M-F Leadership Styles, Effectiveness of

In my last post, Success Tip #140, I caught myself in an un-rare but un-intentional sexist moment. While discussing crisis leadership, I used typically male language and imagery—including the all-male football analogy!

By coincidence, the day after the post, my mail included Leadership and the Sexes: Using Gender Science to Create Success in Business, a book by Michael Gurian and Barbara Annis. The book is a marvel. The authors begin, "This book is about the practical application of information on male/female brain differences in every aspect of your corporate life, from workplace comfort to competitive edge to the corporate bottom line."

The most important phrase being, per me, "brain differences"—that is, the book is derivative of the new brain sciences, not anecdotal evidence. (The book is strongly endorsed by the author of another book I found of inestimable value, The Female Brain, by Louann Brizendine, M.D.)

The evidence is brain-science based, but a social-psychological experiment provides a nice snapshot of the findings. What follows is from a sidebar titled, "Gender Experiments Surprise Even the Experts":

"In the 1990s, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/CBC created a short film that recorded an experiment in leadership styles between women and men. CBC didn't tell the participants the objective of the work they would do that day; the director simply divided the male and female leaders into two teams, and gave those team leaders the same instructions: build an adventure camp. The teams were set up in a somewhat militaristic style at first, including team members wearing uniforms, but also with the caveat in place that the teams could alter their style and method as they wished as long as they met the outcome in time.

"Leader one immediately created a rank-and-file hierarchy and gave orders, even going so far as to assert authority by challenging members on whether they had polished their shoes.

"Leader two did not have the 'troops' line up and be inspected, but instead met with the other team members in a circle, asking 'How are we doing? Are we ready?' 'Anything else we should do?' 'Do you think they'll test us on whether we've polished our shoes?' Instead of giving orders, leader two was touching team members on the arm to reassure them.

"As part of the program, CBC arranged for corporate commentators to watch the teams prepare. Initially the commentators (mostly men) were not impressed by the leadership style of leader two; the second team wasn't 'under control,' members weren't lined up, and they 'lacked order' (or so it seemed). The commentators predicted that team two would not successfully complete the task. Yet when the project was completed, team two had built an impressive adventure camp as good as team one's, with some aspects that were judged as better.

"When debriefing their observations, the commentators noticed that when team one was building the structures for the camp, there had been discord regarding who was in charge and who had completed which job and who hadn't. Team one exhibited a lack of communication during the process of completion that created problems (for example, 'Wasn't someone else supposed to do this?').

"Team two, on the other hand, took longer to do certain things, but because of its emphasis on communication and collaboration during the enactment of the task (such as 'Let's try this' and 'What do you think about that?'), the team met the goal of building the adventure camp in its own positive way, and on time."

There is for me a profoundly important "bottom line" here. Not that one style is better than another, but that virtually every proclamation we make ought to be informed by gender differences. In my speeches, for example, I often find myself rambling on ad nauseam about the importance of relentless relationship building—a stunning insight for a male to make or take on board (I overstate ever so slightly), and boringly obvious beyond words to most of the female participants. I am not suggesting that every phrase be presented in two languages, but I am suggesting that the topic ought not be far beneath the surface. Based on my own experience, I will say that we (i.e., me) will not necessarily improve (as in, exhibit increased sensitivity) over time; hey, with the chips down last week, Joe Montana and the SF 49ers were my immediate benchmarks.

I urge you to read the book—there is a lot at stake, and an opportunity to achieve lasting competitive advantage. From an increasingly robust body of research, we know for sure (as sure as sure can ever be) that diverse teams—diversity on any and all dimensions—outperform homogenous teams. We equally have to know how to maximize the diversity advantage—the reward can be performance leaps, not just modest improvements.

100 Ways to Succeed #141:

Pursue The Enormous Potential "Diversity Advantage"
Through Awareness And Study And Practice

There is an enormous diversity advantage—but it doesn't grow on trees. Working to achieve diversity comes first—but putting that diversity to work is just as important.

Study.
Train.
Practice.

Apply one transaction-exchange at a time.
Always.

This advice applies to men.
This advice applies to women.

This is a strategic opportunity!

Thriving on Chaos

In 1987, I wrote a book titled Thriving on Chaos. Miraculously (for sales, at any rate), it was officially published on the day of the stock market crash of '87, at the time the most severe in decades.

Once again, we are apparently confronted with a hefty dose of "chaos"—or, at least, the prospect of a substantial period of sub-standard growth. (NB: Managers under the ripe old age of 50, more or less, have never experienced, in the role of managers, significant and sustained economic disarray; the brutal recession of the early '80s—marked by unemployment in excess of 10 percent, interest rates in excess of 20 percent, and inflation stuck in the mid-teens—was the last of this sort.)

My speakers bureau sent me an urgent request for a description of remarks I might make on the issue of thriving on, or at least surviving amidst, the current chaos—seems as though that's what their clients are suddenly, and understandably, asking prospective speakers to tackle.

I was limited to a couple of hundred words, which I enjoyed writing (in the best sense of the word "enjoy") and thought I'd share them with you. There is hardly profundity here, but I'll pass it on anyway. In fact, there are two short pieces, as follows:

[The next two blog posts are the 'two short pieces' Tom is referring to. -Ed.]

1) Surviving and Even Thriving Amidst the "Perfect Storm"

While many businesses will fail amidst the current economic crisis through no fault of their own, some will survive in spite of the odds—and a few will surprise by turning a messy situation into economic-competitive advantage. The requisite winner's attitude is expressed by former Ritz-Carlton chief Horst Schulze, commenting on his decision to launch his new high-end hotel business, Capella, despite the market madness: "I do not accept the explanation of a recession negatively affecting the [new] business. There are still people traveling. We just have to get them to stay in our hotel." And, indeed, getting an "unfair share" of "what's left" is near the heart of the matter. Schulze's remarks also remind us that instant, mindless cutting of R&D or training or salesforce travel in the face of a downturn is often counterproductive—or, rather, downright stupid. Tough times are in fact golden opportunities to get the drop, and the longterm drop at that, on those who respond to bad news by panicky across-the-board slash and burn tactics and moves that de-motivate and alienate the workforce at exactly the wrong moment.

Tough times indeed require tough and unpleasant decisions—but thriving, not just surviving, is an option for those who mix wisdom and boldness of leadership with transparency and maximized employee involvement and engagement. Without suggesting that there is anything humorous about the pain that bad times cause, one can say that "this is when it gets fun" for truly talented and imaginative leaders at all levels and in businesses of every sort and size!

2) The Basics Are the Basics Are the Basics Are the Basics:
The Worse the Times the Better They Work;
Or, Listen to Grandfather Snow

The "engine" of the current economic mess is losing total touch with the basics. That is: lending money to people, by the millions in the end, who "obviously" couldn't pay it back. In many ways, that is the whole story—at the bottom of the bottom of the bottom of the pile of derivatives of derivatives of derivatives are truly stupid real-estate loans that "any fool" would say should never have been made.

We get in trouble when we forget the basics.
We get out of trouble when we remember the basics.
We stay out of trouble when we become perpetually "insane" about the basics.
(It ain't quite that simple, but it'll do for starters.)

When "times are tough," the payoff, survival that is, comes from what?

Survival—even growth!—in bad times comes from having wildly "over"-invested in relationships and training and service and employee-customer-vendor loyalty, while behaving in a fiscally prudent manner, in good times.

Well, "Duh."

I'm allowed out in public in 2008, in effect, because I wrote a book with Bob Waterman in 1982 (called In Search of Excellence) that said that Americans were in deeeeeeep trouble—vis-à-vis Japan at the time—because we failed to put people & service & listening to customers & making products that worked & doing-instead-of-talking & staying intimately in touch with "real stuff" at the top of our business agendas. We had placed too much emphasis on "sophisticated," abstract, "MBA thinking" and not enough emphasis on the things that led over a thousand people to show up for my Grandfather Owen Snow's funeral in little Wicomico Church VA over a quarter-century ago.

Grandfather Owen had run a country store—he'd been counselor, banker, and friend of customers and community, as well as shopkeeper, to thousands over the years. He was a math whiz (he passed a bit of it on to me, and thanks), but those thousands showed up at his funeral because he never forgot the basics of taking the time to listen and care and invariably put people first!

The great news for Fall 2008: The worst of the worst can be managed, within limits at least, if we remember and assiduously apply my grandfather's Business Basics 101.

Does that sound simplistic?
Perhaps.
But remember: We're deep in the deep doggy doo-doo because of "nothing more than" lending money to people who obviously (!!!) couldn't pay it back.

********

The CEO of a very successful mid-sized bank, in the Mid-west, attended a seminar of mine in Northern California many years ago—but I remember the following as if it were yesterday. I've forgotten the specific context, but I recall him saying to me, pretty much word for word, "Tom, let me tell you the definition of a good lending officer. After church on Sunday, on the way home with his family, he takes a little detour to drive by the factory he just lent money to. Doesn't go in or any such thing, just drives by and takes a look."

(1) Amen.
(2) Damn few drive-bys at WaMu or Countrywide, I suspect.

100 Ways to Succeed #139:

Work the Damn Phones!
Treble Your MBWA!

One of my favorite quotes, from Carolyn Lamb* (*can't quite figure out who she is, even with Google's brain as helper), goes like this: "A year from now you may wish you had started today."

Yes, today many of us wish we had "wildly" "over"invested in those employee-vendor-client-community relationships when the market was heading North and there was a little slack in the system. Well, perhaps we didn't, but, and I'm not "doing a Tony Robbins" here, it really is never too late. That is:

Work the damn phones.
Keep working the damn phones.

Show up.
Keep showing up.

Call clients and suppliers, ask them how things are going, and how you can help. This is not about sales (directly), but about "showing up"—taking time from your busy affairs to offer assistance of any sort. (E.g., offer up your network: "Well, Dave [one of your key suppliers], I know Ed Simpson, over there at [one of Dave's problem clients]; his daughter and mine are co-captains of the [name of school] soccer team; I can give him a call for you if you'd like." Etc.)

This is even more important with our employees.** "Over"inform—the rumors are invariably worse than reality. "Over"do your MBWA—managing by wandering around. Keep your enthusiasm up if it kills you—not in a dopey grin, "all is well" way, but by exhibiting energy and masking any internal doom & gloom expressions that may, in fact, be just beneath the surface. [**I use the formal word "employees" here, a word I ordinarily dislike. But the point is that you do have a formal hierarchical relationship with those on your payroll, and thence a formal as well as an abiding moral obligation concerning their and their families' well-being.]

100 Ways to Succeed #140:

Stand In Front of the Damn Mirror And Practice Your Confident Look—Until You Get It Right!

As one sage (who he?) put it, "Bosses are not allowed to have bad days—especially on bad days."

I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area during the Joe Montana era—that is, when Joe led the now wobbly SF 49ers to four Super Bowl wins in four tries. A lot of Mr. Montana's excellence, it was said, emanated from his near-miraculous ability to make his teammates believe that the impossible was not only possible, but inevitable, right now, and regardless of how dire the straits were. Sure, he had a good coach, a good team, and terrific athletic skills—but that, as his coach, the late Bill Walsh, once told me, was only part of the story. Bill was a master of drafting attitude-and-character-over-raw-skills; and that's why he had drafted Montana in the first place. And that's what Montana delivered with matchless regularity.

You are not Joe Montana. And neither am I. And perhaps, like my wife, you actually hate football. No matter, I'm sure you get my point. If you don't, let me spell it out: At this professionally precarious time, you'd better practice your Joe Montana-Rudy Giuliani 9/11 act. That is, no matter what your fears and qualms are, you have to exude character and confidence—not confidence that we can bring 3,000 people in the Towers back to life, but that we can soldier on, that we can attack the day with vigor and determination, and perhaps even see some good that may well emerge from the bad.

Ms./Mr. Boss, listen up: You are finally doing what you've been paid to do for the last umpteen years—you are called upon to lead in a time of crisis, financial crisis, yes, but also-mostly human crisis.

Advice: Stand in front of the mirror, or whatever, and practice your Joe (or Jane***) Montana demeanor! Until you get it right!

(***As to "Joe" and "Jane," I am fully aware of gender differences. "Steely look of determination" sounds, in retrospect, "very guy" to me. The way in which women-Janes will exude confidence and practice MBWA and tend to relationships is likely to be far different than the typical male-Joe approach. No matter. The leadership necessity is the same—regardless of the way in which it is expressed. Incidentally, or not so incidentally, at times of stress gender differences are likely to be particularly pronounced—and hence the possibility of botched communication particularly high. There is, I repeat, no reason whatsoever to believe that either men or women are better at dealing with tough times—there is every reason to believe that styles will differ.)

Reading Assignment!

The Financial Times today, 25 September, first section, is wall-to-wall great material about the financial markets madness. I highly recommend it.

On the Attack!

At an Inc. magazine forum last week, I found myself on the attack. The target? Me. I was engaging in a moderated dialogue with Seth Godin—not only do I have the utmost respect for him, but we are in agreement a frightening percentage of the time. It seems at times that we use the same adjectives and adverbs to make the same points. Hence, the surprise at some areas of disagreement.

As you know from my last post, I'm preoccupied with the financial markets chaos—which I see as anything but tamed, though I strongly support recent decisions to boldly interfere in the untrammeled market mechanism. One of the questions, following my public encomium (also in the last post) for Msssrs Paulson, Bernanke, and Geithner, was about the need for authoritarian-significantly centralized leadership at times. I am a rabid (pretty much the right word) decentralist, but I gave a firm and immediate "Yes" to the question.

Seth attacked, reminding me of my roots and arguing that authoritarianism is a slippery slope. And there is always an excuse for it.

I agree about both the slippery slope and the ubiquity of excuses for longer policy manuals, particularly following screw-ups, and more and more centralization of decision making—ad infinitum.

My counter argument has mostly to do with speed. That is, there are times, rare occasions, such as the end of last week, when hours make-made all the difference. There was no time to waste and no time to consult. This is pretty much the case following any major disaster.

There are a bushel of caveats. The situation must be dire—and seen as dire by a majority of the organization's members. Speedy action must be widely seen as imperative, and the absence of speedy action must be deemed catastrophic. The authoritarians must be greatly respected and skilled. (In a more or less perfect world, as is the case now with Paulson, the authoritarians must be seen as pained by the need to take the controls and make the decisions they feel they are forced to take.) The centralized commanders must soon turn to a consultative mode. (Paulson et al. are now fully engaged with Congress—such engagement began in a matter of hours.) The troops engaged in implementation must indeed be engaged and ready to take autonomous action and initiative within the confines of the decisions made by the top dogs. And a formal system must be in place to implement a pre-arranged sunset for authoritarian action.

With all the checks and balances in place, there will be occasions where, indeed, the authoritarianism extends and extends—think of military coups in the likes of Pakistan and Thailand in fairly recent times, or emergency centralized controls at many a corporation.

I will, then, stand by my principles concerning decentralization, argue for rare exceptions, and worry that the centralists' mandate will be self-extended in more than a few cases, human nature being what it often sadly is. I will also argue, more oceanically, that human governance of any sort is a necessary but messy affair.

My next assault on myself will be covered in a subsequent post. Meanwhile, I would beg you to weigh in on the case of Tom v. Tom (and Tom v. Seth) concerning centralized leadership.

NB: Jim Collins was also at the Inc. event. Some of you see the two of us at each others' throats—or, at least, me at his throat. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. I was genuinely delighted to see him—it made my day. My respect for him is limitless, and goes back about 30 years. And while I do have some disagreements with him, the fact of the matter is that, like Seth and I do, Jim and I agree, in my opinion, on 99% of what's important about human affairs—and I unequivocally think that his work has done the world a world of good. And I like him as much as I admire him. (No one I know has more integrity. Period.)

That Time of the Year, Again

Today is the first day of fall, 2008, though as you all know, the equinox, to quote Wikipedia, "is the moment in time (not a whole day) when the center of the Sun can be observed to be directly above the Earth's equator, occurring around March 20 and September 22 each year." That moment occurred at 10:44 a.m. Eastern time in the United States today. And we were going to post the new banner at that moment, but somehow technology thwarted us. It's there now.

I even tried the old "balance the egg on end" trick, but that didn't work either. It's been a tough morning here at tp.com. We can only hope that things will improve.

We hope you enjoy the new banner and all of us here at tompeters.com want to take this opportunity to wish all of you a bounteous fall season (at least those of you in the northern hemisphere).

Inc 500/Inc 5000 Conference

Debbie Weil, a social media consultant and author of The Corporate Blogging Book, catches up with Tom at the Inc 500/Inc 5000 Conference this past Friday, and asks him why blogging has changed his life. See her blog post and video.

Arrrggghhh!!!

Today is our favorite holiday here at tompeters.com. International Talk Like a Pirate Day. So, dig out your Pirate Dictionary, shine up your sword, and add an earring to your outfit. We hope you enjoy the day!

Sorry, the title of this post is all the pirate talk you'll get from me, but the comments are fair game.

All Else On Hold

It is hard to imagine posting on the usual topics when one considers the import of this simple paragraph fragment from the lead article in today's Washington Post, "In Crucible of Crisis, Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner Forge a Committee of Three":

"As [Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Timothy F. Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York] chart a government response to the crisis, the stakes could hardly be higher. If they succeed, they could tame the economic downturn and orchestrate a restructuring of Wall Street with minimal collateral damage. If they fail, the toll could be millions of jobs, trillions of dollars in lost wealth and a crisis of confidence in global capitalism."

FYI, consider this comment, from the same Post article, on Paulson's predecessor, and the followup description-analysis of Paulson's management style:
"[Former Treasury Secretary John Snow] closed the Treasury's monitoring room, where staff members keep an eye on global stock, bond and currency markets around the clock, to save money.

"Snow's contact with Bernanke, then in office just six months, was mainly limited to formal weekly breakfasts. There was little communication between Snow and Geithner.

"That changed rapidly with Paulson.

"A creature of the financial markets prone to firing off rapid phone calls to any potential source of information, he took to calling Geithner and Bernanke at all times of day, to bounce ideas off them or discuss the latest trouble spot in the markets.

"'Overcommunication never hurts,' Paulson said. 'If it is something significant, I would just pick up the phone and call Ben. ... One of the things I do is I create an atmosphere where I am so direct and so open and collaborative with people I trust that it brings out the same in them.'"

100 Ways to Succeed #138:

A Good Formula

From the above we can learn a lot about dealing with crises in general. While not the complete story, I take these gleanings:

(1) Concoct an authoritarian control group that numbers three. [Yes, I like this number per se.]
(2) "Over"-communicate.
(3) Drop all pretense of formality.
(4) Park egos at the door.
(5) Ensure that the group is diverse. [The Post points out that the current troika consists of a Wall Street titan, an academic, and a career civil servant.]
(6) Each member should have towering competence.
(7) Each member must have widespread credibility.
(8) Also "over"-communicate beyond the group.

Event: NBMBAA

Today, Tom is speaking to the National Black MBA Association in Washington DC, at their 30th Annual Conference & Exposition. If you attended the event, we welcome your comments. If you would like to get the slides, you can download them here:
National Black MBA Association, Washington DC
National Black MBA Association, Long Version, Washington DC

Finance's "100-year Storm"

What follows is hardly new-news. Frankly, I'm in a bit of a state of shock. What follows is a slight extension of a list I scribbled on a piece of paper—as in, What's going on here?

***Hubris

Axiom [upon which Nobel prizes were won]: We can eradicate risk [with the new math, the new instruments].
We can refine the eradication process ad infinitum [derivatives of derivatives of derivatives].
A few tens of trillions of $$ of exposure—so what?
We don't want to be the first1st to bail—only wimps quit when they get their third consecutive $10M bonus at age 29.
I got this because I'm smart—this was not repeat not luck; I deserved every damn penny.
[Counter text: Fooled By Randomness—Nassim Nicholas Taleb]

***Quant primacy

Too much faith in super-smart intellectuals [Reminds me to the point of dotting of the "i"s and crossing of the "t"s of David Halberstam's The Best & The Brightest—on the Vietnam quagmire]
If you're not a 100% quant convert, you're "old school" and held up to ridicule—even if you're Warren Buffett.

***Step shift in complexity

Fact is, "it" became incomprehensible.
Connectedness [in general, global] totally new and, again, incomprehensible.

***Greed

Duh.

***Perception Is Everything

Financial markets are, by design, a house of cards—e.g., basic idea is to take a dollar of deposits and lend 10 based thereupon, depending on the depositors not to withdraw all at once.
Emotions rule as much on Wall Street as at the football stadium!!!!!!!!!!!!
Expectations are everything!!!!!
Madness of crowds is just that—madness!!!!!
It is axiomatic that house prices will rise and rise and rise—and then rise some more.

***Basics Rotten

Mary and Joe couldn't have paid the loan back if hell had frozen over—they were not, simply, creditworthy.
The incentives were nutty—lend to anyone and everyone and collect the full commission when you book the loan and get fired if you don't.
[Message from In Search of Excellence, in another context, It's the basics, stupid—Japan is killing us, circa 1980, because (1) their cars work and (2) they ask their workers how to make them even better.]

**Good Ideology Run Amok

De-regulation = Holy.
If de-regulation is good, then more is better.

***Black Swans

Believe it: Shit happens. [See Taleb once again—The Black Swan.]
NB: Your response to one or two black swans is your life legacy—it's easy to be a genius when the market is rising rising rising.

***History repeats repeats repeats itself

South Sea Bubble
Tulips
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.
S & L
Junk bonds
Dot-com
Sub-prime
TK
TK
TK

***No One Knows the Ending to This Story

***Thank God for Paulson—it'd be worse without him.

A Bribe Is Not a Relationship

In the early '90s the word "interactive" got hijacked to mean any kind of marketing on the Internet. (How ironic since shopping on the Internet was not very interactive in those days.) Long before that, the word "brand" got misrepresented as something companies do to their customers, when in reality it is something customers do to companies.

Now I want to rant about how the word "loyalty" has been kidnapped. Loyalty has been dislocated from its true meaning and is now used to describe programs and promotions, usually supported by sophisticated software, that encourage customers to buy from a company multiple times.

Hey, there's nothing wrong with multiple purchases, but return visits don't necessarily correlate with true, meaningful loyalty. This kind of tit-for-tat transactional loyalty can be fleeting. Purchase intent one week doesn't automatically lead to purchase intent the next week, if a competitor offers a better sale price or promotion. This is the kind of loyalty that can evaporate quickly when another company offers better incentives.

The sturdiest, most indelible loyalty is that which is built from a relationship, and not from bribery. When a customer's frame of reference is her long-standing, ongoing conversation with a company, and not the gamesmanship of which company is offering the best rewards this month, she will not be easily seduced by a slightly better offer.

Can you use points programs, punch cards and repeat purchase incentives in your efforts to create true loyalty? Sure, but only if these promotions happen in the context of relationship-building encounters with those customers. And, what's most interesting, if you can build true "We" relationships with customers, you may not need to invest as many of your resources in these programs. Your customers will have more powerful reasons to keep coming back.

So, what's happening in your company? Are you creating solid, relationship-based loyalty, or are you continually wooing your customers with the latest new and improved, bigger and bolder, see-if- our-competitors-can-top-this promotion?

(Related question: Are loyalty promotions becoming a commodity?)

Opportunity

There is an opportunity for all of you who would like to view a Tom appearance. This is the last month to register to see him at this year's Global Institute for Leadership Development (GILD) presented by Linkage on October 12-17 in Palm Desert, California. Register now.

If you can't make it there in person, you get another chance! Tom's speech is to be broadcast over the Internet—not for free—but still a great chance to experience a speech by Tom. Sign up to view Tom's presentation virtually, broadcast live on October 16th.

Cool Friend #127: Howard Mann

Howard Mann is a founder of Sideshow Digital, an award-winning strategic design agency. Mann also works with a select group of entrepreneurs, business owners, and executive teams in highly focused workshops dubbed "a day in the brickyard." He tells Erik that we often lose our focus in business, but that doing things as simple as paying bills quickly can make work more fun. Here at tompeters.com, we’re all about having fun at work. As Tom says, if you’re not passionate about what you do, do something else. Howard Mann is our new Cool Friend and the author of Your Business Brickyard: Getting back to the basics to make your business more fun to run. Find out more by reading his interview, or visiting Howard’s book site, BusinessBrickyard.com. Have fun!

Oops! I almost forgot to mention, he offers the whole book as a PDF, if you'd like to download it.

Kudos to TPWS

Trolling the Web recently, we found praise for one of our favorite parts of the tompeters.com network, tpwireservice.com (TPWS). You should visit it now if you've never seen it. Every day, the TPWS editor, Shelley Dolley, scours the Web for news related to the subjects dear to Tom: Excellence, Talent, Design, Books, Implementation, Branding, Marketing to Women and Boomers (known as Trend$), etc. And she collects them into one place for easy access by Tom fans, aspiring entrepreneurs, Brand Yous, and the like. And, she does a wonderful job! We're glad to see that others feel the same. Thanks to Steve Matthews at the Vancouver Law Librarian Blog for noticing TPWS and reminding us what great work Shelley does.

Spontaneous Discovery: F.A. Hayek, U.S. Grant, Herb Kelleher, and I

Below you will find a link to a new presentation. This one ("Excellence. Always. Action."), which will also become Part 7.2 of our recently updated 10-part Master Presentation, has effectively been 40+ years in the making, dating back to my U.S. Navy tours in I Corps Vietnam, as a Seabee-combat engineer (1966-1968). I claim in my presentations, but a slight exaggeration as I see it, that I have learned only one thing "for sure" in 40+ years: Action! Try it! Experiment now, with the data only 1% in! (And do it with haste!) As Herb Kelleher, founder and longtime CEO of Southwest Airlines, puts it, "We have a 'strategic plan.' It's called doing things." As biographer Josiah Bunting said of the consummate man of action and my hero-of-heroes, General Ulysses S. Grant: "He had an almost inhuman disinterestedness in ... strategy."

Immediately below, in a first for this Blog, I am reprinting a Post from 2007, with a contemporary update:

The Limits of "Systems Thinking": Surprise, Joy, Transformation & Excellence Through Spontaneous Discovery. (And a New Life Along the Way.)

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

"My only goal is to have no goals. The goal, every time, is that film, that very moment."—Bernardo Bertolucci

This summer [2007] was the summer of brush clearing.
And, it turned out, much 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 again 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.)

To make a long story short:

I now have a new hobby, and maybe, ye gads, my life's work for years to come. 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 or amidst my travels; 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. (What discovers itself may actually be a better way to put it—there's a "hidden hand" here.) As I'm beginning to see it, this is at least a 10-year project—maybe even a multi-generation project.

I proceeded by trial and error and instinct, and each experiment led to/suggested another experiment (or 2 or 10) and to a greater understanding of potential—the "plan," though there was none, made itself. And it was far, far better (more ambitious, more interesting, more satisfying) than I would have imagined. In fact, the result to date bears little or no relationship to what I was thinking about at the start—a trivial self-designed chore may become the engine of my next decade; the "brushcutting project" is now leading Susan and me to view our entire property, and what it might represent, in a new light.

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

Note: Some of you will have discovered my implicit debt to the economist-of-freedom, F.A. Hayek. His stunningly clear view of market capitalism as a "spontaneous discovery process" is my intellectual bedrock, my "context" for three decades in Silicon Valley, and now even for my recreational pursuits (which are, as noted, becoming so much more than that).

One-year update, September 2008: This summer has been another one of brushcutting-inventing-discovering. Again, one thing has led to another and then another. Every step is, and I do not exaggerate, a surprise—in my opinion, a surprise of the first order. I am having more fun than ever—and the project becomes more and more ambitious. I tease that I now have a new company, RRI, Rock Revelations Inc. (Giant tree liberation has also been added to the mix.) My passion has become my obsession—and I now feel empty if the day has passed without at least a couple of hours of hard labor. And the joy of exhausting physical work—and the ability to see and touch the product—is staggering.

Above, a farm picture from this past weekend. Several have asked for pictures of the project described above. No offense, but no. The project is solely for me—and Grey Meadow Farm visitors—I am not seeking approval on a broader scale, which is part of the point of the exercise. Sorry.

[Again, the link to the Action Master.]

Civil! Civil! Civil!

I will not use this blog for political purposes. Period. What follows is not political.

I got involved in something this morning. Someone asked me to do something for a candidate. They began with a nasty, longwinded riff on how awful some candidate was. On and on it went.

Until I hung up.

Emotions are running high in this election. But that is no cause for incivility. Ever. I was tempted to swear like a sailor at this guy—but it would have defeated my purpose.

Tempers flare in elections—and in business everyday. I don't object to sounding off in the privacy of a pub with two friends. I do object to such intemperate sounding off in more or less public discourse.

In politics.
At work.
Period.

(Plus: It doesn't work and makes you the idiot.)

100 Ways to Succeed #137:

Civil!

Civil!
Civil!
Civil!

(Always.)
(Only losers badmouth.)
(This is very very important.)

The more pissed off you are, the more you reach out to be civil.
Period.

(This is one helluva winning, practical strategy.)

The Art of Reframing

Ah, context is everything. This hits home to me every time I hear the Céline Dion song, "Because You Loved Me."

My initial reaction to the tune, when I first heard it a dozen years ago, went something like, "Ok, nice vocal performance and musical arrangement. But ENOUGH of these slavishly dependent love lyrics where someone's very existence is contingent on a lover's attention. 'I'm everything I am because you loved me.' Really! Is that a message you want to be sending out to a hundred million listeners, especially other women? How about believing in yourself no matter what he thinks?"

But a few years later I came across an interview with the writer of the song, Diane Warren, who explained that she wrote "Because You Loved Me" to thank her father for his unshakable belief in her—and especially his relentless support of her artistic aspirations. Wham! The song was instantly transformed before my very ears! A mawkish ballad became a paean to a father's love. Instead of being annoyed, I was immediately inspired and even choked up by it. (After all, what parent would not die to hear that sentiment from a daughter?) The song itself didn't change, but seen in a new light, the song could have a dramatically different effect.

This, of course, has applications to work life where we can feel slapped around by events daily that have unpleasant meanings for us. But an event itself doesn't determine its meaning, we do. What matters is our interpretation of an event. And with a little thought and creativity we can find different interpretations to most things that happen to us. Such is the art of "reframing"—viewing an event through a new and deliberately chosen frame. We probably all do it at times—for instance, when we decide to view a misfortune (perhaps a career setback or a job loss) as a constructive opportunity (perhaps an occasion to take a new direction in our work or learn a new set of skills). The choice is up to us in how to interpret these events. And from our interpretation comes our response.

So it is that a pop tune on the radio can be heard as either a sappy report on helpless infatuation or as a timeless acknowledgment of a daughter's enduring love for her father.

DailyLit Publishes Tom's 50List Books and The Pursuit of Wow!

As we (sort of) promised back on May 12 of this year when we announced the launch of Tom's Success Tips at DailyLit.com, The Brand You50, The Professional Service Firm50, The Project50, and The Pursuit of Wow! are now available via the digital publisher. While these are not free, the price of $4.95 for 50+ (Tom always delivers more than he promises) essential tips on how to succeed at work seems quite reasonable. (Especially for our British friends!) And the folks at DailyLit have even managed to preserve some of the design elements from those books. You won't see those graphics on your BlackBerry, but we think you'll be pleasantly surprised by what you see in your email version of each installment. Happy digital reading!