vermont, 10°F (-12°C), 1209.07.

Links to PPTs:
Cross-functional Excellence—The "XF 50"
Mapping Competitive Position—"Top 50" "Have Yous"

The PDF versions are available now, also:
Cross-functional Excellence—The "XF 50"
Mapping Competitive Position—"Top 50" "Have Yous"

Listening, Secular Variety

I've been talking about the power of listening, offering what I'll call the "spiritual" version—which I commend. But I thought I also owed you the "secular" version, including a doubtless inappropriate remark. You'll find it below and as an attached PPT.

Listening may or may not be an "act of love" or way to "tap into people's dreams," but it sure as hell is (1) an uncommon act of courtesy and recognition of worth from which (2) you will invariably learn amazing stuff if you can just keep your damn mouth shut and ears open with an expression of interest on your face and (3) it will build-maintain relationships beyond your wildest dreams. (And if you are young, which I am not, the surprisingly uncommon act of listening is the most foolproof seduction "tool"-"method" ever invented, because no one, M or F, is ever able to resist the overwhelming attraction that comes from being listened to and taken seriously—and when I was young I was always amazed at how the most unlikely sorts, compared to me, "got the girl" because they were able to keep their mouths shut and ears open and at least act as if they cared more than anything on earth about what they were hearing.) Also, above, Dubai, 26°C (78°F), 1210.07, from my hotel room window.

Relationships!
Relationships!
Relationships!

As I, to some extent, resurrect things past, I have been murmuring & shouting ...
Relationships!
Relationships!
Relationships!

Big brains!
Logical thinking!
The heart of the human difference!
Right?

Wrong!
The heart of the "human difference"?
Gossip!

The human brain is about nine times bigger, on a body-size-adjusted basis, than that of mammals in general. Obviously, or so I think, the reason, therefore, is of interest. But let's take a step back first. Humans were a long, long way from the strongest of the species. So how did we win out over the Truly Big Beasties? Answer: Joining together in groups and outwitting and out-organizing the brutes. And how did that come about?

Gossip!

Or as British evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar put it, our brains expanded to store social information. (Relationship stuff!) To make a long, long story short, this "relationship stuff" allowed us to join together in bands, maximize what we now call "organizational effectiveness" ... and become Kings & Queens of the jungle and more.

My point here is to suggest that anyone, as so many do, who dismisses or diminishes "relationship stuff" and "communication stuff" as "the soft stuff" is not only a fool (per me), but also denying the essence of what it means to be human—and the reason we have ruled the planet, for better or for worse, for ever so many years.

(Source for most of this: No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality, by Judith Rich Harris.)

100 (Or So) Ways to Succeed #101:

"Investment" Plan/
New Year's Resolution

During his days as Goldman Sachs boss, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson had an invariant habit. He would call "60 CEOs in the first week [of the year] to wish them happy New Year." During my brief White House stint in the mid-seventies, I spent eight or nine straight hours one New Year's Eve on my office phone. I called close to 100 people I worked with—in agencies all over Washington and in embassies around the world—to thank them for their help in the prior year. In addition to enjoying the chats, which I did (I suspect Paulson did, too), I admit that I was purposefully engaging in an ADRE ... Act of Deliberate Relationship Enhancement.

While I fully buy "If you aren't sincere, it won't work," I nonetheless urge you to develop some similar ritual. Moreover, I urge you to do it in the next couple of weeks!

Think ADRE. Twelve months a year!

100 (Or So) Ways to Succeed #102:

Purposefully Practice Listening
(And "Hearing")

I'm dealing with a thorny problem. Even thought of calling my shrink—he's my "life coach" as much as my esteemed mental health advisor.

In the end I didn't call him. And you can thank crosstown Manhattan Christmas traffic for that.

I inveterately chat with cabbies—about life, not the weather. This driver-advisor-to-be had been around the circuit a couple of times, as, indeed, I have as well. I laid out my issue pretty damn directly. All issues are the same—in the end, relationship issues (see above). His thoughts were "obvious" (all useful thoughts are, in retrospect) and really turned my thinking on its ear.

On the one hand, I was making idle chatter, as I am wont to do; on the other hand, I really wanted to get his reaction. His take on human interaction is likely to be more profound than mine—given his natural laboratory. I'm almost loath to admit it, though I don't know why, but I actually jotted a couple of notes on my Amtrak ticket stub while he was talking. I gave him a healthy Christmas tip, but the fact is that his advice was priceless— or at least a lot cheaper than my psychiatrist's invoice.

In the last couple of weeks, I've talked about Dave Isay's book, Listening Is an Act of Love, and cool friend Matthew Kelly's The Dream Manager. Both are books about stories and listening and hearing. As is my little "Manhattan Cabbie's Tale." If relationships are "everything" (they are), then listening-hearing-story collecting is Tool #1. Stephen Covey and others are wonderful instructors on this topic. I will not attempt to copy them. My suggestion is simpler: During this holiday season, you'll likely go to cocktail parties, open presents, attend family dinners. While not aiming to spoil your spontaneity, I'd suggest that each of these occasions is an opportunity to purposefully practice listening-hearing-story collecting. I have no tricks, except to say tune deliberately into the process. If you want to give yourself an exam, at the end of the party or whatever, review what you heard-learned that was new about an old friend; I learn new stuff about 20-year friends when I really work on my listening-hearing. And keep in mind, as lodestar, the words from Dale Carnegie: "You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you."

Size Does Matter!
Small Rules!

Size matters!
Small rules!

** "For Nations, Small Is Beautiful," reads the headline of a Financial Times article (12.04.07) by Gideon Rachman. Mr Rachman begins as follows: "Europe seems intent on slicing itself up into ever smaller pieces. ... Kosovo is likely to declare independence—making it the seventh new country to emerge from the wreckage of Yugoslavia. The Soviet Union has given way to 15 new states. Even in Western Europe, there is talk of Belgium dividing in two, while a pro-independence party has taken power in Scotland. People tend to treat countries that split up a bit like married couples. It is a sad event. ... But if the formation of new countries can be achieved peacefully, it is usually a cause for celebration. This is the age of the small state." Rachman goes on to provide a bucketful of supporting evidence. For example, four of the five richest nations in the world have populations of less than five million. (The U.S., number four, is the exception.) Five of the seven most competitive countries, according to the World Economic Forum, have populations of less than 10 million.

Support for this idea comes from many quarters.

** The peerless Japanese thinker, Kenichi Ohmae, wrote years ago that the age of the "city-state" had returned. Richard Florida, our premier student of the "creative class," which in turn is the engine of modern economic growth, backs into something like the city-state argument when he shows how a minuscule number of postal ZIP Codes account for a stunning share of U.S. patents. Likewise, biotech start-up founder many times over (formerly of Harvard B-School) Juan Enriquez, in As the Future Catches You, argues that "The future belongs to small populations who build empires of the mind, and who ignore the temptation of—or do not have the option of—exploiting natural resources."

** Some (many, most, virtually all) have argued that the only way to deal with globalization is through consolidation—and that tomorrow's winners will gobble up so much market share that you will be "on the bus" or "off the bus." But, in a November-December Foreign Policy article, titled "The World's Biggest Myth," author Pankaj Ghemawat claims otherwise. "Some believe globalization is a force for good. Others see it as a global curse. These two camps agree on almost nothing, except that globalization leads to increased market share for fewer players. In fact, both sides couldn't be more wrong." The detailed statistical analysis Ghemewat presents makes it clear that, in even our largest industries, the "consolidation equals more share" hypothesis is far more often wrong than right.

Irrefutable fact is, from nations to corporations ("Is CitiGroup Too Big to Manage?"—headline, several times repeated in the last couple of weeks), size ain't all it's cracked up to be. Tiny may not always be beautiful ... but, by and large, hyper-big and growth for growth's sake are a loser's strategy, time & time & time & time again.

(I'm tuned into this in general, but, at the moment, in particular, because when you read this I will have ventured from Vermont to Dubai for my last seminar of 2007. In my lectures I refer to the emergence of this great modern city-state as "the single most extraordinary act of pure imagination that I have ever been privy to.")

"DNK"!

Add to your vocabulary: "DNK."
And thank the American intelligence services.

"DNK" is a new addition to the intelligence family, apparently following the Iraq WMD "intelligence" fiasco.

DNK?
Do Not Know.

In the past, the intelligence services were loath to admit that they didn't know something; their remit is to know things, not to not know things.

But now, if you DNK and say you DK, well, you end up in DDD (deep doo-doo).
(FYI, "all this" and more led to the recent re-assessment of Iran's nuclear program—but the DNK bit was apparently a big part of the new approach.)

My post, however, is not about national intelligence collection. Instead it is about you and me and our frequent "intelligence failures." And a plea that we enter "DNK" into our language. Bosses and "brilliant" staffers are very prone to falling into this trap. The boss thinks "I'm supposed to know that"—and is loath to admit that he doesn't. He seldom lies outright, but he is very inclined to obfuscate his ignorance. So, too, those "brilliant" staffers who are paid large sums to be brilliant, not to not know.

Tip of the day: When you "don't know," add this to your vocabulary: "I don't know." Maybe as enlightened bosses we can add, "What are our DNKs here?" We can, and should, make it a positive, worthy of praise, to say "DNK" when we DNK.

100 Ways to Succeed #99:

Reward "DNK" When You DNK

Of course you don't want to reward "I didn't bother to ..." laziness, but you do want to reward—Big Time—truth-telling. Hence, cheer publicly the person who admits, in front of a boss, that he or she "does not know" the facts here, or the answer to this or that. In fact, per the above, make a game (serious game!) out of identifying the "DNKs" regarding any analysis or proposed action. Frankly, good inventories of DNKs may be far more important to success than inventories of DKs.

Three Cheers For Us!
Whoops, Hold The Applause!

"We" (Americans) are near the top of the "get it" list when it comes to providing women equal opportunities to men. Hey, it's what I thought—and I study this stuff. The World Economic Forum begs to differ. Their annual "Global Gender Gap" assessment is based on: (1) educational attainment; (2) economic participation and opportunity; (3) political empowerment; and (4) health and survival. The U.S.A. ranks ... 31st! (Um, down from a lofty 22nd in 2006.) We are indeed well ahead of Chad and Yemen, the two worst at #127 and #128. But, we are behind Sweden (#1), Germany (#7), Cuba (this year's #22), Bulgaria (#25), and Estonia, immediately above us at #30.

Source: Time, 11.26.07

100 Ways to Succeed #100:

overnight viagra delivery without prescription

Passing the "Squint Test"

When you squint at the page in the annual report featuring the Executive Team, does the gender and skin-tone roughly match the demographics of the market being served?

(Notice that I purposefully said "roughly"; I'm not looking for quotas, just very rough approximations.)

If you fail the "squint test," what is your 6-month, 1-year, and 2-year program, including immediate "next steps" for addressing the issue?

Note of importance: This holds as much for a 23-person project team as it does for a division or company as a whole.

My opinion: Fix the "women part" first. I.e., more or less ... now.

(P.S. We ain't done yet! #101 on our "Top 100" success strategies comes Monday.) (Probably.)

Watch Tom!

Tomorrow, Friday, December 7, 2007, Tom will be speaking live to Neil Cavuto on Fox Business Network at 6:00 p.m. (Eastern U.S. time). The show is eponymously named Cavuto. Here's an opportunity for our readers who don't often get a chance to see Tom. So, if you have Fox Business Network among your cable TV choices, be sure to tune in!

The "XF-50": 50 Ways to Enhance Cross-Functional Effectiveness and Deliver Speed, "Service Excellence," and "Value-added Customer 'Solutions'"

(This is a very long Post—but too important to truncate—or put in a "to be continued" format. We are also providing this doc as an MSWord file, and another Word file [PDFs forthcoming] that contains the "Top 50 Have Yous" from our 12.03.07 post.)

A 2007 letter from John Hennessy, president of Stanford University, to alumni laid out his long-term "vision" for that esteemed institution. The core of the vision's promise was a more multi-disciplinary research, aimed at solving some of the world's complex systemic problems. The chief of GlaxoSmithKline, a few years ago, announced a "revolutionary" new drug discovery process—centers of interdisciplinary excellence. (It worked.) Likewise, amidst a study of organization effectiveness in the oil industry's exploration sector, I came across a particularly successful firm—one key to that success was their physical and organization mingling of formerly warring (two sets of prima donnas) geologists and geophysicists. The cover story in Dartmouth Medicine, the Dartmouth med school magazine, featured a "revolutionary" approach, "microsystems," as "the big idea that [might] save U.S. healthcare." The nub is providing successful patient outcomes in hospitals by forming multi-function patient-care teams, including docs, nurses, labtechs, and others. ("Cooperating doc" may top the oxymoron scale.) One of the central responses to 9/11 is an effort to get intelligence services, home to some of the world's most viscous turf wars, talking to one another—we may have seen some of the fruits of that effort in the recently released National Intelligence Estimate. And in the military, inter-service cooperation has increased by an order of magnitude since Gulf War One—some of the services' communication systems can actually be linked to those of other services, a miracle the equal of the Christmas miracle in my book!

All this, and much more, amounts to a "revolution" (the latest revolution?) called "working together." Web-based tools certainly abet this latest attempt, but the story at the end of the day is timeless: attitude, relationships (investment therein), protecting powerbases-turf, "corporate cultures," and the like. I.e., dealing with human nature itself. But if anything helps this eternal-intractable problem it is simply "keeping it on the agenda." Relentlessly! In Re-imagine I tried to do just that with a full chapter titled "Welcome to XF/Cross-functional World." The main idea was-is that in order to provide the "value-added" solutions to customer problems that are necessary to move beyond commodities and compete with India, China et al., we have no choice but to deliver the "integrated" "goods" from every nook and cranny of the organization and its supply chain. XF wars are a killer, now much more than ever. Alas, no one paid the slightest bit of attention to this chapter—which I thought was one of the most important in the book.

But I refuse to give up. The Re-imagine chapter was organized around a list of 50 ideas. I have herein resurrected that list—and modified it significantly in the process. Hence this holiday gift—of sorts. In short, nothing (n-o-t-h-i-n-g!) is more important than getting the bits of the organization, or organizations (most project teams extend beyond our borders), in synch. "In synch" and more, much more—XF work at its best is not merely about "reducing organizational friction," as important as that is. It is about fundamental revision of the breadth and depth of the "product" the company offers. If the chef doesn't get along with two of our four waiters—the clientele is screwed, and the restaurant evaporates. Intellectually that's the same story, writ small, as development of the Airbus A380 or intelligence services cooperation.

Enough of my introduction. What follows is my latest effort to get you to pay "strategic" attention to what has always been Issue #1 in organizational effectiveness, from Airbus to the Army, from Napoleon to the man on the moon:

1. It's our organization to make work—or not. It's not "them," the outside world that's the problem. The enemy is us. Period.
2. Friction-free! Dump 90% of "middle managers"—most are advertent or inadvertent "power freaks." We are all—every one of us—in the Friction Removal Business, one moment at a time, now and forevermore.
3. No "stovepipes"! "Stove-piping," "Silo-ing" is an Automatic Firing Offense. Period. No appeals. (Within the limits of civility, somewhat "public" firings are not out of the question—that is, make one and all aware why the axe fell.)
4. Everything on the Web. This helps. A lot. ("Everything" = Big word.)
5. Open access. All available to all. Transparency, beyond a level that's "sensible," is a de facto imperative in a Burn-the-Silos strategy.
6. Project managers rule!! Project managers running XF (cross-functional) projects are the Elite of the organization, and seen as such and treated as such. (The likes of construction companies have practiced this more or less forever.)
7. "Value-added Proposition" = Application of integrated resources. (From the entire supply-chain.) To deliver on our emergent business raison d'être, and compete with the likes of our Chinese and Indian brethren, we must cooperate with anybody and everybody "24/7." IBM, UPS and many, many others are selling far more than a product or service that works—the new "it" is pure and simple a product of XF cooperation; "the product is the cooperation" is not much of a stretch.
8. "XF work" is the direct work of leaders!
9. "Integrated solutions" = Our "Culture." (Therefore: XF = Our culture.)
10. Partner with "best-in-class" only. Their pursuit of Excellence helps us get beyond petty bickering. An all-star team has little time for anything other than delivering on the (big) Client promise.
11. All functions are created equal! All functions contribute equally! All = All.
12. All functions are "PSFs," Professional Service Firms. "Professionalism" is the watchword—and true Professionalism rises above turf wars. You are your projects, your legacy is your projects—and the legacy will be skimpy indeed unless you pass, with flying colors, the "works well with others" exam!
13. We are all in sales! We all (a-l-l) "sell" those Integrated Client Solutions. Good salespeople don't blame others for screw-ups—the Client doesn't care. Good salespeople are "quarterbacks" who make the system work-deliver.
14. We all invest in "wiring" the Client organization—we develop comprehensive relationships in every part (function, level) of the Client's organization. We pay special attention to the so-called "lower levels," short on glamour, long on the ability to make things happen at the "coalface."
15. We all "live the Brand"—which is Delivery of Matchless Integrated Solutions that transform the Client's organization. To "live the brand" is to become a raving fan of XF cooperation.
16. We use the word "partner" until we want to barf! (Words matter! A lot!)
17. We use the word "team" until we want to barf. (Words matter! A lot!)
18. We use the word "us" until we want to barf. (Words matter! A lot!)
19. We obsessively seek Inclusion—and abhor exclusion. We want more people from more places (internal, external—the whole "supply chain") aboard in order to maximize systemic benefits.
20. Buttons & Badges matter—we work relentlessly at team (XF team) identity and solidarity. ("Corny"? Get over it.)
21. All (almost all) rewards are team rewards.
22. We keep base pay rather low—and give whopping bonuses for excellent team delivery of "seriously cool" cross-functional Client benefits.
23. WE NEVER BLAME OTHER PARTS OF THE ORGANIZATION FOR SCREW-UPS.
24. WE TAKE THE HEAT—THE WHOLE TEAM. (For anything and everything.) (Losing, like winning, is a team affair.)
25. "BLAMING" IS AN AUTOMATIC FIRING OFFENSE.
26. "Women rule"—women are simply better at the XF communications stuff—less power obsessed, less hierarchically inclined, more group-team oriented.
27. Every member of our team is an honored contributor. "XF project Excellence" is an "all hands" affair.
28. We are our XF Teams! XF project teams are how we get things done.
29. "Wow Projects" rule, large or small—Wow projects demand by definition XF Excellence.
30. We routinely attempt to unearth and then reward "small gestures" of XF cooperation.
31. We invite Functional Bigwigs to our XF project team reviews.
32. We insist on Client team participation—from all functions of the Client organization.
33. An "Open talent market" helps make the projects "silo-free." People want in on the project because of the opportunity to do something memorable—no one will tolerate delays based on traditional functional squabbling.
34. Flat! Flat = Flattened Silos. Flat = Excellence based on XF project outcomes, not power-hoarding within functional boundaries.
35. New "C-level"? We more or less need a "C-level" job titled Chief Bullshit Removal Officer. That is, some kind of formal watchdog whose role in life is to make cross-functionality work, and I.D. those who don't get with the program.
36. Huge (H-U-G-E) cooperation bonuses. Senior team members who conspicuously shine in the "working together" bit are rewarded Big Time. (A million bucks in one case I know—and a non-cooperating very senior was sacked.)
37. Get physical!! "Co-location" is the most powerful "culture changer." Physical X-functional proximity is almost a guarantee (yup!) of remarkably improved cooperation—to aid this, one needs flexible workspaces that can be mobilized for a team in a flash.
38. Ad hoc. To improve the new "X-functional Culture," little XF teams should be formed on the spot to deal with an urgent issue—they may live for but ten days, but it helps the XF habit, making it normal to be "working the XF way."
39. "Deep dip." Dive three levels down in the organization to fill a senior role with someone who has been proactive on the XF dimension.
40. Formal evaluations. Everyone, starting with the receptionist, should have an important XF rating component in their evaluation.
41. Demand XF experience for, especially, senior jobs. The military requires all would-be generals and admirals to have served a full tour in a job whose only goals were cross-functional. Great idea!
42. Early project "management" experience. Within days, literally, of coming aboard folks should be "running" some bit of a project, working with folks from other functions—hence, "all this" becomes as natural as breathing.
43. "Get 'em out with the customer." Rarely does the accountant or bench scientist call on the customer. Reverse that. Give everyone more or less regular "customer-facing experiences." One learns quickly that the customer is not interested in our in-house turf battles!
44. Put "it" on the—every agenda. XF "issues to be resolved" should be on every agenda—morning project team review, weekly exec team meeting, etc. A "next step" within 24 hours (4?) ought to be part of the resolution.
45. XF "honest broker" or ombudsman. The ombudsman examines XF "friction events" and acts as Conflict Resolution Counselor. (Perhaps a formal conflict resolution agreement?)
46. Lock it in! XF cooperation, central to any value-added mission, should be an explicit part of the "Vision Statement."
47. Promotions. Every promotion, no exceptions, should put XF Excellence in the top 5 (3?) evaluation criteria.
48. Pick partners based on their "cooperation proclivity." Everyone must be on board if "this thing" is going to work; hence every vendor, among others, should be formally evaluated on their commitment to XF transparency—e.g., can we access anyone at any level in any function of their organization without bureaucratic barriers?
49. Fire vendors who don't "get it"—more than "get it," welcome "it" with open arms.
50. Jaw. Jaw. Jaw. Talk XF cooperation-value-added at every opportunity. Become a relentless bore!
51. Excellence! There is a state of XF Excellence. Pursue it. Talk about it.

Good luck!

100 Ways to Succeed #98:

Relentlessly Focus On Pragmatic Actions

     (1) See the above list.
     (2) Implement.
     (3) Pick one item.
     (4) Start today.

Marketing Power!

Years ago I did some work with the Ford division of the Ford Motor Company. I distinctly remember division boss Ross Roberts saying [booming] to me, "Whoever said marketing programs were not powerful is nuts. We have brilliantly trained a generation of consumers not to come into the dealership unless we offer $3,000 off." Likewise, I heard on "Marketplace" this morning that one reason seasonal spending is lower than expected is that consumers won't shop until stores offer deep discounts—which they increasingly do, long before 12.26.

Something about reaping what ye sow, eh?

Just Like It's Supposed to Work

Dollar way down. Euro likely to be strong-very strong for the foreseeable future. Airbus contemplates factory in Alabama. (More to it than this, obviously, but this is exactly the way markets are supposed to work. In New York City last Friday, the onslaught of European tourists—walking around with big bags of electronics—was a small version of the above.)

"Top 50" "Have Yous"

While waiting last week in the Albany airport to board a Southwest Airlines flight to Reagan, I happened across the latest Harvard Business Review, on the cover of which was a yellow sticker. The sticker had on it the words "Mapping your competitive position." It referred to a feature article by my friend Rich D'Aveni. His work is uniformly good—and I have said as much publicly on several occasions dating back 15 years. I'm sure this article is good, too—though I didn't read it. In fact, it triggered a furious negative "Tom reaction" as my wife calls it. Of course I believe you should worry about your "competitive position." But instead of obsessing on competitive position and other abstractions, as the B-schools and consultants would always have us do, I instead wondered about some "practical stuff," which I believe is more important to the short- and long-term health of the enterprise, tiny or enormous.

Hence, rather than an emphasis on competitive maps or how blue your water is, I am urging you to pay attention to my "Top 50" "Have Yous," as I shall call them. The list could easily be three times as long—but this ought to keep you occupied for a while. Of course, the underlying hypothesis is that if you do the stuff below your "competitive position" will improve so much that mapping will become a secondary issue! Some will rebut with the tired old saw (and silly idea) of "doing the right things" versus "doing things right." I, for example, believe that if you do even a smidgeon of what's below you will wildly enhance both "do the right thing" and "do things right." (Admission: As an engineer by training and disposition, doing things right is priority #1. I am an admitted "implementation nut.") In any event here's my list, random, but in batches of ten:

Have you in the last 10 days ... visited a customer?
Have you called a customer ... TODAY?
Have you in the last 60-90 days ... had a seminar in which several folks from the customer's operation (different levels, different functions, different divisions) interacted, via facilitator, with various of your folks?
Have you thanked a front-line employee for a small act of helpfulness ... in the last three days?
Have you thanked a front-line employee for a small act of helpfulness ... in the last three hours?
Have you thanked a frontline employee for carrying around a great attitude ... today?
Have you in the last week recognized—publicly—one of your folks for a small act of cross-functional cooperation?
Have you in the last week recognized—publicly—one of "their" folks (another function) for a small act of cross-functional cooperation?
Have you invited in the last month a leader of another function to your weekly team priorities meeting?
Have you personally in the last week-month called-visited an internal or external customer to sort out, inquire, or apologize for some little or big thing that went awry? (No reason for doing so? If true—in your mind—then you're more out of touch than I dared imagine.)

Have you in the last two days had a chat with someone (a couple of levels down?) about specific deadlines concerning a project's next steps?
Have you in the last two days had a chat with someone (a couple of levels down?) about specific deadlines concerning a project's next steps ... and what specifically you can do to remove a hurdle? ("Ninety percent of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get things done."—Peter "His eminence" Drucker)
Have you celebrated in the last week a "small" (or large!) milestone reached? (I.e., are you a milestone fanatic?)
Have you in the last week or month revised some estimate in the "wrong" direction and apologized for making a lousy estimate? (Somehow you must publicly reward the telling of difficult truths.)
Have you installed in your tenure a very comprehensive customer satisfaction scheme for all internal customers? (With major consequences for hitting or missing the mark.)
Have you in the last six months had a week-long, visible, very intensive visit-"tour" of external customers?
Have you in the last 60 days called an abrupt halt to a meeting and "ordered" everyone to get out of the office, and "into the field" and in the next eight hours, after asking those involved, fixed (f-i-x-e-d!) a nagging "small" problem through practical action?
Have you in the last week had a rather thorough discussion of a "cool design thing" someone has come across—away from your industry or function—at a Web site, in a product or its packaging?
Have you in the last two weeks had an informal meeting—at least an hour long—with a frontline employee to discuss things we do right, things we do wrong, what it would take to meet mid- to long-term aspirations?
Have you in the last 60 days had a general meeting to discuss "things we do wrong" ... that we can fix in the next fourteen days?

Have you in the last year had a one-day, intense offsite with each (?) of your internal customers—followed by a big celebration of "things gone right"?
Have you in the last week pushed someone to do some family thing that you fear might be overwhelmed by deadline pressure?
Have you learned the names of the children of everyone who reports to you? (If not, you have six months to fix it.)
Have you in the last month taken an interesting-weird outsider to lunch?
Have you in the last month invited an interesting-weird outsider to sit in on an important meeting?
Have you in the last three days discussed something interesting, beyond your industry, that you ran across in a meeting, reading, etc?
Have you in the last 24 hours injected into a meeting "I ran across this interesting idea in [strange place]"?
Have you in the last two weeks asked someone to report on something, anything, that constitutes an act of brilliant service rendered in a "trivial" situation—restaurant, car wash, etc? (And then discussed the relevance to your work.)
Have you in the last 30 days examined in detail (hour by hour) your calendar to evaluate the degree "time actually spent" mirrors your "espoused priorities"? (And repeated this exercise with everyone on the team.)
Have you in the last two months had a presentation to the group by a "weird" outsider?

Have you in the last two months had a presentation to the group by a customer, internal customer, vendor featuring "working folks" 3 or 4 levels down in the vendor organization?
Have you in the last two months had a presentation to the group of a cool, beyond-our-industry idea by two of your folks?
Have you at every meeting today (and forevermore) re-directed the conversation to the practicalities of implementation concerning some issue before the group?
Have you at every meeting today (and forevermore) had an end-of-meeting discussion on action items to be dealt with in the next 48 hours? (And then made this list public—and followed up in 48 hours.) (And made sure everyone had at least one such item.)
Have you in the last six months had a discussion about what it would take to get recognition in a local-national poll of "best places to work"?
Have you in the last month approved a cool-different training course for one of your folks?
Have you in the last month taught a front-line training course?
Have you in the last week discussed the idea of Excellence? (What it means, how to get there.)
Have you in the last week discussed the idea of "Wow"? (What it means, how to inject it into an ongoing "routine" project.)
Have you in the last 45 days assessed some major process in terms of the details of the "experience," as well as results it provides to its external or internal customers?

Have you in the last month had one of your folks attend a meeting you were supposed to go to which gives them unusual exposure to senior folks?
Have you in the last 60 (30?) days sat with a trusted friend or "coach" to discuss your "management style"—and its long- and short-term impact on the group?
Have you in the last three days considered a professional relationship that was a little rocky and made a call to the person involved to discuss issues and smooth the waters? (Taking the "blame," fully deserved or not, for letting the thing-issue fester.)
Have you in the last ... two hours ... stopped by someone's (two-levels "down") office-workspace for 5 minutes to ask "What do you think?" about an issue that arose at a more or less just-completed meeting? (And then stuck around for 10 or so minutes to listen—and visibly taken notes.)
Have you ... in the last day ... looked around you to assess whether the diversity pretty accurately maps the diversity of the market being served? (And ...)
Have you in the last day at some meeting gone out of your way to make sure that a normally reticent person was engaged in a conversation—and then thanked him or her, perhaps privately, for their contribution?
Have you during your tenure instituted very public (visible) presentations of performance?
Have you in the last four months had a session specifically aimed at checking on the "corporate culture" and the degree we are true to it—with all presentations by relatively junior folks, including front-line folks? (And with a determined effort to keep the conversation restricted to "real world" "small" cases—not theory.)
Have you in the last six months talked about the Internal Brand Promise?
Have you in the last year had a full-day off-site to talk about individual (and group) aspirations?

100 Ways to Succeed #97:

Relentlessly Focus On Pragmatic Actions

     (1) See the above list.
     (2) Implement.
     (3) Pick one item.
     (4) Start today.