Quality!
Excellence!
New Delhi!

I'm in New Delhi, where the thermometer is apparently stuck above 100°F. I am presenting at the "ASQ/FICCI Symposium on Innovation and Quality." The joint sponsors-organizers are the American Society for Quality and The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce, a venerable institution whose origins date back to 1927.

As always, I am wonderfully overwhelmed by the amazing energy that one sees and feels in India.

(As part of my preparation, I created "The Quality 121: 121 Random Thoughts on Quality, Emphasizing the Variables That Are Often Missing in Conventional Quality Programs." You'll find it here as a Special Presentation, along with the PPT for the event.)

Cool Friend #138: Diane Hessan

Our latest Cool Friend Diane Hessan is the CEO of Communispace, a social networking company that is a "pioneer in creating online communities to help marketers deeply engage customers." The company has built and managed more than 350 private online customer communities for an impressive collection of Fortune 500 companies. Erik and Diane discuss the company's business, social media, and Tom, whom Diane knows well. Given the business she's in, naturally there are many ways to find Diane online: Twitter, Twitter.com/CommunispaceCEO; blog, Blog.Communispace.com; and website, Communispace.com being only three among them. And, be sure to read her Cool Friends interview.

Tom Meets His Neighbor, Cubist Pharmaceuticals ...

And Says ...
"Who the Hell Are You?"
They Reply ...
"We're #1!"

The attitude in China a couple of weeks ago was pretty good, maybe better than pretty good. There were economic problems, but the group of mostly entrepreneurs I was with vibrated with energy and lived to turn others' problems into their opportunities. Economically (I'm not talking nukes here), the feeling was also pretty good in Korea. Moreover, I was in Seoul to be part of Korea's launch of a new growth strategy, focused on global leadership in "green" industries, and marking a radical departure from business-as-was; the goal is to go beyond "doing good work" to unalloyed planetary leadership in arenas that matter. It did not seem incongruous to them or me that we were having a refreshing discussion of a brave new & exciting future when the current economic numbers were still sketchy—and surprises, even bad ones, could be in store. (E.g., how will the world's markets react to an almost certain GM bankruptcy? For what it's worth, my layman's bet is that after a hiccup or two or three, the markets will settle down and take it in stride. Maybe six months ago the psychology would have been such that true panic would have set in, but not now.) To sum it up, there's no bunker mentality—moving ahead smartly, even audaciously, is the order of march.

In a somewhat similar vein, I've been carrying around a couple-week-old special section of the Boston Globe, titled, "Globe 100: The Best of Massachusetts Business." Some things about MA seem to bug some people, but the academic and entrepreneurial firepower concentrated here surely makes it a Top 10 "success city" in the world—or, rather, success region. (We benefit from a bunch of such regions in the U.S., like the SF Bay Area/Silicon Valley, with no real earthly parallels, Greater Austin, Greater Seattle, Greater D.C., Greater Houston, Raleigh-Durham, Madison WI, great swaths of the LA Basin, etc.)

I found the "Globe 100" fascinating. Three of the top five finishers, 13 of the top 25, and 31 of the top 50 were tech companies—that number should actually be about 35; some of the so-called "service" companies are essentially tech companies. I have a house in Boston, though I'm hardly a regular resident, and business in general is my beat—hence I definitely should be plugged into "all this." So I was literally dumbfounded that of the 13 tech companies in the top 25, I had never heard of eight of them—and in particular I'd never heard of #1, Cubist Pharmaceuticals! (It's a half-billion-dollar revenue company—the rankings are performance-based, not size based.)

I actually think my ignorance is very cool—and important. You could say, surely, that it condemns me as "out of it." But I think that would be an erroneous conclusion. My conclusion is that there is a truckload or two or three or four or forty or four thousand of largely-invisible-absolutely-fabulous great stuff going on from Greater Boston to Greater Shanghai to Greater Seoul. The developed world is indeed in the middle of a profoundly troubling financial-economic crisis, and the impact will be felt for years; but unlike the Great Depression, all sorts of extraordinary things are going on or in the works or even accelerating—and the promise of a raft (a big, big, big raft) of future tech-based Revolutions (yes, with a capital "R") is mind boggling; and cause for extraordinary, almost giggle-worthy mid- to long-term optimism.

Shanghai's irrepressible entrepreneurs.
Korea's aggressive, bold green initiative.
The "Globe 100."

And now I'm off to Delhi ...*

(*NB: my trip-to-Delhi reading is alibaba: The Inside Story Behind Jack Ma and the Creation of the World's Biggest Online Marketplace, by Liu Shiying and Martha Avery. Wow!)

(It would be ironic if this Post appeared the day GM applied for bankruptcy. But if it were so, I would not change a word. While I would weep for dislocated families and shuttered businesses, I would also remind myself, and you, that it ain't a GM world, and it actually hasn't been for a good quarter century—even in the U.S.A.)

Event: Seoul

Tom is in Korea when a great deal is happening in that country. He's speaking to the New Growth Engines'
Convention & Expo in Seoul. We wish him a safe trip, and please let us hear from you in the comments if you attended the event. If you would like to get the PPT, you can download it here.

Memorial Day 2009

May the sacrifices of our troops today, in literally dozens of countries, and our veterans be remembered this Memorial Day.

I will be in Seoul on Memorial Day 2009—my special best wishes to our Korean War vets, still largely unhearalded.

Above: Note and flowers left at the Vietnam Memorial.
Below: Old Navy Seabee—actually 24 or 25 at the time; somewhere near Danang, Vietnam, 1966 or 1967.

When the Phone Rings at 3 A.M. ...
Something's Afoot!

Last Saturday at 3 a.m. my home phone rang. It was my Hong Kong client canceling yesterday's event—just hours before I was due to leave. I inform you of this because it means that my "after 40 years" trip to Vietnam also bit the dust; hence no [brilliant, incisive, soul-searching ...] commentary associated therewith.

Off to Seoul tomorrow!

Science "Fiction"

I can not heartily enough recommend Daniel Suarez's Daemon. A Daemon is a computer program that runs in the background and performs certain system-controlling activities at certain pre-arranged times. In the book, written by a computer guru and gushingly endorsed by the likes of Craig Newmark/Craigslist and Stewart Brand/The Long Now Foundation, a renowned computer scientist-game designer dies and, after his demise, unleashes the Daemon, which disrupts the world as we know it.

There are a few things which boggle the imagination such as fleets of robotic cars acting with amazing intelligence, but all in all the scenarios played out seem terrifyingly realistic—in fact, on a modest scale they are underway as I write. While we know what's going on in the background is frightening, and William Gibson fans have been reading somewhat like material for years, something about this rendition sent chill after chill up (down?) my spine. Indeed, said sad spine is that of a cyber-amateur; but I think even the pros will find the book compelling—incidentally (?) it's teenage gamers who are most adept at dealing with various conundrums, while well-trained but ancient (30s??) FBI-ers and NSA-ers are out of their league.

Oddly enough, the day I finished the book, May 18, the Wall Street Journal ran a page 1 feature titled "Ups and Downs Whipsaw Supply Chain." It describes in gory detail the effect of vast interconnected systems of just-in-time management that have led to all sorts of glitches in manufacturing—a plant running fullspeed is flummoxed by three vendors whose hasty, independent decisions to slash inventory bring the downstream manufacturer to a screeching halt while the manufacturer's market is still robust. Hence the downstream manufacturer cannot meet demand, and the economy takes yet another hit. Of course the Wall Street fiasco was started and accelerated by genius programmers whose programs effectively (and automatically) took over global financial markets.

This book demonstrates, at least to me, that we are in for one wild ride.

Go, Larry!

You may recall my applause for Larry Janesky, who has turned "dull" basement transformations into a powerhouse business, Basement Systems Inc. (His portfolio includes his best-selling book, Dry Basement Science.)

Well, Larry's hit a home run, as far as I'm concerned, with an idea he passed on to his dealers—in my experience it's an original.

In short, Larry distinguishes between "busy" and "growth." Simply put, "busy" is booking business in good times—which boosts your revenue growth to the heavens, in the short-term. As to "real growth," it occurs "when the troughs in sales come up, not when the peaks go up." That is, on a chart, the bad times bottom-trough today is higher than the trough during the prior problem period.

In a little more detail, directly from Larry's dealer presentation (imagine quotation marks around what follows):

"Busy": OUTSIDE forces acting positively on my business.
"Growth": INTERNAL forces acting positively on my business.

Busy:

Good news: Lots of work available, go get it (but it probably won't last).
Bad news: Can't count on it continuing—so don't let your overhead soar!!!

Growth:

Good news: [Internal-basic] improvements are paying off.
Bad news: Probably been growing because your [internally driven] good work allows you to take competitors' business. But when you [succeed and] become a "big fish in a little pond," you'll have to add higher value to your products to redefine what you do and thus expand the marketspace.

Your call, but I think this approach to business makes a helluva lot of sense—especially to those firms, the great majority in my experience, which did indeed get sloppy during the now departed "good times."

TomChirp #11

Warning!
Strong Language Follows!

The New York Times (May 19) reports "Passengers' Advocates See Progress." Several topics are discussed, and the most contentious by far "is whether Congress will impose a time limit on keeping passengers on planes stuck on the tarmac." Four Canadian airlines have recently set a 90 minute limit in almost all cases. Needless to say, American carriers are fighting this tooth and nail.

Forget, please, for a moment, any diatribes about government nosing into private sector business—save 'em for another topic.

As to the strong language warning: As a veeeeeeery veeeeeery frequent flyer, I hereby declare that I don't give two shits about the airlines' problems in this regard. They bloody well asked for the regulation by their repeated disregard for customer concerns—read overflowing, clogged toilets for one.

To the airlines I say: Stuff it!!!

2009 Recalibration: Part 6

Is your internal brand clear and compelling?

Throughout this series I've encouraged you to "recalibrate" your approach to your business by addressing six questions:

1. Where is the latent profit in your business?
2. How can your current customers help you unleash that latent profit?
3. How does the economic situation help you focus your new customer acquisition efforts?
4. Is your brand strategy right for the times, i.e., what do you want your customers to think about you?
5. Are you communicating optimally with customers at all touchpoints?

And ... the subject of today's post:

6. How clear and compelling is your internal brand?

[Download a PDF from Yastrow.com presenting the six steps graphically.]

[read more]

Cool Friend #137: Matthew May

Matthew May spent eight years consulting to Toyota, during which time he assessed how they got 250,000 employees fired up to come to work every day. At the heart of it was small changes with big impact—"the notion that they're always trying to do more with and for less." Thus he began the studies that led to his latest book—out today!—In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing. He discusses the concept of leaving something out with Erik, in his Cool Friends interview. You can read more at Matt's book website, InPursuitofElegance.com. And, with "less is more" as part of his philosophy, naturally Matt is on Twitter at twitter.com/matthewemay.

Update from a Cool Friend

Everywhere he goes, Cool Friend Dan Ariely, the behavioral economist, meets people desperate to understand what is going on with the economy and why we were blindsided. In response to this demand he has updated his book Predictably Irrational. On the shelves May 19—today!—you will find Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.

In over 25% of fresh material, Ariely addresses questions we all have, such as:

• Why did people take mortgages they couldn’t afford and why did lenders grant them?
• What caused bankers to lose sight of the economy?
• Did the government underestimate the importance of trust as an economic asset?
• Why didn’t we plan better for the possibility of bad times?
• If a rational approach doesn't protect us, what are we supposed to do in the future?

If you missed his book the first time around, this may be the time to take a look.

Oops!

Another new book from one of the Cool Friends is Oops! from Aubrey Daniels. Its subtitle says it all: 13 Management Practices That Waste Time & Money (and what to do instead). Check it out and let us know your impression.

Once Again:
The True "Heart of Strategy"

My friend and colleague Hal Movius has just delivered to me his profoundly important Built to Win, coauthored with Lawrence Susskind.

The topic is purportedly "negotiation." I use "purportedly" because it so thoroughly re-defines the term that the "old definition" is more or less rendered meaningless, even a distraction.

Much (most) of what we "do" in the real world, internal to our organization or vis-à-vis outsiders, is, in fact, negotiation of one sort or another. But the way the "skill" is typically approached is transactional—how to structure a single negotiation. To be sure, in the last few years we have emphasized such things as "win-win" approaches—and that's no small thing.

But Built to Win goes a country mile or ten further. First, the authors argue that internal politics make a mess of negotiation outcomes as much as the "at the table" bit—complex internal pressures (substantive, political, subjective, as much as "hard numbers") by various functions are as important as the "stuff-at-the-table," especially over the long haul—you know, that funny-ole-word, imp-le-ment-a-tion. Second, they argue that such complex "stuff" at the opposing party's organization is also crucial. "Win-win" at the negotiating table is relatively unimportant if everybody, or lots of bodies, back home (both homes) is pissed off at the result.

Third, and the real breakthrough, is the notion that negotiating per se (remember, much of what we "do") can be an incredibly important "strategic competence" that becomes a core, encompassing, pervasive (i.e., everybody!) system and "cultural trait" of a successful organization.

As you know (see my "Heart of Strategy" post—also PDF and PPT), I fervently believe that "all this stuff" is the true basis for lasting "strategic EXCELLENCE," not the battle plan for conquering markets. "We will conquer X market, a 'Blue Ocean,'" is utterly meaningless (deleterious) if not married to the "all-important last 98%" called Execution or "Implementation through the Enthusiastic Cooperation of 100% of our People."

The book is loaded (!!) with compelling examples—and practical advice for getting the "core competence" imbedded throughout the enterprise. Frankly, in the very best sense, this is not a "page turner." The idea, which of course I've grossly oversimplified, is straightforward enough, but the execution requires a lot of deep thought and very hard work. The payoff is staggering—but building the under-structure ain't no walk in the park.

Bottom line: This is a terrific book, that truly deserves the moniker "an original," and we look forward to adding Hal to our Cool Friends roster. (Incidentally, the authors' credentials are solid gold, such as intense work with the Harvard Law School—on top of extraordinary "in the trenches" work. Yadda, yadda, yadda.)

100 Ways to Succeed #171:

Consider Imbedding Negotiation, Writ Very Large, a True Core Competence.
(You'll Doubtless Be the First on Your Block.)

I've argued for the likes of "Black Belts in Strategic Listening" and a values "plank" labeled "Thoughtful in All We Do"—as the "Heart of Strategy." Now I'm on my high horse again: Strategic Enterprise-wide Negotiating Culture belongs on this list—and damn near the top.

Fresh Matters!

I am loath to admit that I watch Grey's Anatomy. It's fundamentally a soap opera. But the tragic Buffalo air disaster makes it an apt subject. The Buffalo fiasco is significantly tied to exhausted pilots (and several other wretched and avoidable things). One of the many Commandments violated was the co-pilot's sleeping in the ready lounge. Prep for a flight requires more than a catnap!

"Rested pilots" are a safety requisite.
Period.

After days of Buffalo Bombardment in the media (as a very very frequent flier, I welcome the attention), I watched, without horrid consequences in this fictional case, exhausted surgeons sacking out in their ready rooms prior to complex surgeries. Fictional as Grey's is, the problem is very very real—with brutal consequences.

But the real problem is that un-necessarily killing people in hospitals, by the hundreds of thousands in the U.S. alone, gets virtually no media attention, while the cause of one crash becomes a cause célèbre that usually results in FAA revisions to Biblical Flying Rules, and often engineering changes in fleets of planes worldwide.

(In fact the entire hospital system mostly hides mistakes as a "cultural" trait—unlike Airline World, where reporting bad news is commonplace and requisite and "cultural," and causes no blame unless something unconscionable occurs. Hence, airlines and the industry have encyclopedic knowledge of "what went wrongs," and hospitals don't, except, as usual, the Veterans Administration, tops in virtually all things when it comes to error reporting and removal and patient safety.)

I want to fly with perky pilots.
And I want surgery provided via perky docs.
(In fact, to some significant extent, "perky" beats raw talent.)

100 Ways to Succeed #170:

Stop Kidding Yourself!
Do Fresh!

Years ago: I'd gotten home late from a long & harrowing trip. At breakfast the next morning, I declared to my ex-wife that I felt "fresh as a daisy"—no ulterior motive, I did! As I said it, I dropped my coffee cup on the floor.

Her (appropriate!) response: "Petal fell off."

Likewise, apparently brimming with energy, in days past, I'd arrive in London from San Francisco, go to my hotel and change, and get on with my day's work—certain, redux, that I was "fresh as a daisy."

Arriving at around 6 a.m. from a mere Boston-LondonHeathrow trip, these days I usually take the day off:

Nap.
Then wander around London.
Working dinner is a possibility.

Message:

Fresh matters!
A lot!!!!!!
(And not just in the OR or cockpit.)
(And age makes some difference—but, I believe, not a lot of difference.)

(I still feel "fresh as a daisy"—thanks, Mom Peters, for the Energizer Bunny genes. But now I'm "sage enough" to admit that I ain't!)

So:

Don't do delusion!
Do fresh!

Della

One of the points Tom's been making for over a decade is that women have an enormous impact on purchasing decisions, and companies ignore this at their peril. Dell is proving that it's not as easy as it looks. Our Cool Friend Andrea Learned, coauthor of Don't Think Pink and a recent guest blogger here, was featured in a piece in the New York Times about Dell's struggles. While, as Tom quoted earlier this week, according to Kelley Murray Skoloda, 66% of personal computers are purchased by women, they're not all using them to count calories or find recipes. Marketing to women requires more than a change in color scheme.

There is a happy ending here. Dell is handling the hullabaloo quite well. They have responded quickly to the controversy and have been making changes to their Della site (less pink!) as a result of the feedback. Let's hope the lessons they're learning will be shared across industries.

EXCELLENCE?
Always?
Yes!

(As Far as I'm Concerned.)
(And I'm right.)
(Damn it.)

I have some fear that you'll read this and accuse me of playing "holier than thou"—the good news is that I know you'll let me know if that's the case.

I went to town earlier today to do some errands—including, yes, getting yet another brushcutting tool.

On the way, I was delayed by a crew doing some roadside tree trimming. One lane of VT Route 30 was closed—and there was, naturally, a Flagman at each end of the work area.

As is my habit ("Tom being Tom" is Susan's term for it), I waved to the flagman—not some big full-body "Hiya," just a little flick of the wrist. It ain't a great job, and a dollop of recognition can't hurt—right?

The guy on the front end waved back—a similar flick of the wrist, and perhaps a little nod. But as I approached the other end, I almost cringed. The Flagman there had as sour-grim an expression as I've seen in a long time. Not aggressively, attack-dog sour, just sour-sour. (Presumably you know what I mean.) I waved anyway, but as expected received no response whatsoever.

Maybe Flagman #2 was fired from a two-hundred-thou-a-year job at Lehman. Maybe Wal*Mart laid him off. Maybe his wife is pissed off at him. Maybe he has a nasty head cold. Any of those things is possible, or a hundred others—plus the job's not exactly a major career step.

Or is it?
(More accurately, could it be?)

I use a lot of quotes in my speeches; but the fact is that I commit very few to memory. But one that is etched indelibly into my synapses comes from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well."

I'm sure there are multiple interpretations of this, and for awhile I had a touch of trouble with the quote: Did it mean that our street sweeper should aspire to no more than street sweeping? I decided not necessarily. To my mind, the quote means that whatever you are doing for whatever reason can be (ought to be, per Dr. King) turned to a Work of High Art and Fullblown Commitment.

I remember, on a visit to Rome at Easter a couple of years ago, racing at one point to catch a glimpse of a world-famous (!!-true) cop who stood in the center of a mid-city roundabout directing traffic with the same style-vigor-artistry with which Leonard Bernstein conducted a symphony orchestra or John Madden coached from the football sidelines.

It's a truism, as I see it, that a Flagman's job, per Dr. King and our Grand Roman Traffic-circle Cop, could indeed be turned into High Art. Or at least the work could be performed with a positive-vigorous-engaged attitude.

My sour Flagman made me sad—mostly for him, but it also put a wee dent in my day. These are troubled economic times. Some readers are doubtless doing something "less" than they were a year ago—perhaps both their ego and wallet have been dented.

But no one but no one but no one can rob you of your attitude. It's all yours to shape and put on parade.

Maybe tough times make it tough to sport a grin. But tough times are especially good times (!!!) to Stand Out for your Spirit & Determination & Engagement & Comradeship.

Flagman, 7-11 clerk, or bank teller, there's always a promotion right around the corner—or at least something close to a short-term employment guarantee—if you live by the words of Martin Luther King. And if the great attitude is still not enough, you retain your self-respect—which is no small thing.

The bastids can't steal your attitude!
(No matter how hard they may advertently or inadvertently try.)
Your attitude is all yours!
Are you Flagman #2?
Or Dr. King's street sweeper?

[Above, my new Corona Ratchet Action Bypass Lopper RL3560. Below, feeding time in the Peacable Kingdom, West Tinmouth VT.]

100 Ways to Succeed #169:

Only You "Own" Your Attitude!

Does life suck sometimes?
Absolutely.

Nonetheless you and only you own your attitude. "Realistically," things may stink to high heaven. Still, the day is yours to Embrace with Vigor and Good Cheer—or not.

Your call.
100%.
Period.

Remember, if you will, the annoying-persistent TPR/Tom Peters Rant:

EXCELLENCE. Always.
If not EXCELLENCE, what?
If not EXCELLENCE now, when?

Design for Environment Speaks A Woman's Language

Joseph Fiksel, the author of the soon-to-publish updated edition of Design for Environment, speaks a woman's language, though he may not realize it. In a recent podcast interview for GreenBiz.com, he points out a few things that companies must do to approach the greening of their design processes. What interests me is that so much of what he identifies and recommends reflects the ways women think (and are ideas all brands should consider).

1) A non-linear and more systematic approach.

2) Collaboration, not competition, focused.

3) The path is as important as the end goal.

I expand each point below:

[read more]

Short Takes.
Catching Up.

Before I leave for Hong Kong-Korea-Delhi, I thought I'd catch up with "stuff" lying in my file from my last trip to Holland-China.

I think I'll do a new feature, TomChirps. I am not so keen on Twitter, but I am keen on short (140 characters—or so!) comments on stuff I deem important, not egocentric posts about my-life-as-tom having a secret Cinnabon at the Omaha airport.

TomChirp #1

Not crying at the loss of Portfolio. Some very good writing. Don't need a glossy celebration of business at the moment.

TomChirp #2

Circa 2009, lots of top performers (financially) in the U.S.A. Look at "Barron's500" (05.11). Top of the heap includes: Mastercard. (#1). Research In Motion. Western Digital. Oracle. Apple. Google. Microsoft. HP. Fluor. Philip Morris. Jacobs Engineering. Ingersoll-Rand. CVS Caremark. Charles Schwab. Best Buy. Deere. Etc.

BusinessWeek (04.27), tech companies sitting on cash: Cisco, $27 Billion. Apple, $26B. Microsoft, $21B. Google, $16B. IBM, $13B. Intel, $12B. HP, $10B.

TomChirp #3

Obama to double research budget to 3% of GDP—great. No baloney Cyber Command to be birthed—very, very great; very, very overdue.

TomChirp #4

Hospitals in general "stealing" the relatively simple-inexpensive-Excellent VA Hospitals' approach to Electronic Medical Records—hooray! The Big Consultants such as McKesson, are pissed off—hooray! (Wall Street Journal 04.30)

TomChirp #5

"China Far Outpaces U.S. in Building Cleaner Coal-Fired Plants" (page 1, New York Times, 05.11).

Why? Damn it!

TomChirp #6

"The Female Advantage. A New Reason for Businesses to Hire Women: It's Profitable" (Boston Globe, "Ideas" section, 05.03). In a nutshell: "Several studies have linked greater gender diversity in senior posts with financial success." Some studies, from Europe, show that the difference is enormous.

TP: Duh!

TomChirp #7

Stats from Kelley Murray Skoloda's Too Busy to Shop.

Women purchase:

85% all consumer purchases, cars to computers
91% new homes
66% personal computers
92% vacations
80% health care decisions
89% bank accounts
Etc.

Marketing "success"—women's perceptions:

59% of women "feel misunderstood by food marketers"
66% healthcare
74% automotive
84% investment advisors
Etc.

So??????????

TomChirp #8

As part of a new healthcare initiative, a big ad (Financial Times, 05.07) from Philips tells us, in large, veeery large, type: "WHEN IT COMES TO MATTERS OF THE HEART, MEN AND WOMEN DIFFER."

Waaaaaaay to go, Philips!!!

TomChirp #9

The Financial Times' Gillian Tett won "Journalist of the Year 2009" award. I love her financial analyses. Also, her Fool's Gold, about the financial crisis, just published.

TomChirp #10

Oh my God, science about effectiveness may be used in healthcare! What will they think of next!

What works and doesn't work in terms of treatments remains a mystery. (One study claims 97%—a pretty big number—of bypass surgeries unnecessary.) (Take an Aspirin instead!) New York Times (05.07) reports the federal budget includes $1.1 billion in the next few years to study treatment effectiveness. The prestigious New England Journal of Medicine is highly supportive—but Rush Limbaugh calls it socialism, naturally.

Yup, evidence comes to medicine—and the world wobbles on its axis!

Chirp!
(Re chirps, we have an Oriole, gorgeous bird—flies too fast for a pic.)

Guarantee!

Guarantee?
How ridiculous!
But here it comes.

I guarantee that any reader from anywhere can learn something from this book:

Retail Superstars: Inside the 25 Best Independent Stores in America, by retail guru
George Whalin

Guarantee?
Yup!

These are stores that, literally, give new meaning to the word "special." That personify one of my "Top 10 Favorite Quotes," from Jerry Garcia (The Grateful Dead): "You don't want to be merely the best. You want to be the only ones who do what you do."

We start, naturally, in Fairfield, Ohio, home to Jungle Jim's International Market. The adventure in "shoppertainment" begins in the parking lot, and goes on to 1,600 cheeses and, yes, 1,400 varieties of hot sauce—not to mention 12,000 wines priced from the very bottom to $8,000 a bottle; all this is brought to you from 4,000 vendors from around the world. Like virtually all the stores in this book, customers arrive from every corner of the globe.

There's Abt Electronics in Chicago, Zabar's in Manhattan, and Bronner's Christmas Wonderland in Frakenmuth, Michigan—a town of just 5,000 whose 98,000-square-foot "shop" features the likes of 6,000 Christmas ornaments, 50,000 trims, and anything else you can name if it pertains to Christmas.

There's the Ron Jon Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach, Florida.
And Junkman's Daughter in Atlanta, and Smoky Mountain Knife Works in Sevierville, Tennessee.

We finish the tour where we started—in Ohio. This time we visit Hartville Hardware in Hartville, OH.

These stores demonstrate-prove so many things:

You can create a worldwide attraction and thrive as an independent in the Age of the Big Box retailer.
You can do anything.
You can be from anywhere.
You can make any-damn-thing bizarrely-amazingly-stupendously special.
"Customer care" gets a new definition.
"Showmanship" gets a new definition.

If you run a training department ... you can learn from this book.
If you run a sales department of 1 or 101 people ... you can learn from this book.
If you run a purchasing department ... DEDICATED TO INTERNAL CUSTOMER CARE ... you can learn from this book.

You can learn about Special.
You can learn about being "the only ones who do what we do."
You can learn about Leadership.
You can learn about "experience marketing."
You can learn about the irrelevance of Supersized Competitors ... if you are special enough.
You can learn about Sustaining EXCELLENCE.

Inside the 25 Best Independent Stores in America gives new meaning to my trademark phrase:

EXCELLENCE. Always.
If not EXCELLENCE, What?

As I said, perhaps for the first time:

I guarantee that any reader engaged in any activity, who wants to, can learn from this book.

[Note from Cathy: Tom says the fun starts in the parking lot, but I say it starts on the websites of these businesses. Except for the Junkman's Daughter link, every one of the links in this post leads to an exciting website with fantastic images and goods aplenty on offer. And if you want a sword, I know where you can get one. In fact, I almost bought a knife, a basket of goodies, a set of speakers ... ]

100 Ways to Succeed #168:

"Special" Wins!
In Any Circumstance!
(Including the Toughest Environments Dominated By Monster Firms.)

Is your product or service offering (see above post) ...

Special?
So special it takes your and your customers' breath away?

Live the super-amazing-incredible-WOW-only ones who do what we do flavor of Special.
(Or die—professionally—trying.)

Start the Quest for SPECIAL today.
Why not?

Coming To Your Local Theaters.
Or Maybe iPhones?
Or Maybe ...

Erik and Cathy and I and our Enterprise Media colleagues, Stewart Clifford and Dini Coffin, spent two veeeeeery long days doing videos in Stewart's lovely house in Boston's South End. The idea was useful short pieces for use hither, thither, and yon. By the time we wrapped, we’d done about 80, count 'em!, little pieces, each with a complete "micro-story." They're being edited right now.

(NB: There are lots of ways, like a cellphone camera for YouTube sorts of production, we could have proceeded. Perhaps I’m just a "yesterday" sort of guy—but we went with a very world-class camera-and-sound crew.)

We'd love your help! Got any great ideas on the distribution front? To be brutally honest, we wouldn't mind making a buck or two from this, though we also plan some freebie releases at tompeters.com. Let us know ...

(Above, photographer-in-chief Erik Hansen offers a side view of the proceedings as I recount a story. And, below, the punchline.)

The Only Thing You Need to Know

I really hate the following phrase: "the only thing you need to know." Hence, I want to talk to you about ... the only thing you need to know.

The formulation that follows came from a speech I gave in Shanghai a couple of weeks ago. I was part of a program that included consultants, economists, etc. For better or for worse, I stuck to character and began by trashing ... consultants and economists. I said, "In the next several hours you will hear many prescriptions for dealing with today's shaky times—and preparing for China's future. Many of those prescriptions will involve the role of the government in the economy, the sort of help that big firms and smaller firms need. Despite my rather snide remarks, I will in fact find many of the suggestions on the money—figuratively and literally."

I meant every word of it.

But then I added that my role was to simplify—to boldly, and perhaps foolheartedly, assert that there was only One Thing that mattered in the long run to the health of the enterprise—and, indeed, the economy as a whole.

The quality of the work force.
(And, perhaps 1.5, the devotion of the leadership to developing that work force to the utmost extent of its talents and prospective talents.)

I said "there is only one 'winning formula.'"
People who are 100%, everybody, no exceptions, Receptionist to EVP R&D:

Committed.
Engaged.
Growing.
Learning.
Fearless (unfailingly encouraged to try new things).
Respected.
Trusted.
Appreciated.
Independent-minded.
Team focused.
Focused themselves, even when fresh caught, on the growth of others
Passionate about their work, their mates, and their customers.
Informed.
Open (fanatic about sharing).
Caring.
Committed to EXCELLENCE in everything they do.

And, in turn, that demands 100% "servant leaders," to shamelessly steal from Robert Greenleaf, who are 100% devoted—as Priority & Job #1—to developing people, in good times or bad—100% of people—who are:

Committed.
Engaged.
Growing.
Learning.
Fearless (unfailingly encouraged to try new things).
Respected.
Trusted.
Appreciated.
Independent-minded.
Team focused.
Focused themselves, even when fresh caught, on the growth of others
Passionate about their work, their mates, and their customers.
Informed.
Open (fanatic about sharing).
Caring.
Committed to EXCELLENCE in everything they do.

I explained that, in my opinion:

This applies throughout the world—in America and Brazil and Lithuania and Estonia and Korea. And in China, as it pursues a future obviously more and more dependent on incorporating intellectual capital into its economic portfolio (already China bridles at being assigned a role as "the world's workshop").

This applies to 100% of people in the workforce. As in a football team or symphony, there are no "bit players."

This applies in every industry and every pricepoint strategy therein. In Brazil, Magazine Luiza, the country's Wal*Mart, is invariably near the top of the "Best Companies to Work For" list, just as Wegmans, the regional grocer, and the Container Store are at the head of the pack, peers of Google and Amgen, on the American "Best" list.

This applies to companies of all sizes—from microscopic to humongous.

This applies in good times—and especially bad times. Engaged workers and an unwavering Commitment to EXCELLENCE will not make problems in the market evaporate, but they, nonetheless, represent the best chance of weathering the storm and coming out stronger on the back end.

Strategy is important.
Systems are important.
Financing is important.

But this is ... The Only Thing You Need to Know.
I'd bet my life on it.
(I guess I have.)

100 Ways to Succeed #167:

Commit Wholeheartedly to Pursuing
"The Only Thing You Need to Know."

As leader-Servant Leader, devote your career to developing 100% of the people in your charge. You will know that you are succeeding when you can see that they are, or are journeying toward, being:

Committed.
Engaged.
Growing.
Learning.
Fearless (unfailingly encouraged to try new things).
Respected.
Trusted.
Appreciated.
Independent-minded.
Team focused.
Focused themselves, even when fresh caught, on the growth of others
Passionate about their work, their mates, and their customers.
Informed.
Open (fanatic about sharing).
Caring.
Committed to EXCELLENCE in everything they do.

People first.
EXCELLENCE. Always.

Wrong Answer!

I'm returning to Vietnam later this month—for the first time in 41 years. Hence my mind drifts occasionally to the 4-decade-old events that marked the beginning of my professional career.

One rather strange occurrence crossed my mind while driving home to VT from Boston last week.

I was out in the field, deep in the jungle, in fact, building a camp for a U.S. Army Special Forces team. I was choppered back to Danang in a rush for a brief meeting with the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, General Leonard Chapman, who was paying a visit to I Corps, the northern part of South Vietnam, which was under USMC command—more specifically under the command of General Lew Walt.

What the hell was a LTJG (very junior officer) doing visiting with a 4-star general? Simple. My uncle, General H.W. Buse, was USMC Chief of Staff back in D.C., and my aunt had insisted that General Chapman see me in the flesh. (Aunts are like that, even, or especially, at the Mrs. 4-star general level.) (Also, her son, my cousin, was in Vietnam as well—a USMC captain.)

When I got back from the field, covered with mud (it was rainy season), I was sent directly to the Commandant with no time to change into a respectable uniform—a great embarrassment. General Chapman engaged in all of about 15 seconds of chitchat, and having done his duty to my aunt, sent me on my way. As I was literally walking out of his temporary field office, he summoned me back, and said, out of the blue, "Tom, are you taking care of your men?" (I had a little detachment, about 20 guys as I recall, doing the work described before.)

Yup, 40 years plus later, I remember his exact words—which is the point of this Post. I replied to the General, "I'm doing my best, sir." To this day, with a chill going up my spine (no kidding—as I type this), I can see his face darken, and his voice harden, "Mr Peters, General Walt and I and General Buse are not interested in whether or not you are 'doing your best.' We simply expect you to get the job done—and to take care of your sailors. Period. That will be all, Lieutenant."

The line echoes to this day—as you can tell. You are there to "get the job done"—not just-merely "do your best." I recall many years later seeing a Churchill quote that was much the same; more or less this: "It is not enough to do your best or try as hard as you can—you must succeed in doing what is necessary."

I guess it was all this stuff that, about a year ago, caused me to more or less lose it during a Q&A session at a healthcare conference. We were talking about medical errors and patient safety. And people kept saying, "We're understaffed." "This is a 'caring profession'—and everybody cares despite the stress." "We're doing our best with the resources available." "The docs resist this, that, and the other." Etc. Etc. Yup, I lost it, and sang the General Chapman-Winston Churchill song: "It really doesn't matter how much everybody cares, or that you're doing your damnedest—you must get the job done and stop unnecessarily wounding and killing patients." The response gave new meaning to the term "stony silence."

And so the lesson sticks, on this, the 43rd anniversary, of my first "visit" to Vietnam. The lesson sticks, and the voice and demeanor of General Chapman are as clear and commanding and unequivocal as they were four decades ago.

viagra order I'll conclude with a simple "thank you" to the late General Chapman. I think I can say with some certainty that the story of my life would not have unfolded as it has, had the General not made his views on success and failure so succinct and so crystal clear.

100 Ways to Succeed #166:

Do What Is Necessary

"Trying one's best" and "Caring" are better than not trying one's best and/or not caring.
I guess.

Reluctant as I am to use such strong and absolutist language, there is only One Acceptable Standard: Getting done what is necessary to get done.

Proceed accordingly.
And evaluate those in your charge accordingly.

Excellence.
Always.
All You Need to Know.
(More or Less.)

My recent Shanghai seminar went from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (or so), three days running. In fact, as best I can recall, this was the first time I've ever done three straight days, all day, by myself!

(Yes, I slept on the flight home from Shanghai to Boston; at least, I think I did—I don't remember.)

As the last half of day three began, I wanted to summarize—very succinctly—what had gone before. I pulled together 25 slides (attached), making just six points:

Point #1/Aspiration.

I recalled a seminar in Siberia in April 2006. Given the unusual setting, I dug deep into my often neglected packet of Basic Beliefs about Organizations. So I issued a challenge, and have issued it a hundred times since.

At its best (alas, hardly the norm), an organization, any organization can be/should be:

... an emotional, vital, innovative, joyful, creative, entrepreneurial endeavor that elicits maximum concerted human potential in the wholehearted service of others—e.g., Employees, Customers, Suppliers, Communities, Owners, Temporary partners.

My question, as I said, repeated now a hundred times: What else—literally—could the point be of any collective human endeavor, grand or mundane? No, I can't imagine this as the norm on any given day, but I can imagine this as a very real, very pragmatic aspiration. I've discovered that, upon serious reflection, most people agree that this is indeed a pragmatic aspiration—an aspiration worthy of measuring oneself and one's mates against.

This is the point of organization.
This is the point of organizing per se.
Period.

(Right?)

Point #2/Listen.

I have become obsessed with "listening." (About time, some of my friends might add ...) I think it was Dr. Jerome Groopman's book, How Doctors Think, that tipped the balance. Groopman observes that the patient is unequivocally the best source of information about the patient's perceived problem. But to extract useful info the doc must listen to lots of noise along with some signal. Alas, research that the average doc interrupts the patient after 18 seconds! I'd say the average [know-it-all?] boss is in the same sorry boat.

Everything (!!—big word) proceeds from listening—to our spouse, our kids, our friends, strangers along the way (my forte), our students, our employees, our customers, etc. And yet, while we study accounting or history or piano for years and years, we seldom if ever study listening.

Study.
Really study.
Pursue Mastery.
Pursue Excellence.
Become a "professional."

When "six-sigma" quality became the rage, one of the accoutrements was a rash of training programs that allowed one to become a "six-sigma blackbelt." Companies of all sorts and sizes made a big fuss over this. Though it's a little much for me, I nonetheless want to steal shamelessly: I want organizations of every size and shape to start programs aimed at having participants work assiduously to achieve and then maintain "listening blackbelt" status.

Listening, to one and all, intently and constantly, even obsessively, may be/is the greatest of strategic strengths—the greatest of "sustainable competitive advantages."

100% "Listening Blackbelts"!
Or bust!

Point #3/Ask.

Dave Wheeler commented at tompeters.com that the "four most important words" in an organization are:

"What do you think?"

I agree.
Wholeheartedly and unabashedly.

Shouldn't "listening" and "asking" be combined? Perhaps, by some narrow logic. But remember my situation—trying to extract for my Chinese colleagues the most significant points in a 3-day seminar. It's my subjective judgment that The Big Four Words—"What do you think?"—must be singled out, put on their own separate and tall pedestal.

There is no greater honor (!!) that can be bestowed upon a person, peasant or prince, than "What do you think?" "What do you think?" automatically makes me a person of value, whose observations and opinions are of the greatest importance to the functioning of the organization.

Benefits are piled upon benefits! The person routinely asked "What do you think?" starts thinking about what to say when asked "What do you think?"!! This Virtuous Circle of Engagement literally ensures that the quality (breadth and depth) of engagement increases markedly over time.

The idea here—obviously, I assume—stretches beyond the borders of our formal organization. E.g.: "What do you think?" is also World's Best Customer Loyalty Program! The Web is, in fact, teaching us the limitless value of The 3Cs—Continuous Customer Conversations.

Get "Ask" & "Listen" right and you've taken a giant step toward Excellence—the Holy Grail!

Point #4/Fail.

Ask.
Listen.

Act.

"It" is all about attention-recognition-engagement. And action. None of the above, to state the obvious, matters unless something happens. Twenty-seven years ago Bob Waterman and I put "bias for action" at the top of our list of the Eight Basics of Excellence. As the speed of change accelerates exponentially, that notion increases in importance—also exponentially. I've often said that I've learned but one thing in my 40-year professional career: "He/She who tries the most stuff wins."

Well, I mean it.

But it is the corollary to "bias for action" that I singled out to my Shanghai colleagues, the more difficult-to-swallow Fast Failure Imperative that necessarily accompanies rapid learning, adaptation, and improvement. "Fail. Forward. Fast."—that was the advice from a high-tech CEO who attended a seminar of mine years ago. David Kelley, IDEO design: "Fail faster, succeed sooner." And the word/s according to Nobel Laureate (Literature) Samuel Beckett: "Fail. Fail again. Fail better."

My point to my colleagues: "IT IS NOT NEARLY ENOUGH TO 'TOLERATE' FAILURE—ONE MUST CELEBRATE FAILURE."

To move fast, adjust fast, take advantage of the constant dialogue-conversation discussed above ("ask"-"listen"), one must be "trying new stuff"—all the time and at a ferocious pace. Tryin' new stuff means screwing up constantly—then adjusting fast with a new try ("Fail. Fail again. Fail better."). At the heart of the matter—yes, the heart—is the wholesale celebration (CEL-E-BRA-TION!!) of failure. As NYC Mayor/entrepreneur Mike Bloomberg aptly put it: "In business, you reward people for taking risks. When it doesn't work out you promote them—because they were willing to try new things. If people ... tell me they skied all day and never fell down, I tell them to try a different mountain."

Ask.
Listen.
Fail.

And: Succeed.

Point #5/Life Success.

Dave Liniger founded the real estate colossus RE/MAX. He says that putting the customer (home purchaser) first is not the way he looks at things. To have sustaining success with customers his field team must be learning, growing—succeeding. Making that field team a passel of superstars on the march is the principal point of the exercise. Hence he delightfully states of RE/MAX:

"We are a life success company."

Remember my initial challenge to make the organization: ... an emotional, vital, innovative, joyful, creative, entrepreneurial endeavor that elicits maximum concerted human potential in the wholehearted service of others—e.g., Employees, Customers, Suppliers, Communities, Owners, Temporary partners.

That comes, in the end, from a team hellbent for vigor-enthusiasm-growth-learning-service-life success. I'll go further and insist that over the long haul, Service Excellence (and every organization exists only to serve!) cannot be sustained unless those who are called upon to provide it day in and day out are fully engaged in a Quest for Excellence—my words for "life success." (I think, from my contact with him, that Dave L. would gladly sign off on that.)

I'll end this section by repeating an earlier message: Creating "life successes," like listening and asking, goes way beyond our borders. Our goal is an encompassing team striving for collective Excellence—staff, customers, vendors, etc. A great company aims not just to "satisfy" its customers—but to contribute to their individual and collective growth and success—to help its customers achieve Excellence. A great company aims to stretch its vendors in their quest for growth-success-Excellence. Creating "life success" sagas, then, is an inclusive adventure.

Point #6/Excellence.

Anonymous, from tompeters.com:

"Excellence can be obtained if you:

... care more than others think is wise;
... risk more than others think is safe;
... dream more than others think is practical;
... expect more than others think is possible."

Excellence.
Always.
If Not Excellence, What?
If Not Excellence Now, When?

So there you have it, or, rather, there they (my Chinese colleagues) had it/have it. Tom's "Six-step Program, Circa 2009."

100 Ways to Succeed #165:

Excellence.
The "Six-step Program."
Circa 2009.

Tom's Six-step Program:

**Pursue a "non-negotiable" aspiration for growth and greatness that stretches us to the breaking point and perhaps beyond: ... an emotional, vital, innovative, joyful, creative, entrepreneurial endeavor that elicits maximum concerted human potential in the wholehearted service of others—e.g., Employees, Customers, Suppliers, Communities, Owners, Temporary partners.
**Listen like maniacs. Consciously pursue Excellence in Strategic Listening. 100% "Listening Blackbelts." Listening per se is at the Heart of Competitive Advantage.
**Ask and ask and ask again and again and again: "What do you think?" Engage everyone as Rockstar Participant in a Bold Adventure in Personal and Organizational Growth and Excellence.
**Celebrate failure. Yes, damn it, CELEBRATE. Try and fail and adjust and try and fail and adjust, then try and fail and adjust. Repeat. Forever. At the speed of light. To paraphrase my friend Richard Farson: "Whoever makes the most mistakes wins."
**Total and unwavering focus on creating "100% life success sagas" among our staff and customers and vendors and other members of our extended family.
**Excellence. Always. If not Excellence, what? If not Excellence now, when?

[Above: Crabapples arriving!]

Cheers, Jack!

I'll miss Jack Kemp! We became pretty good pals in the late 1980s. Silicon Valley was facing severe competition from Japan, as the car folks had before. And to my dismay, their response, like the car folks', was mostly whining. That is, they turned protectionist—led by such luminaries as Valley icon Bob (Intel) Noyce.

I became, from my perch in Palo Alto, a very loud and visible and annoying voice for free trade in the Valley—and made a friend of rabid freetrader Kemp. (I testified to Congress a few times to the irritation of many of my friends.) Thanks largely to Andy Grove's brave decision to change the playing field, the Valley retreated from the protectionist brink—there'd be no Valley as we know it today if the anti-traders had won; I'm sure of that.

In the midst of it, Bro Kemp and I did this, that, and the other together. Fact is, our official political party designations were opposites—but I loved being around the guy, we had fun with very serious stuff, and we were 100.00% in synch on trade.

[My favorite Kemp memory. I was on the Farm in Vermont—not my primary residence at the time. And the phone rang at dinnertime. This booming voice was on the other end. (Kemp could sound face to face, or on the phone, like the Bills quarterback he once was, barking signals in front of 50,000 people.) "Peters, damn it, you're harder to get hold of than George Bush (JK was Mr Bush I's HUD secretary at the time). I need you to get your butt down to D.C. ..." Needless to say, I scurried to Washington a couple of days later for some meeting or other on the Hill with Pals of Jack.]

100 Ways to Succeed #162:

Process > Outcome.
Happy Staff, Happy Customers.
Kindness Is Free!
(Kindness SAVES $$$$.)

You'd think that "getting well" was the heart of the matter when it comes to evaluating a hospital stay.

Right?

Wrong!

In one giant survey, Press Ganey Associates queried 139,380 former patients at 225 hospitals on "patient satisfaction." After the data were collected, they teased out the 15 most powerful determinants of said Patient Satisfaction.

Are you ready?

None.
N-O-N-E.
Zero.
Z-E-R-O
Zilch.
Zip.
Nada.

Not a single one of the Top 15 sources of patient satisfaction had to do with the patient's health outcome. All 15, in effect, were related to the quality of the patient's interactions with hospital staff—and employee satisfaction among staff members.

The study is reported in Putting Patients First, by Susan Frampton, Laura Gilpin, and Patrick Charmel. The authors are leaders at Griffin Hospital in Derby CT. Year after year it ranks near the top (Top 10 on several occasions) of Fortune magazine's Best Companies to Work For list—one of the rare, and often the only, health care institution to do so. (It also tops the charts on damn near every other measure you can name from patient safety to financial viability. The so-called Planetree Alliance, run out of Griffin, is the epicenter of the "patient-centric care" movement.)

The authors use the Press Ganey data as the jumping-off point for discussing the process and tenets that guide their work with staff and patients at Griffin:

"There is a misconception that supportive interactions require more staff or more time and are therefore more costly. Although labor costs are a substantial part of any hospital budget, the interactions themselves add nothing to the budget.

"Kindness is free.

"Listening to patients or answering their questions costs nothing. It could be argued that negative interactions—alienating patients, being unresponsive to their needs, or limiting their sense of control—can be very costly. ... Angry, frustrated, or frightened patients may be combative, withdrawn, and less cooperative—requiring far more time than it would have taken to interact with them initially in a positive way."

The Big Lessons here—and they are BIG—are several:

(1) Process "beats" outcome in evaluating an "experience"—even one as apparently "outcome sensitive" as a hospital stay. The positive quality of staff interactions were more memorable than whether or not the health problem was fixed.
(2) Happy staff, happy customers. Want to "put the customer first"? Put the staff "more first"!
(3) Quality is free—and then some. We learned (well, most of us learned) when the "quality movement" dominated our consciousness that not only was quality free—but doing the quality thing right actually reduced costs, often dramatically.

100 Ways to Succeed #162A:

Kindness Is Free!

And, to repeat (and what could be more worth repeating?) ...

(4) Kindness is free!!!

100 Ways to Succeed #162B:

The Big Four!

Kindness is free!
Thoughtfulness in all we do!
Put customers first by putting staff "more first"!
Watch your cash balance-market share soar!

100 Ways to Succeed #163:

"Being There" for Others

Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People) once famously said, perhaps all you need to know to get ahead, in 29 words: "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."

Mr Carnegie's observation-commandment came to mind when a good friend asked me to contribute to a compilation of "best advice I ever got" stories he was putting together. I thought for a long time about his "simple" request. And here's where I ended up:

Could attending a funeral count as "best piece of advice" I ever got? For me, yes.

My Grandfather Owen Snow (my Mom's side) ran a little country store in Wicomico Church, Virginia, in a part of the state called the "Northern Neck." As you might expect, we grandkids loved hanging out in the store—there were still barrels of this and that back in the late '40s and even the '50s. Sometimes Grampa Owen would let us measure something out—and he would turn tyrant if we ever shorted someone by even a fraction of an ounce. He'd always pile a little something extra into a can of 10-penny nails, or whatever. One also noticed, to the extent that a kid could, that he always took his time with people, listened to their stories, and treated them with the utmost respect.

I was in the Navy in Port Hueneme, California, when Grampa Owen passed away. We were days from a deployment to Danang, Vietnam, but my commanding officer didn't hesitate for a second in giving me four days' leave, even though I was the so-called Embarkation Officer—there's a lesson for another day in that, too. Anyway, I made it to Wicomico Church in plenty of time for the service. Did I tell you it was a truly pipsqueak town, with, I'd guess, a population of 400 or 500, though my memory is cloudy? The roads were still pretty primitive, and it'd been dry for a while. Around 8 a.m., the service was at 10, the dust started to stir. In short order, it was a veritable dust storm. The upshot of all this is that over 1,000 people showed up. I talked to several of them, whom I didn't know. It seemed as if Grampa Owen had lent each and every one a helping hand at one time or another—good advice, a call to someone somewhere who might help them out, an extended period of credit, a few bucks out of his pocket, whatever, and whatever.

The "lesson" that funeral taught me was the power of decency and thoughtfulness. It wasn't that my Mom and Dad hadn't done a lot of that, but this was the Ultimate Technicolor Illustration. In the most unassuming way, Grandpa Owen had "been there" for an entire community and beyond—and a great dust storm of people, some, who'd moved, from 100 miles away, had come to say one last thanks. If there isn't a crystal-clear message, and, de facto, advice in that, I don't know where you'd find it.

To make the obvious more obvious, if necessary: How do you (me!) stack up on The Great "Being There" Exam? It's a "life question"—and a "business-career success question" with few, if any, peers.

100 Ways to Succeed #164:

Excellence. Always.
If Not Excellence, What?
If Not Excellence Now, When?

I'm here because of Excellence.
That is, back in 1982 I co-wrote a book called In Search of Excellence.
A lot of people were kind enough to buy it.
And I've been "talking Excellence" for the subsequent 27 years.

(NB: Never write the word "Excellence" without capitalizing the "E." This I command—not that I have the power to do so.)

I love "Excellence"—and not just because it paid for the farm I bought in Vermont in 1984.

I love EXCELLENCE—truth is, I think you should capitalize all the letters—because Excellence is soooooo Cool. (Cap "C.")

It's so cool.
It's so heartening.
It's so soaring & inspiring.
It's so worth getting out of bed for.
(Even in the winter in Vermont.)
It's so healthy.
It's so helpful to others.
(The striving more than the arriving.)
It's so good for your morale—even on the shittiest of days.
(Especially on the shittiest of days.)

Book tour driver Bill Young says:

"Strive for excellence. Ignore success."

TP: Amen. (Love it!)

Anon.* says:

"Excellence can be obtained if you:

... care more than others think is wise;
... risk more than others think is safe;
... dream more than others think is practical;
... expect more than others think is possible."

(*Posted by K. Sriram @ tompeters.com.)

TP: Amen. (Love it!)

Asked how long it took to achieve Excellence, IBM's legendary boss Tom Watson is said to have answered more or less as follows: "A minute. You 'achieve' Excellence* by promising yourself right now that you'll never again knowingly do anything that's not Excellent—regardless of any pressure to do otherwise by any boss or situation."

(*I don't really know whether or not Watson insisted on the Cap "E"—from what I know, I wouldn't be surprised. I do know he loved the word.)

TP: Amen. (Love it!)

Regardless of the location (China, Lithuania, Miami) or industry (health care, fast food), I title all of my presentations:

Excellence. Always.
If Not Excellence, What?
If Not Excellence Now, When?

I hate the word "motivation"—surely I've told you that before.
I hate it because the idea of me "motivating" you is so outrageous—and arrogant.
To state the obvious, only you can motivate you.
What I can do (as boss or even "guru") is to Paint Portraits of Excellence.
And then we can imagine ourselves in those portraits—in Pursuit of Excellence.
"Pursuit": Excellence is not a "goal"—it's the way we live (remember Mr Watson of IBM).

Excellence. Always.
If Not Excellence, What?
If Not Excellence Now, When?

100 Ways to Succeed #164A:

Excellence In (Today's) Tough Times.
Now.
More Than Ever.

Excellence is always worth its weight in gold.
If possible, Excellence is worth even more than its weight in gold in tough times.

In tough times, the pressure is such that there is often a temptation to cut corners.
Think "Excellence."
Don't cut the corner/s.

In tough times, your morale is often shot, and it's hard to get out of bed.
Think Excellence.
Set the alarm a half-hour earlier than usual.

In tough times, it's really tough to be a boss.
Think Excellence.
It is tough to be a boss in tough times—but tough times are the Ultimate Test for you and your team—EXCELLENCE is a more worthy aspiration than ever before.

Excellence. Always.
If Not Excellence, What?
If Not Excellence Now, When?

[Above, the Farm, with Spring finally arriving. Below, close-up of the sort of brambles that stand between me and Excellence!]

100 Ways to Succeed #159:

Create a “Cathedral”!
(If Not, What?)

In an important [as far as I was concerned] keynote conference speech honoring the work of Peter Drucker, I let my imagination soar, and out popped, among other things,

Organizations should be ...

... no less than Cathedrals in which the full and awesome power of the Imagination and Spirit and native Entrepreneurial flair of diverse individuals is unleashed in passionate pursuit of ... Excellence.

"Cathedral/s" is a Big Word. In fact, I don't mean it in a religious way—except in that I see all organizations as driven by an unstinting commitment to members' growth.

A classroom in a primary school should ... obviously ... be such a Cathedral. But so, too, an accounting or training department. Organizations must effectively serve their external customers to survive, let alone thrive. But my line-of-logic is, at least to me, crystal clear and admits no alternatives: The odds of the external customer being served effectively is a direct function of such service being provided by those [employees] who are engaged in a vigorous Quest for Growth and Excellence.

I don't ask you to "buy my act." I do ask you to think about it—and the consequences (enormous!) thereof.

Is, in fact, your unit of any size ...

"... no less than a Cathedral in which the full and awesome power of the Imagination and Spirit and native Entrepreneurial flair of diverse individuals is unleashed in passionate pursuit of ... Excellence"?

And if it is not, or if that is not the am, then tell me what the alternative is. Please.

Cathedral.
Imagination.
Spirit.
Entrepreneurial flair.
Diverse.
Passion.
Excellence.

Or???????

100 Ways to Succeed #160:

Show Me "The Money"!

Let us assume that you are the boss of a 63-person IS/IT department, or a 111-person engineering department, or a 37-person hotel housekeeping department. Let us further assume that you buy into my idea of organization-as-Cathedral-devoted-to-human development.

And let's also assume that I'm your boss.
And let’s assume we are commencing my annual review of your performance.

Want to guess my first and primary question, to which we will dedicate 50% of the entire review?

Here it is:

Please describe for me in exacting detail the top 5 examples of growth on the part of your staff. Among other things, on a scale of 1 to 10, describe where every person who works for you was at the beginning of the year (Mary was a high-potential "5"), and where they are at the end (Mary is a clear "7").

(If I am interviewing outsiders for a VP slot, I'll ask, "Please tell me in some detail the best 5 examples of people you 'grew' in your current job. In the job before that." Again, we will spend about 50% of the interview on this question, or some close kin.)

The point is, if you subscribe to the "cathedral model" of organization-human development, then individual Adventures in Growth are at the top of your accomplishments list.

(Incidentally, I'll also ask you, again concerning named individuals, about the Brick Wall case of no progress or even regression.)

You are the boss.
You are in the human development "business." So "show me the money"—the best cases of your success and the details of your approach.

100 Ways to Succeed #160A:

Right Now!
As in ...
Now!

Stop!
Right now!
(I was too easy on you before!)

Please list.
Right now!
The 5 people!
Whose development you have contributed to!
Directly!
And Profoundly!
In the last 24 months!

Are.
You.
Happy.
With the list?
Happy with yourself ...
As a "People Developer"?

If "Yes" ...
Great!
Congrats!

If "No" ...
What.
Precisely.
Do you plan to do about it?
Starting Monday?

100 Ways to Succeed #161:

Make It #1!
Every Job!
(Every = Every!)

"I am a dispenser of enthusiasm"—Ben Zander, renowned symphony conductor and "management guru"

"Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm."—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Axiom: Enthusiasm is the sine qua non of success ... at anything. buy viagra australia generic

Hence, I command:

The Very First Item on EVERY job criteria list shall hereinafter be:

"Enthusiast."

Every.
Job.
Enthusiast.
First.
Period.