Radically Thrilling.
Lickable.
Recession Cure.

Steve Jobs says that the definition of a perfectly designed product is one you want to lick.
BMW claims that one of its models is radically thrilling.
Economists agree that inducing people to open their wallets is the cure to the recession.
And I claim it all boils down to the right kind of hammer.

A hammer you want to lick.
A hammer that is radically thrilling.
And a hammer that induces you to make an expenditure that you hadn't intended to make.

Hence: See the photo above of the Tuf-E-Nuf hammer.

This gorgeous little hammer is a true innovation, even an earth-shattering innovation. The head is the head of a [normal] heavy hammer. But the handle is only five inches long, half the standard length. And the grip is great, up to the OXO standard. The net result is the ability to maneuver in tight spots while retaining almost all the power of a full-size hammer. And, as a bonus, owning a piece of sculptural art. So I ended up buying six of the bloody things for Christmas presents—including, Christmas spirit be damned, one as a present to myself.

Great design rules!
Innovation is king!
Functionality scores!
Lickability and Radically Thrilling are the standards worth shooting for!
There is more to life than iPods!
Beating the recession occurs at the checkout in the R.K. Miles hardware-home-building supplies store in Manchester Center VT!
Excellence knows no bounds!
Happy 2009!

100 Ways to Succeed #149:

Excellence!
Now!
More Than Ever!
Happy New Year!

Excellence is the best defense.
Excellence is the best offense.
Excellence is the answer in good times.
Excellence is the answer in tough times.
Excellence is about the big things.
Excellence is about the little things.
Excellence is a hammer.
Excellence is a relationship.
Excellence is a philosophy.
Excellence is an aspiration.
Excellence is immoderate.
Excellence is a pragmatic standard.
Excellence is execution.
Excellence is selfish.
Excellence is selfless.
Excellence keeps you awake.
Excellence lets you sleep well.
Excellence is a moving target.
Excellence knows no bounds.

Excellence2009!
What else?

Now!
More than ever!

Brand You: Ten Years Later, Needed More Than Ever

[Julie Anixter was a key part of the Tom Peters team behind the Reinventing Work books. His R&D gal, Tom called her "Official Muse," as she had the passion and stamina to go toe-to-toe with him on these ideas and then take them out into the world and crusade for them. She can currently be found as CMO of the design firm Brandimage - Desgrippes & Laga and blogging at www.thinkremarkable.com.—CM]

If year-end is good for reflection, this year-end has got to be one of the most poignant in a long time, as we watch and wonder and slide between the chaos (Wall Street, Detroit, our 401Ks) and the promise (an Obama & crew heading towards 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and clean green technologies poking through the haze of unconsciousness thanks to Thomas Friedman and others.)

Each time my own heart breaks a little for every laid-off worker, every ravaged "everyman and everywoman" whose non-Wall Street career adds up to a whole lotta loss despite loyalty and hard work, the next thing I know my neural networks careen toward the idea that Tom dropped like a big stone in our cultural pond, in August 1997, with the now-famous Tide "kapow-take-that!" Fast Company cover story "The Brand Called You." A year or so later, I was challenged to the hilt myself, collaborating on three books and educational programs with Tom, and his inner circle of creatives, three great little lists of 50 calls to action: The Project50, The Professional Service Firm50, and The BrandYou50.

Tom called these three topics "The Work Matters" movement, and we, like elves before Christmas, had an incredible sense of urgency about getting these ideas out to the world because dot-com mania and outsourcing were making it clear that white collar jobs were going to decline and anxiety was beginning to twist in the air. In retrospect, perhaps we—the collective we—weren't ... anxious enough.

Perhaps the idea that you too could be your own box of Tide, ready to be grabbed off the shelf (which would in fact make you one of the best loved, most valuable franchises on the planet), of branding yourself—like most big ideas—was a bit hard to swallow at first. Perhaps just a little too ahead of its time. Tom claims he always wants to be five minutes ahead—but this idea of "being a brand" and all the self-focus (aka self-care) was extremely ahead and is still not well embraced ... particularly in many leadership suites where individual brands were viewed as big recruiting targets and a pain in the ass.

Just think, if the brand-centric idea of doing work so well, so remarkably, so worth noticing, had become inherited wisdom, if it had become a survival strategy that any self-respecting job holder-careerist, blue, white, or green collar had to hold on to ... this season's sheer human greed and destruction would be a little easier to swallow. Because we'd all just pick up our tools, our resumes, our reputations built on our WORK, and move to the next team, job, town, or wherever, that we were "in demand." Come to think of it, it's not a bad idea now, today, circa 2009, to try on that remarkable thinking for size.

Maybe the most profound learning I had through that whole wonderful project was that we are all, already, walking brands. We just have to polish them so that we can see them shine. So read the book, take it to heart, or just check out Tom's challenge from the article:

The real action is at the other end: the main chance is becoming a free agent in an economy of free agents, looking to have the best season you can imagine in your field, looking to do your best work and chalk up a remarkable track record, and looking to establish your own micro equivalent of the Nike swoosh. Because if you do, you'll not only reach out toward every opportunity within arm's (or laptop's) length, you'll not only make a noteworthy contribution to your team's success—you'll also put yourself in a great bargaining position for next season's free-agency market." (Tom Peters, "The Brand Called You," Fast Company, August 1997)

Christmas 2008

So, a Christmas post is in order. I have been thinking about it for days, no kidding, and have had no success in the arenas of Big Ideas. Or little ideas. And I am ever so fearful-horrified of glibness at this particular moment.

Let's start with the fact that a lot of people who deserved better (or didn't, for that matter) are having truly crappy-rotten Christmases. And it pains me personally—one case at a time ad infinitum. Sure, the auto industry made its own mess by and large, but I honestly teared up yesterday listening to a little ("little"?) NPR story about a 15-year-old family-run restaurant-tavern directly across from the main gate to a GM plant that closed down indefinitely last night. Sure it's a "big world out there," and sure such things are always going on—but this one got to me as I went about my Christmas shopping, modest though it is this year. And then that led me to my frighteningly rare thoughts about the roughly two billions of my "global village" neighbors trying to make it on a buck-a-day ...

And then I stopped for papers—and picked up the New York Post (I have a longstanding penchant for tabloids), and said in an inappropriately loud voice that turned heads, "You f#%^ers." I had just seen the big photo on page one of Bernard Madoff's son Andrew and his wife, laden with conspicuously high-end shopping bags as they went about their holiday shopping in Manhattan. Just got to me. Should they not buy gifts? Or go to Wal*Mart? That's not the point (for me); the point is Total Incredible Inexcusable Nauseating Pathetic Insensitivity, of the sort we saw from the Big Three Beggars flying in their corporate jets to D.C. a few weeks ago. In my head the words "Have they no shame?" run around and around and around.

And then my hair shirt starts to itch. I've asked myself 100 times, or a hundred hundred times, "Tom, what could you have done differently?" While I cannot bear the entire burden of human greed run amok, I can find plenty of fault. I ceaselessly preach the basics and people first. Yet I did not in any way, shape, or form scream often enough or loud enough about the obvious wretchedly wretched excess of the last several years. Like Greenspan, I definitely believe that I took my Silicon Valley lessons a bit too seriously and drank the "self-regulating unfettered capitalism" Koolaid. I remain a capitalist (it works) but I shall go to my grave beating the crap out of myself for not having seen the obvious and for not having used my not inconsequential bully pulpit. (For God's sake, I routinely call health care professionals killers for not washing their hands; surely I could have shouted "Enough!" upon regular occasion regarding the growing absurdity of demonstrated greed and the lack of any semblance of accountability.)

So, we're in for it. And may be in for it for the foreseeable future. And the bottom may—or may not—be in sight. This is beyond any shadow of doubt the biggest financial crisis in 75 years. And despite my advanced age, even I have Zero Experience with anything like this. Hence, how does one give serious advice, or play expert with a straight face?

Then there's the glib stuff galore that is the current staple of the shameless self-help gurus. E.g., get up with a smile and get on with life! Or, remember it's your family and friends who are your anchors! Both things are true, but hackneyed to say the least.

So here is my effort, probably futile and surely inadequate, to be a little less hackneyed than I otherwise might:

***Feel the pain. Feel free to hurt and hurt badly for every single person laid off or fired, maybe even the Lehman gang. (I admit I can't personally go as far as Lehmanites, but I do feel that I should—they are, after all, more or less human beings.) There is a lot of hurt "out there" and it is inappropriate not to feel it; that's my view. It shouldn't paralyze you, but it should haunt you.

***Be of help. Feel the pain—and do something about it. Whether it's a $100 bill dropped in the Salvation Army bowl, or some hours serving in the soup kitchen, help out. Sure, it'll make you feel better, but that's not the point. There are a lot of people who need help. Period. So help. And keep helping. This is not a rich man's-woman's blog, but the average peruser of tp.com has a little room to spare—or more. Give until you are half poor—money and time.

***Kind words or no words. Go gentle in the world. Period. A little kindness goes a long way. Especially when the fans are all covered with crap. I said "action" a minute ago, but now I'm saying attitude. No, not some ginned up "positive mental attitude"—just human grace and thoughtfulness and gentleness and decency roughly 100% of the time.

***Say "Thank you" to anyone who goes even a quarter-step, eighth-step out of their way to be helpful or cheerful. Most everyone is under great pressure—and positive acknowledgement of their being is a true and enormous gift.

***In your professional lives, work on your thoughtfulness as if your life depended on it—it does in the sense of your Final Exam with St Peter. (Or whomever.) You may have to make tough decisions, but you can streeeeetch to ameliorate the pain and, per the above, exude decency 100.00000% of the time.

***Re-assess your needs. From an economic standpoint, we do, in fact, have to spend our way out of this bind—banks must offer credit for new car purchases, etc. On the other hand, many of us could use a hearty dose of newfound simplicity and thriftiness in our lives longterm. This is a matchless, if painful, time to reassess what it's all about.

***People have long memories. To be "P&L" focused, those to whom you extend kindnesses in tough times will likely reward you 10-fold in the long term. (Make that 100-fold.) "Thoughtfulness pays" is a fact of life in business or "the rest."

***Get outdoors. Exercise and good breathing habits are gifts from the Gods when it comes to longevity or equanimity or stress reduction. But do your exercise outside—"close to the soil" is not reserved for those of us who live on farms in the likes of Vermont. Up your daily exercise regimen to at least an hour—outdoors. Being in touch with the soil, including urban asphalt, is good for the soul and sanity and those around you.

***Basics #1. "It's always 'the people.'" It may be glib, but in this instance I don't care. Network, keep your promises, behave decently. You are as good as your relationships. Period. Short term. Long term. Good times. Tough times. This is the time (though all times are, in fact, the time) to "over"invest in relationship building and maintenance.

***Basics #2. Execution is king. I arrived at a retail shop at, literally, 4:57 p.m. three days ago. It closed at 5 p.m., and the doorcloser was poised by the door, hovering by the door, whatever. Open early, stay open late—even if the traffic is approximately zilch. For God's sake ......
(Why o why o why o why should I have to write this???)

***Basics #3. MBWA.* (*Managing By Wandering Around.) To be present is to care. To be absent is broadcasting contempt or disregard or shameful insensitivity.

***Basics #4. Keep growing. Learn new stuff. Have lunch with new people. Get better and better at what you do. Glib or not, we're either growing or contracting—and it's not your 401(k) I'm talking about. I'm off on a new sustainable architecture jag. I indulged in a mini-library of about 10 books—and I'm about to dig in.

***Basics #5. Be accountable. You must take absolute & unequivocal & total responsibility for the stuff you promise, real or implied—especially the accumulation of so-called "small stuff." (Five minutes late to a meeting is late, not "a little late.") The current mega-crisis is to a significant degree an accountability (lack thereof) crisis—sure, Mr Rubin, you had nothing to do with the Citigroup implosion; sure, Angelo-I-screwed-the-world-and-took-home-$100,000,000-for-my-efforts-as-a-walkaway-reward (Countrywide), you were jus' helpin' people buy homes.

***Basic #6. Become a better listener-hearer. Practice. Practice. Practice.

***"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."—Gandhi. (Talk about glib!!!!!!) "Make each day matter." (Talk about glib!!!!!) This is your life. You have neither yesterday. Nor tomorrow. Only today. (Talk about glib!!!!!!)

In summary, as I try to sort all this out:

Graceful.
Decent.
Kind.
Caring.
Attentive.
Thoughtful.
Accountable.
Helpful.
Close at 5:05 p.m.

Sorry, it's the best I can do.

Christmas Greetings and Thank You

To ...

Non-officer members of the U.S. armed forces serving abroad at Christmastime (written as an American) (not that I have anything against officers—I was once lucky enough to be one)

99% of cops—who are routinely in harm's way

Firemen who do insane things to save lives

Community bankers who lent only to those who could pay back their loans—then kept the loans on their books

Small business owners who come to work every day with a PMA-damn the torpedos philosophy

Airline employees who do their damndest despite the odds

My fellow Vietnam Vets who were "in country" with me for Christmas 1967 (and to my C.O. for giving us a half-day off on Christmas Day—I'm not being sarcastic, we were there to get the job done)

Historical figures like Grant and Nelson who inspire me

My friend and former boss Walt Minnick who passed up a lucrative CEO job to run (successfully) for Congress at age 66 and be of service

America's revolutionary privates and corporals in the winter of 1776

Herb Kelleher, who founded and put in 37 years at Southwest Airlines

Workers in Mumbai who reopened the Taj and Oberoi in short order

Larry Janesky, Basement Systems Inc, who created a star out of the most mundane activity imaginable

Employees who smile

Authors (and I don't mean me) who labor for years to have their say about an idea they think is worth broadcasting

Founders of the Weather Channel—who were held up to relentless ridicule, but who beat the odds

Nurses, the superstars of the healthcare world

Those small business people who beat Wal*Mart or Starbucks by producing matchless local Excellence (though I have no gripes with Wal*Mart or Starbucks)

All Olympians for their insane dedication to Excellence

Any manager who practices MBWA with reckless abandon

Anyone who says "Thank you"

Anyone who accepts accountability and says "It's my fault"—when it more or less is

Florists who add color to our lives (especially those of us in cold, gray climates)

My stepson Max, who truly believes he can improve our environment and change a nation's behavior in the process (and for his 4,000-mile solo bike ride across the U.S. to demonstrate his commitment to a more gentle way of inhabiting the planet)

Those under 25 who voted in our presidential election—not for their choice of candidate, but for showing up and exercising their precious franchise

Kids in the ghetto who avoid peer pressure and go on to accomplish great things

My late Mom who Mommed with a passion as representative of so many Moms

Those who hold three jobs to make ends meet

Those who go to college at night at age 35 despite a grueling daytime job

Charming rascals

The players at Cirque du Soleil, who deliver Excellence every time

Comedians—we need 'em right now

Theatrical bit players who bust their buns to make their 45 seconds unadulterated Excellence

Startup CEOs

Women business owners

Steve Jobs who is relentless in pursuit of Excellence again and again and again

Those who live and die to pursue Excellence—and inspire us

George Bush and Dick Cheney, whom I didn't vote for twice and am furious at for the damage they've done to my country's reputation—but who, excesses notwithstanding, have helped us avoid a sequel to 9/11/01

Barack Obama with selfish prayers for your forthcoming service—and for lifting our spirits and aspirations

And so many others who anonymously do vast quantities of good work for their communities without a shred of recognition

Not. Bernard Madoff—not for his fiscal malfeasance, but for screwing his longstanding friends
Not. Robert Mugabe

A Penny for Your Thoughts!
A Penny for Your Custom!

How horrid! Recommending that someone buy one's book/s! I avoid self-recommendation like the plague. But, alas, I'm going to make an exception.

While trapped at home during a 2-foot, 2.5-day VT snowstorm and doing an intense winter cleanup, my "brand you" book reared its dust-covered self from underneath a bed. It was part of our 1999 3-book set published under the rubric of "Re-inventing Work":

The Project50: Fifty Ways to Transform Every "Task" into a Project That Matters!

The Brand You50: Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an "Employee" into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion!

The Professional Service Firm50: Fifty Ways to Transform Your "Department" into a Professional Service Firm Whose Trademarks are Passion and Innovation!

The idea, as the Age of Outsourcing descended in the late '90s, was that the best & sole defense against a global labor market was: Do Great Work!

That is:

(1) Turn every task into a project of distinction worth bragging about 5 years from now—if not 10. ("Wow Project" was our moniker—and Steve Jobs' "insanely great" was the benchmark.)

(2) Turn your run-of-the-mine "department" into an indispensable, value-adding superstar professional services firm in the tradition of IDEO, Chiat Day, or McKinsey. ("Gamechanging PSF" was our shorthand here.)

(3) Turn yourself into a businesswoman sporting a project portfolio to die for. ("Brand You" was the tag line.)

Fact is, as The Deep Recession deepens by the day, these ideas are more, not less, timely than a decade ago. While nothing will make the current rocky road smooth, the fact is that Truly Inspired Work—the basics and innovation alike—is the best defense and the best offense in very tough times.

So in a departure from tradition, I recommend these three books; and in the name of modesty, I can report that each one is available used at Amazon.com for One Cent!

Does God Hate Detroit?
(Or: Why Does God Hate Detroit?)

What did the folks in Motown do to make the Big Guy sooooooo mad? Two of the "Big" Three come within an inch of bankruptcy before President Bush, with a little help from us taxpayers, became Detroit's one-man Salvation Army. Then, yesterday, the Detroit Lions became the first NFL team in his-to-ry to go 0-15 courtesy a loss that was waaaaaaaay beyond embarrassing.

We Don't Do Movie Reviews at This Blog!

All rules are made to be broken. You must see Slumdog Millionaire. That's an order.

[Or buy the book it's based on.—CM]

We Don't Do Movie Reviews at This Blog!

(While I'm at it, this is the perfect year to put It's a Wonderful Life on your "must see" Christmas viewing list.)

Christmas Giving

Here are three charities that support our troops. Instead of the normal gifts you might give friends, perhaps consider a donation in the name of friends to:

www.childrenoffallensoldiersrelieffund.org/;

www.woundedwarriorproject.org/;

or the old-but-good-as-ever standby, www.uso.org/.

(These proven suggestions come courtesy my-our colleague Abbey Bishop, whose husband Keith is an active duty Army Ranger.)

And When Night Falls ...

Don't trust your eyes! No, I am not Bernard Madoff by night!

Christmas Haiku

Best Buy.
Worst Service.
No Buy.

(Yippee, I saved $2,000! I'm sure "Best" Buy didn't need my custom.)

Repeat!

I used this quote last week in a post. Since then, I've shared it with dozens of people in professional and personal settings. Almost no one has failed to say, "Email it to me—I want to circulate it." Hence my decision to re-inflict you with it:

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, "Yes, but I have something he will never have ... enough."

—John Bogle, Enough. The Measures of Money, Business, and Life. (Bogle is founder of the Vanguard Mutual Fund Group.)

Repeat Two

While I'm at it, this one deserves a repeat, too; it's constantly on my mind:

Managers have lost dignity over the past decade in the face of widespread institutional breakdown of trust and self-policing in business. To regain society's trust, we believe that business leaders must embrace a way of looking at their role that goes beyond their responsibility to the shareholders to include a civic and personal commitment to their duty as institutional custodians. In other words, it is time that management became a profession.

—Rakesh Khurana & Nitin Nohria, "It's Time to Make Management a True Profession," Harvard Business Review/10.08

Must Reading!

Our good friend Trevor directed us to our good friend Tom Asacker's "Nine Predictions for 2009." I agree with Trevor's "it’s brilliant."

Must Market!

The economy is in the tank, etc., etc. But there will be an end to the gloomy tunnel, and the barrel of gold at the end of that tunnel—bruises and "new world" iterations notwithstanding—will be, for the Americans, our 80-million, mostly healthy, even if not quite as wealthy, Boomers. Some get it—and maybe it's not as hard as others think. For example, my bet is for great success for Jay Leno in his soon-to-be 10 p.m. slot. If "60 is the new 30," "10 p.m. is the new 11:30 p.m." Boomers may be healthier than their predecessors of the same age band, but they mostly go to bed by, say, 11 p.m.

(Startling success in general will go to those in the "rapidly aging universe"—e.g., U.S., EU, Japan—who vigorously pursue the BGB/Boomer-Geezer Bonanza.) (Reminder: "It" is not mostly about marketing; "it" is overwhelmingly about new products and services.)

The Bullock Cart and the Race Car

Imagine you are trying to travel from your town to another town on a bullock cart. It may be hard for some of you to imagine that. Coming from India, I know that there are lots of places where this is very common. It can take a long time for you to get from one place to another place. If there is one thing that's positive with this arrangement, it is that, in case of an accident, the damage won't be much.

Why? Simply because you can't travel at breathtaking speeds on a bullock cart.

Now, imagine you are on the same journey but now you are traveling in a race car instead. (While people can't imagine that in many parts of India, you can totally imagine it here.)

First, you will notice that you can reach your destination considerably faster than before. It's not only more comfortable to travel in the race car, it's also more fashionable. I can go on with all the positives, but there is at least one negative. As you drive at breakneck speeds, if there is an accident, you may really break your neck.

Now, you may be wondering why we are talking about bullock carts and race cars?

[read more]

Cool Friend #131: Martin Lindstrom

We think this is a Cool Friends interview you won't want to miss. Martin Lindstrom's studies are in the field of Neuromarketing. He describes it as a marriage between marketing and science that uses non-verbal expression techniques to make people express what's going on in their subconscious mind. In other words, it predicts buying behavior a customer can't express verbally, because even she may be unaware of what's going on in her subconscious. Sounds useful, right? But, would you want advertising based on the techniques aimed at you? Through his book Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, Lindstrom takes the discussion of whether this technique should be used, how much it should be used, and when it should be used (in politics, for instance?) to the consumer. He feels that getting the consumer involved in the decisions made in this stage of the discipline's application is of paramount importance. You can read Martin Lindstrom's Cool Friends interview to learn more, or visit his website, www.martinlindstrom.com.

She's Got a Point!

I'm no apologist for George W. Bush, let alone his sidekick, Mr. Cheney, but I think Secretary of State Rice had a damn good point when she recently said, "If you were in a position of authority on September 11, then every day since has been September 12."

Stay Tuned ...

I do not pretend to be an expert on financial markets. However the financial markets amateur in me offers a big "Hmmmm ..." when I see headlines like this one from yesterday's Wall Street Journal: "Prime Time? Investors Bet Against AAA." In short, prime AAA mortgage bonds are going for 30 cents on the dollar. Yup, AAA!

Bottom?
What bottom?
(Hmmmm ...)

Ear Pablum!

The latest favored term from the Fed referring to pumping money into the banking system is "quantitative easing." BusinessWeek (12.15) columnist James Cooper tells us the definition of quantitative easing is "printing money."

Beats Biofuels?!

Okay, I've stooped to reading ads. A United Technologies (Otis, Carrier, etc.) ad illustrates in detail the contours of a "zero net energy" building. There's nothing far out about it—and buildings today consume perhaps 40% of our energy.

I'm not conned by the ad—it just succinctly captured a ton of stuff I've been reading, and a ton of stuff underway in the green building "movement." Working on energy reduction in built environments is certainly on the prospective Obama stimulus list. But is it high enough on that list? Massive improvements can be made with proven technologies, far closer at hand than hydrogen cars or a national network of car battery recharging facilities. (And maybe the price of corn would fall in the process—thus saving starving people from bonehead Washington policies.)

Note to Bill Gates

I've done all my Windows updates, Bill, but when I type "Obama" (as immediately above and preceding) I get the infamous wavy red underlining—which suggests that I replace Obama with "Osama."

Whatever Are We "Gurus" Gonna Do?

Management gurudom seems to depend on GE excellence. GE is a monopoly supplier of case examples to Guruworld. With GE Capital wobbly, and with GE Capital's Immelt-era profits accounting for 50% of the whole firm's profits, I'd be surprised if the company ever returns to its Welchian glory. (Which is not to knock Immelt—Welch is the true architect of hyper GE Capital-centrism.)

Scratch GE.
Scratch Starbucks.
Uh, scratch Enron.
And Countrywide and WaMu.

There's always Wal*Mart.
Thank God.
Mr. Sam, we love you.

"Scan" or "Scam"?

"'A patient comes in because he's in pain,' said Dr. Nelda Wray, a senior research scientist at the Methodist Institute for Technology in Houston. 'We see something in a scan and we assume causation. But we have no idea of the prevalence of the abnormality in routine populations.'"—Science Times/New York Times, 1209.08, "The Pain May Be Real, But the Scan Is Deceiving"

As I've said again and again (piggybacking on the "evidence-based medicine" "movement" championed by the likes of Michael Millenson and the peerless Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice), there's a lot that goes on in medicine, even in the most hallowed halls (especially in the most hallowed halls?), that has no basis in fact or hard evidence. This telling-frightening article is one more compelling example of medical witchcraft (sorry to use such strong language); and one more good reason to avoid hospitals whenever you can; and one more reason to question-the-living-bejesus out of any test the doc wants to perform; and one more reason to take charge of your own treatment—for God's sake, grow up, the guy in the white coat is flying blind half the time.

One growing response to the above, fostered by Web 2.0 and social networking, is patient involvement. BusinessWeek (12.15) offers "Can Patients Cure Healthcare?" Discussing websites such as PatientsLikeMe.com, sometimes collectively called "Health 2.0," the article explains that some groups of patients are going so far as doing their own clinical trials. Mounting health-establishment pushback is clear evidence that these increasingly informed patients, even when they get it wrong, are up to something good!

FYI

The same BusinessWeek used above as a source has an article titled "What Top CEOs Are Thinking."

8 CEOs.
8 males.

(Sorry to waste your time, I realize this is not news.)

Amen!

A commission formed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies recommended a Cyber Czar in the White House. While Mr. Bush did increase spending on cyberthreats, much, much more emphasis is called for—and the topic is too important to bury in DHS.

Symbols, Smiles, and Walking the Talk

A debate raged (more or less) in a couple of sets of Comments on "style" versus "substance." In my opinion, it's a no-brainer, style is substance for leaders. I've always taken a shine to the oft-repeated Gandhi-ism, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." I ran across a companion expression recently, from St. Francis of Assisi: "It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching."

In honor of these ideas, I have created a PowerPoint/Special Presentation, lightly annotated, which is my best effort to make these points. It comes under the generic heading of my favorite me-ism, God forbid: Hard is soft. Soft is Hard.

I'd be honored if you'd look at the Special Presentation, titled "Symbolic Behavior/Smile/Respect," and continue the earlier dialogue.

(Incidentally, our collection of probably 25+ Special Presentations is not for my seminar Clients—the special PPTs exclusively appear at tompeters.com.)

It Bogles the Mind

Our renaissance woman-commentator Judith Ellis recently mentioned Vanguard Mutual Fund Group founder John Bogle's Enough. The Measures of Money, Business, and Life. Judith's reference led me to add the 79-year-old Mr. Bogle's opus to my bookshelf. I will simply say that it is one of the best business books ("life" books?) I have ever read, an easy All-time Top 10. And its timing is, well, read it yourself ...

Rather than spend several sentences summarizing the short-but-very-sweet-and-very lucid tome, I'll let the brilliant chapter titles do the work for me. Here's a sample:

"Too Much Cost, Not Enough Value"
"Too Much Speculation, Not Enough Investment"
"Too Much Complexity, Not Enough Simplicity"
"Too Much Counting, Not Enough Trust"
"Too Much Business Conduct, Not Enough Professional Conduct"
"Too Much Salesmanship, Not Enough Stewardship"
"Too Much Focus on Things, Not Enough Focus on Commitment"
"Too Many Twenty-first Century Values, Not Enough Eighteenth-Century Values"
"Too Much 'Success,' Not Enough Character"

As to the overarching theme captured by the book's title, "Enough," Mr. Bogle begins with this vignette:

"At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, 'Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.'"

Amen!
And thank you, John Bogle!
(And Judith Ellis.)

Upside Down

I am depressed, a word not used lightly. Part of it may be winter-in-Vermont. But the larger part, I think, is the world of business ideas, that I've participated in as more than a bit player, is being turned upside down. I feel somewhat like Alan Greenspan, who said his core beliefs are undergoing close examination. This is not a "hair shirt" Post—it is a musing of importance to me, and perhaps you. The following are not "assertions," for they are not definitive by any means. They are instead Question Marks, and I've illustrated each one with a single anecdote, offered without analysis:

***The guiding premise of ubiquitous Globalization, of which I have been among the most vociferous champions, is under assault:

"The world has become normal again. The years immediately following the Cold War offered a tantalizing glimpse of a new kind of international order, with nation states growing together or disappearing, and increasingly free commerce and communications. ... People and their leaders longed for 'a world transformed.' ...

"But that was a mirage. The world has not been transformed. In most places, the nation-state remains as strong as ever, and so, too, nationalist ambitions, the passions, and the competition among nations that have shaped history. ... Nationalism and the nation itself, far from being weakened by globalization, have now returned with a vengeance."

From: Robert Kagan, The Return of History and the End of Dreams. The title of the 2008 book is, in effect, a stinging rebuke to The End of History and the Last Man, a wildly influential 1992 book by Francis Fukuyama, in which he argues, "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." (Kagan is on most anybody's top five list of influential foreign affairs intellectuals—as is-was Fukuyama, a leading "neocon.") (Not so incidentally, the "exponentially interrelated global commerce ends the likelihood of war" theme was predominant among Europe's "leading intellectuals" in 1910–1912.)

***The Ubiquity of the benefits of extensive outsourcing and new organizational forms emerging is turning out to be a much more complex "transformation" than many expected, me included, again as a "cheerleader-in-chief":

Boeing, according to the Wall Street Journal [1205.08], is getting ready to announce another 6-month delay to delivery of its Dreamliner, bringing launch delays to date to two years. Part of the latest cock-up is attributed to "the volume of work that Boeing outsourced." I.e. coordination is turning out to be nightmarish.

Outsourcing is hardly a discredited idea—but the implementation [ah, execution, the "last 98%"] of extensive outsourcing has been far more difficult than most anyone imagined.

***Good ideas, private equity buyouts aimed at rapidly shaping up ailing firms, are often resulting in unspeakably predatory behavior:

"When [private equity firms, including Chrysler owner Cerberus] bought Mervyns from Target, they promised to revive the limping West Coast retailer. They stripped it of real estate assets, nearly doubled store rent, and saddled it with $800 million in debt while sucking out more than $400 million in cash for themselves. ... The moves left Mervyns so weak it couldn't survive."

From: "What Have You Done to My Company?" BusinessWeek, 1206.08. In July 2008 Mervyns entered bankruptcy and a few months later 18,000 employees were let go without severance. The title, "What Have ..." was uttered in October by 88-year-old Mervyns founder Merv Morris as he visited employees recently at a shuttering store, and was cheered by employees.

This literally sickens me.

While acknowledging the downfalls of private equity deals, I more or less drank the Kool Aid. The saving grace, of some sort, on this one is that many, but not all of us, have been taken waaaaay aback by the magnitude of the expression of greed revealed with each passing day—but that's hardly an adequate excuse. The bloated "guru class" is supposed to issue red alerts long before the bombs drop.

Shit, what a year.

[Belatedly, albeit with a vengeance, I have turned 163.82 degrees toward a radical "back to basics" approach—which was more or less the In Search of Excellence melody. Recall one of the chapter titles from the Bogle book (see immediately above) was: "Too Many Twenty-first Century Values, Not Enough Eighteenth-Century Values."]

Rightside Up?

I have nothing against men—and feel profoundly for the million refugees cited below. On the other hand, I have been trying to make the case for an enhanced women's role in business for a dozen years now—and I've also been a particularly noisy foreteller of the exponential shift of the U.S. to a service economy.

These amazing stats appeared in the 5 December Boston Globe. In the last year:

Men are down 1,069,000 jobs.

Women are up 12,000 jobs.

Holy moly.

The principal reason is the continuing demise of male-dominated manufacturing jobs, and the continuing rise of service jobs. In particular, healthcare, where women constitute 80% of employees, has added 400,000 jobs during the period in question.

Interesting, eh?

(Net: It is increasingly a women's world, called the global rise of "Womenomics" by one European observer. Another accelerator is the stunning rate at which women are eclipsing men on the education front, again pretty much worldwide—from primary school to Ph.D. programs.)

Bullet Points

A new client (praise be) asked for 5 bullets about my forthcoming presentation to use for marketing purposes. As an overachiever since about age 5, thanks (?) Mom, I offered up 27. See below:

The "Top 27": Twenty-seven Practical Ideas That Will Transform Every Organization

1. Learn to thrive in unstable times—our lot (and our opportunity) for the foreseeable future.

2. Only putting people first wins in the long haul, good times and especially tough times. (No "cultural differences" on that one! Colombia = Germany = the USA.)

3. MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around. Stay in touch!

4. Call a customer today!

5. Train! Train! Train! (Growing people outperform stagnant people in terms of attitude and output—by a wide margin.)

6. "Putting people first" means making everyone successful at work (and at home).

7. Make "we care" a/the company motto—a moneymaker as well as a source of pride.

8. All around the world, women are an undervalued asset.

9. Diversity is a winning strategy, and not for reasons of social justice: The more different perspectives around the table, the better the thinking.

10. Take a person in another function to lunch; friendships, lots of, are the best antidote to bad cross-functional task accomplishments. (Lousy cross-functional communication stops companies and armies alike.)

11. Transparency in all we do.

12. Create an "Innovation Machine" (even in tough times). (Hint: Trying more stuff than the other guy is Tactic #1.)

13. We always underestimate the Innovation Advantage when 100% of people see themselves as "innovators." (Hint: They are if only you'd bother to ask "What can we do better?")

14. Get the darned Basics right—always Competitive Advantage #1. (Be relentless!)

15. Great Execution beats great strategy—99% of the time. (Make that 100% of the time.)

16. A "bias for action" is a "bias for success." (Great hockey player Wayne Gretzky: "You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.")

17. No mistakes, no progress! (A lot of fast mistakes, a lot of fast progress.) (Australian businessman Phil Daniels: "Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.")

18. Sometimes "little stuff" is more powerful than "big stuff" when it comes to change.

19. Keep it simple! (Making "it" "simple" is hard work! And pays off!)

20. Remember the "eternal truths" of leadership—constants over the centuries. (They say Nelson Mandela's greatest asset was a great smile—you couldn't say no to him, even his jailors couldn't.)

21. Walk the talk. ("You must be the change you wish to see in the world."—Gandhi)

22. When it comes to leadership, character and people skills beat technical skills. (Emotional Intelligence beats, or at least ties, school intelligence.)

23. It's always "the little things" when it comes to "people stuff." (Learn to say "thank you" with great regularity. Learn to apologize when you're wrong. Learn the Big Four words: "What do you think?" Learn to listen—it can be learned with lots and lots of practice.)

24. The "obvious" may be obvious, but "getting the obvious done" is harder said than done.

25. Time micro-management is the only real "control" variable we have. (You = Your calendar. Calendars never lie.)

26. All managers have a professional obligation to their communities and their country as well as to the company and profit and themselves. (Forgetting this got the Americans into deep trouble.)

27. EXCELLENCE. ALWAYS. (What else?)

[Of course, you can get a PPT version of the "Top 27" also.—CM]

Design Redux: Beyond Women's Restrooms

Two book recommendations:

From my friend and colleague Richard Farson: The Power of Design: A Force for Transforming Everything. That's a bold hypothesis—and to a great extent what I've staked my own professional career on in the last two decades. The book is well written, and it's well worth your time.

The other, also brilliant by my lights: Do You Matter? How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company, by Robert Brunner and Stewart Emery. Consider a sample of subtitles from the last chapter, "Building a Design-driven Culture": "Why good design is everybody's job" ... "Why we need risk support instead of risk management" ... "Why risk should be understood—not avoided" ... "How design requires faith and commitment ..." First paragraph: "In 1997, shortly after Steve Jobs returned to Apple, Dell's founder and chairman, Michael Dell, was asked at the Gartner Symposium and ITxpo97 how he would fix financially troubled Apple. 'What would I do?' Dell said. 'I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.'" (As you doubtless know, a scant ten years later Apple's market cap surged past Dell's.)

Civil Defense, Circa 2008: An Urgent and Monumental Management Task

Janet Napolitano, assuming confirmation, will have her hands full as our third chief of homeland security. That was made even more clear with the publication yesterday of the report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism. In short, the report virtually promised a major WMD attack on the U.S. homeland within the next five years, by 2013—and said that deaths in the hundreds of thousands could well be the tally.

If history is a teacher, DHS will work like hell to prevent the catastrophe—and beef up the capabilities of first responders. I'd hardly shortchange those two tasks, particularly the first, but I think that no-bullshit training and organizing of you and me and our neighbors in Civil Defense, not unlike World War II practices, should share top billing. If a WMD, nuclear or biological, kills hundreds of thousands, the entire nation will go nuts. (Rightly so.) So how do the man or woman on the street and our community prepare for it and deal with it? My father, too old for the draft in WWII, was a Civil Defense air warden leader within a well-organized schema—one of my favorite souvenirs from him was an elaborate guide showing the shapes of German bombers that might make it to our shores. (A few German subs did make shore not so far away.) He was a local big cheese in a highly developed and well-trained civilian network—needless to say, the British version of this was more elaborate by orders of magnitude, as the odds were high (very high!) of an invasion of their homeland.

Well, if the shit is going to hit the fan, and a sane person would conclude that the odds of a shit-covered fan are not all that low, you and I should be exceptionally well trained and exceptionally well organized to be part of the solution, a big part, rather than part of the problem. (Did you watch any of the short-lived TV series Jericho—not a pretty sight, and not necessarily all that far out.) My entire "training" since 9/11 has amounted to half listening to airport announcements telling me to look out for suspicious things. That is a pathetic request for my involvement. And I'll bet things don't change much—or at all.

My bottom line, and others have said this, is that I, and I suspect you, stand ready for my country to ask much of me in defending our homeland—if only President-elect Obama or DHS Secretary-designate Napolitano bother to ask.

So what are you and I going to do about it? (Anybody have Governor Napolitano's private cellphone #?)

Commonplace?

Susan just severed a relationship with a professional working on a project with her. The person was creative and personable. But time and again failed to deliver the goods—actually hard goods in this case. Whether accounting or plumbing or design work, I'd wager that 75% of firings of professionals comes from follow-through, not the cleverness of the work. (Give me your guess on the percentage. Please.)

(In this case the professional was indeed personable, a key trait. But on the EQ side, the person in question lost by arguing every point with Susan rather than acknowledging responsibility.)

Penance?

What shall we do with the architects (and operators) and facility managers?

As most know, two of my great passions are gorgeous and startling and utilitarian DESIGN. And MARKETING to WOMEN. (Add great experiences—but I was a follower on that one.)

Susan and I went to the fabulous-restored Colonial Theater in Boston to see Spamalot. At the break, I at one point counted (I counted twice—zero hyperbole here) a line of 27 (TWENTY-SEVEN) (TWENTY-SEVEN) at the entrance to the LADIES ROOM.

Of course I know that such a problem is tough to deal with after the fact in an old facility—but there was the renovation point, and I'd guess "the boys" (I'd wager a pretty penny that it was boys), the architects, TOTALLY BLEW IT.

SO OUR QUESTIONS OF THE DAY ARE (1) HOW DO WE FIX IT NOW? (2) WHAT SHOULD THE ARCHITECTS' PENANCE BE?

(My starter suggestion, since re-renovation is tough, especially in a tough philanthropic environment, is to punish all us boys by severely and sternly (rent-a-cops with batons) limiting access to the Men's Room and carefully managing the line so ours is always one-third longer than theirs. (The penalty extra third acknowledges that it takes us less time to get the job done.) Hmm, maybe ours should be twice as long, adding in some small measure of punitive damages.

I anxiously await your replies which I shall forward with dispatch to the AIA/American Institute of Architects.

Sorry About the Understatement!

In a recent Post, I recalled a story from Maryann Keller's Rude Awakening: The Rise, Fall, and Struggle for Recovery of General Motors about the extreme deference paid to GM middle managers. I did it from memory, but ordered the book anyway. I got the stocked refrigerator and the torn-out hotel room wall part right (mostly—it was soft drinks, not beer), but had forgotten the story that preceded it—which made my little vignette small change by comparison. An exec reported this to Ms Keller about a not-atypical incident that marked his more junior days as a GM staffer:

"When [the assistant general sales manager] would fly in from the Chevrolet Central Office in Kansas City, I was assigned to stand outside the door of the Muehlenbach Hotel in a snowstorm and I was not to move, because whenever he showed up, I had to be there to open the door. We bought the elevator and blocked it off so he'd have an elevator to go to. We had somebody assigned to stand outside his room all day to take his shirts to the laundry and perform other tasks. And—this is true—we had learned that he had to have his morning orange juice a certain temperature, so we had somebody in the kitchen every day who tested the orange juice with a thermometer." [My italics.]

NB: Pondering Senator Obama's recently announced national security team and the Big Three execs returning with their begging bowls to D.C. this week, this thought occurred: While autoworld's Big Three CEOs took home about $40 million in compensation for their individually and collectively disastrous performance in 2007, the combined pay for the Big Four Generals responsible for our global security (military heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps) was about $1 million!