An Amateur's View of Social Media
Circa May 2010
Disorganized Musings

On the evening of May 26, I made my first "presentation" (an informal talk) on social media. The affair, called "Sweets & Tweets," was held in Georgetown and hosted by corporate social media consultant Debbie Weil. I participate in social media somewhat myself, but in no way, shape, or form am an expert. Moreover, I did not spend an enormous amount of time preparing—the talk was intended to be "off the cuff." But with my obsessive penchant for lists (ah, engineers), I did jot a few things down which I shall simply call "musings from an incredibly old guy and unadulterated amateur" on social media:

1. Social media is not new. SM writ large is LITERALLY what makes us human!!!! Ape brains grew to accommodate socializing skills; aborigines and "songlines;" people trade refrigerators in for radios; etc.


2. But "modern" social media does change everything: Matt Ridley's new Rational Optimism: How Prosperity Evolves; prosperity (more or less in its entirety) comes from trading-connections (leads to inventions, econ growth); today's SM is wildly accelerating connections (crowdsourcing, etc., etc.)


3. FYI: SM changed my life. Blogging turned out to be the best marketing tool ever—based on giving away "everything"/90% of intellectual capital, etc. And Twitter caught me totally by surprise—my compulsion for, and emerging benefits of.


4. I do SM for ONE reason: fun! (Fun makes it loose, social, inclusive—and hence personal and professional ties grow.)


5. SM does not relationships make. Part of the game, to be sure, and "intimate" (professional) ties can arise. But, at least for now, pubs, dinners, clubs, bars, body language are imperative.


6. SM is an end in itself. We are simply discovering new ways of interacting—which is, as noted, "everything."


7. SM is not an end in itself. For me, Steve Jobs, etc. For most of us there's gotta be a great there there: iPad, iPhone, BMW, Cirque du Soleil, speeches (for me).


8. It appears that brand new organizational forms are arising—"emergent leadership" at Cisco, etc. The nature of implementation of pretty much everything is changing.


9. Da basics are the basics, always were, always will be. "Thank you." Decency. Thoughtfulness. Integrity. Etc.


10. Beware "sexy." Napoleon: The simple is the best, and most failure (on the battlefield) comes from generals trying to be "clever."


11. SM is the ultimate EXPERIMENTAL medium ever. Change. Adjust. Fail. Try again. And again. (On large scale, Google's the master.)


12. Beware of learning too much from others. Michael Schrage: innovation from "serious play." Gotta try your own combinations, not copy others.


13. Beware hanging out with too many social media peers. Hyping each other and getting caught up in "SM is all there is" is a deadly sin!


14. Consider differences: Women and men process differently, socialize differently. (Women around the world are the biggest market, taking over in general, especially among the young/youngish. In developed countries, older/old folks are the most incredible market (size, $$$) in history—and old are surprisingly vigorous SM/Internet users.


15. Consider differences: Most businesses are small businesses doing "ordinary" things—how can we help them?


16. Bonus/redux: This is a hoot! Enjoy!

Memorial Day 2010

What a great time to be in Washington D.C. (Wednesday, Thursday.) We scream and shout and hoot and holler, but the magical American experiment in self-rule continues on. Washington is our Capitol, and a reminder, through its monuments and beauty and bustle, of our nation's specialness, warts and all. (The warts are as much of it as are the glorious bits.)

As almost always when in D.C., I make a detour to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. Our sustaining democracy has not come inexpensively, from Concord to Kandahar. Monday, called Memorial Day, is the day we set aside—and have been setting aside since the late 1860s—to honor those who fought for American freedom. We will have our parades and hot dogs, but it is also a somber occasion to be honored by prayer and silence, too.

I always am found wearing a baseball cap. And the last few days, for no particular reason, I've been wearing my Rosie the Riveter cap. The sacrifice of American lives helped win World War II, but American tools and armaments were at least as important. And in our nation, Rosies were as important as Privates and Lieutenants in the Army.

So lets give thanks to our soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines, but also to those who have given them the tools to prevail. And, also, guide your prayers to the families who have most recently lost sons and daughters and husbands and wives and nephews and nieces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

(Above and below and center, the Vietnam wall.)

New Video: Tom Talks About Excellent Organizations as Cathedrals

In this latest video in The Little BIG Things series, Tom gives his definition of excellent organizations. He says that they should be "no less than cathedrals."

You can watch the video here. [Time: 2 minutes, 17 seconds]

[Or, get a PDF transcript of the video's content: Organizations as Cathedrals.]

Also, you might like to try these other titles:
Strategies: Diversity Wins
Brand You: First Impressions
Strategies: First-line Supervisors
Servant Leadership

Cupcakes Revisited

Last night Tom had a terrific time speaking to a crowd of 60 packed into a cupcake salon as part of Debbie Weil's Sweets & Tweets events in Washington, DC. To see what people had to say about the event, you can follow their live tweets using the hashtag #sweetevent, or watch a video interview with Tom and Debbie.

It's All About the Relationships!
Duh!

Sebastian Junger, best known for The Perfect Storm, now gives us War, based on harrowing months in which he was embedded in an American platoon in Afghanistan. Consider this, from the Economist review:

"Mr Junger ... is in awe of his fellows' fighting skills and acceptance of, sometimes, appalling danger. ... The main reason, Mr Junger observes and numerous studies have confirmed, is love. The Americans in the Korengal, heroes by the standards of any warrior culture, are not especially religious or patriotic. They show little interest in the war overall or allegiance to the army at large. ... Rather, with passionate intensity, they fight for each other. 'What the Army sociologists, with their clipboards and their questions and their meta-analyses slowly came to understand was that courage was love,' Mr Junger writes. 'In war, neither could exist without the other.'"

I believe these findings go back at least to sociological studies in the U.S. Army in World War II. That is, it is a commonplace. In the context of this Blog and its aims and prejudices, it is one more, perhaps the ultimate, confirmation of ... RELATIONSHIPS ARE EVERYTHING!

Self-knowledge Reigns!
Every Interaction Unique!
Their Eyes, Not Yours!

I happened across a New York Times interview, from April 10, of Andrew Cosslett, CEO Continental Hotels Group. I was particularly taken by the following two quotes from Cosslett, as he explained his success:

"I think having a sense of self-awareness is very important, like how you impact each of the people you're with individually. ...

"The whole thing about staying alive on a rugby field is about reliance on the guys around you. You need to gel them as a team, but each one responds individually. So it's about dealing with them on their terms, not yours. I'm very sensitive to how people are feeling at any given moment."

The powerful notions, for me, are:

(1) "how you impact each of the people you're with"
(2) "sensitive to how people are feeling at any given moment"
(3) "dealing with them on their terms, not yours"

Many of the top leadership authorities, such as Warren Bennis and Marshall Goldsmith, have long put self-knowledge at the top of their lists of leaders' success traits. Fact is, research shows, the large majority of us are downright lousy judges of how we come across. Working on this self-knowledge is a big project, not to be taken lightly.

Major league baseball consists of a whopping 162 games in the regular season. To listen to the best managers, they field 162 different teams, depending on where the heads and hearts of their players are on any given day. The work year consists of about 250 "games"—and, indeed, each one differs from the one before and the next one to come. Conscious awareness of "where the heads are at" of our 25 colleagues on the project team on 25 May 2010 is of paramount importance to the leader; again, evidence suggests that many of us are found wanting on this score.

Finally is the paramount idea of "their terms, not yours." It is a commonplace, often ignored, that we deal with the world as seen through our own eyes, leaden with our feelings of the moment; and often are oblivious to the trials and tribulations of "the other"—alas, this seems to especially be the case with spouses, and for males. Seeing the world through the other's eyes does not in any way mean being a patsy, as so many seem to assume. It is possible to be just as tough, when necessary, looking through the other guy's spectacles. In fact, it can readily be argued that "being tough" (if necessary) is more effective when looking through the other's lenses; that is, many/most acts of toughness backfire precisely because they fail to account for the mental state of the other person.

All three of these ideas are near the core of effective leadership. And none of the three is easy to take aboard, let alone master. Yet it is not a stretch to say that success or failure on these three dimensions is the key to success or failure as a leader.

Thank you, Mr Cosslett!

Cool Friend #148: Ed Schein

When people need help, they often can't articulate exactly what it is they need. Ed Schein's book, Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help, Understanding Effective Dynamics in One-to-One, Group and Organizational Relationships, offers practical strategies for determining what kind of help is desired. Ed is Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus at MIT, and he's done a great deal of writing and consulting on the subject of culture change. In the new Cool Friends interview, Ed talks with Erik Hansen about how to offer the most effective help. If you call yourself a consultant, I'd call this interview essential reading, and this book, a highly recommended purchase.

The One-third Rule:
And You?

From No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller, by Harry Markopolos (the Madoff whistleblower):

"I had established the one-third rule: For every three hours you spend at work you have to spend at least one hour outside the office on professional development. That might mean reading material that might improve your life, but more likely it meant social networking [TP: this from a diehard quant!!!]. I encouraged Neil to take advantage of the pub culture in Boston, to go to professional association meetings, and to go to dinners."

I love this!
How are you doing on "the one-third rule"?

NB: While I believe that emerging "social media" is incredibly powerful, there is something about a pub.

R.O.I.R.

I call it "Return On Investment in Relationships." It outstrips standard "ROI" by a mile in the long term—and, for that matter, the short term.

Here's a take on R.O.I.R. from Harry Markopolos, author of No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller:

"The financial industry is a business of contacts and relationships. No one ever buys a product and says, 'That product is the sexiest thing I've ever seen. I don't care who's selling it.' Generally people do business with people they trust and like, or people who are recommended by someone they trust."

This is not news.
But it always bears repeating.

So: Over the weekend, consider in detail your R.O.I.R. strategy for next week, the next month, maybe the rest of the year. This is an idea that deserves careful and continuous thought, not a catch-as-catch-can attitude. You'd work for months or years on a plan for a new bridge. Well, R.O.I.R. is your "bridge to success."

NB: Markopolos is the quintessential "quant"; i.e., this is a geek pushing relationship power, not a used car salesman.

(Above: Ice-tea season. Fresh mint.)

Tom & Cupcakes in DC

Cool Friend Debbie Weil is hosting a Sweets and Tweets event featuring Tom on Wednesday, May 26 at 8pm. If you're in the Washington, D.C. area next week, stop by and chat with Tom while getting a sugar rush.

21st Century Must Read:
Matt Ridley's Latest & Greatest

Epigraph from Matt Ridley's new and magisterial The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves:

"This division of labor, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual, of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the prosperity to truck, barter, exchange one thing for another."—Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

This is the essence of Smith's work, and the singular explanation of innovation. Innovation is driven by trading. Period. It is a singularly human trait, the origins of which are tens of thousands of years.

Of course our new tools, DARPANet, the Web, and more recently Social Media, are re-writing Smith's "slow and gradual."

It's not that you will necessarily learn anything "new" from this book, but you cannot help but learn a staggering amount about the innovation process among humans. To me, that learning is of the utmost practical value.

NB1: F.A. Hayek's felicitous phrase for "all this" is "spontaneous discovery process;" the key word is "spontaneous."

NB2: My longtime "bedrock"/"only certain belief" is: "He who tries the most stuff wins"/"Screw around vigorously"/"Ready. FIRE. Aim." I am now ready to revise it to: "He who makes the most oddball connections and tries the most stuff wins."

NB3: One of my five greatest literary indulgences ever is a 1st edition of The Wealth of Nations.

(Above: Susan and I move "up the hill" to our cottage/former "sap house" [where maple sap was boiled to produce syrup] for the summer, from about May 1 to October 10. Below: View of our "upper pond" from front door of said sap house—this morning at 6:30 a.m.)

Audio Added: Hear Tom Read The Little BIG Things

The latest additions to the audio version of The Little BIG Things, posted free at tompeters.com make up the section of the book called "Attitude." Tom says that "... no one can rob you of your attitude. It's all yours to put on parade." You can find items 37, 38, 39, and 40 if you scroll down in the audio player on the book page, or you can use these links:

Attitude

#37. Put the "Eye-Sparkle Factor" on Your Menu.
#38. Pleasant, Caring, Engaged—at 6 A.M.!
#39. Hire "Cheerful"—Or: That Damned AV Guy!
#40. Which "Flag" Are You Waving?

Video: More on Brand You

Here's the latest video of Tom expounding on The Little BIG Things before starting work on the book. All the seeds of the 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence are in this video series, though the text of the book is different from what you'll find here, because Tom edited about 5 (or 10) times. In this video, Tom explains that taking control of your own career is not an option, but a must.

You can watch the video here. [Time: 3 minutes, 8 seconds]

[Or, get a PDF transcript of the video's content: More on Brand You.]

The 90% (Bullshit) Factor

A Tweet that showed up yesterday mused that about 90% of statistics are made up. I laughed, but it's probably about right. Well, not made up, exactly, but highly and selectively doctored.

Reading the Tweet coincided with a book purging project which led me to pick up the well received 1982 book, Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science, by two prominent science journalists, William Broad and Nicholas Wade. It is at once entertaining and serious. Along the way, the work of the likes of Galileo, Newton, the chemist John Dalton and American physics Nobelist Robert Millikan are raked over the coals. Data that's too good to be true, experiments that after many efforts could not be replicated by even the best scientists, simple fudge factors applied with abandon, etc.

And then I tripped over my all-time favorite, which I used to use in seminars, when discussing the real (messy) world of science and innovation. The Austrian monk Gregor Mendel is widely acclaimed as the "father of modern genetics." But he is also a poster child for questionable data. Though he has his defenders, one detractor wrote a brief essay, "Peas on Earth," that appeared in a professional journal:

"In the beginning there was Mendel, thinking his lonely thoughts alone. And he said: 'Let there be peas,' and there were peas and that was good. And he put the peas in the garden saying unto them 'Increase and multiply, segregate and assort yourself independently,' and they did and it was good. And now it came to pass that when Mendel gathered up his peas, he divided them into round and wrinkled, and called the round 'dominant' and the wrinkled 'recessive,' and it was good. But now Mendel saw that there were 450 round peas and 102 wrinkled ones; this was not good. For the law stateth that there should be only 3 round for every wrinkled. And Mendel said unto himself 'Gott in Himmel, an enemy has done this, he has sown bad peas in my garden under the cover of night.' And Mendel smote the table in righteous wrath, saying 'Depart from me, you cursed and evil peas, into the outer darkness where you shalt be devoured by rats and mice,' and lo it was done and there remained 300 round peas and 100 wrinkled peas, and it was good. It was very, very good. And Mendel published."

Love it!

Maybe one of the good side effects of the Web is that the proliferation (tsunami) of absurd data (a/k/a utter bullshit) will lead to a general increase in skepticism. Very few things are what they seem, regardless of their imprimatur (think of Wall Street and its battalions of MIT-Stanford-Harvard-Chicago PhD mathematicians). The caution light should be permanently yellow.

(NB1: The book is also replete with instructive sagas like that of Ignaz Semmelweis. With childbed [puerperal] fever claiming up to 30 percent of mothers' lives in even the best European maternity hospitals, Semmelweis was able to virtually eliminate it in his own clinic simply by having doctors wash their hands in a chlorine solution before examinations and procedures. Alas, Semmelweis had an all-time low EQ, and was abrasive beyond measure; moreover, at a volatile time, his political views were on the fringe. Hence his work was ignored out of hand, and tens of thousands of lives were unnecessarily lost over the following three decades—Semmelweis died in restraints in a mental institution in 1865. Once more we observe that science in the real world strays from "just the facts, ma'am" more often than not—and personal style almost always matters more than one would imagine.)

(NB2: Another book I grabbed was The War of the World, by the renowned British historian Niall Ferguson. It recounts in all too vivid detail the unmatched human violence of the better forgotten 20th century. On the "true facts" dimension, Ferguson at one point calls into question the sacred notion that a few brave Spitfire pilots held off the German horde. There is no disputing or diminishing the pilots' remarkable bravery, yet Ferguson points out that at the beginning of the Battle of Britain the RAF had more fighter aircraft and many more trained pilots than the Germans, and was out-producing the Germans in terms of new aircraft by a ratio of about 3 to 1. Britain's estimates of German pilot strength were off by a factor of 7, Ferguson reports. Um, so much for statistical accuracy; and, hey, nobody ever accused my all-time hero Churchill of being less than a great actor.)

When the Yoghurt Hits
the Fan ...

When the yoghurt hits the fan, in corporations or the public sector, the response is invariably to centralize. Which, of course, makes things worse. I have watched this process proceed mercilessly for 40 years.

An Op-ed in yesterday's New York Times by Ross Douthat captured the phenomenon brilliantly, referencing in particular the financial crisis:

"Once a system grows sufficiently complex, it doesn't matter how badly our best and brightest foul things up. Every crisis increases their authority, because they seem to be the only ones who understand the system well enough to fix it. But their fixes tend to make the system even more complex and centralized, and more vulnerable to the next national-security surprise, the next natural disaster, the next economic crisis."

Amen.

Woe Betide

I have been shaped morally as well as professionally as an adult by the institutions I served immediately after graduation from university. Of the United States Navy, in which I served in the late 1960s, I retain nothing short of reverential respect. Of McKinsey & Co., following the Jeff Skilling/Enron fiasco and the likely involvement of very senior officers with the Galleon insider trading case, I am in true despair; given an apparently reckless emphasis on growth, it appears to no longer be the institution that drummed integrity and professionalism into my soul in the 1970s.

The Job Hunting Paradox

A tweet I came across argued that job hunters (a lot of us these days) needed to: (1) have a good story, (2) dazzle with your energy, and (3) know the company.

There's nothing wrong with that.
And everything wrong with that.

Pro-action is a (very) good thing. So I've argued for years. On the other hand, I believe that there is no force more powerful than effective listening. And the three (fine) factors enumerated above implicitly suggest that job hunters are always on the attack.

A good story is great.
BUT IT NEEDS TO BE THE RIGHT STORY FOR THE RECRUITER.

Dazzling with energy is fine.
BUT BEWARE THE FINE LINE BETWEEN VIGOR AND AIMLESS FRENZY.

Knowing the company is imperative.
BUT KNOWING THE COMPANY CAN DEGENERATE INTO A RECITATION OF STATISTICS ... RATHER THAN AN APPRECIATION OF THE COMPANY'S CULTURE.

I am hardly arguing for applicant-as-shrinking violet. But I am arguing that the attentive listener, listener between the lines in particular, has an advantage that is priceless. That is, job hunting is a paradox. One must exhibit equal adeptness at talking and listening—but maybe with a nod to the latter.

Remember that old one-liner about God giving us one mouth, but TWO ears. Atheist or devout believer, keep that in mind at all times!

Leo's Lesson.
(And Ken Kesey's.)

"Hermann Hesse's story, Journey to the East, tells of a band of men, each having his own goal, on a mythical journey to the East. With them is the servant Leo, who does their menial chores, sustains them with his spirit and his song, and, by the quality of his presence, lifts them above what they otherwise would be. All goes well until Leo disappears. Then the group falls into disarray and the journey finally is abandoned. They cannot make it without the servant Leo."

It was this story, and there obviously is a lot more to it, that triggered Robert Greenleaf's adventure as the prophet of "servant leadership."

I spent a fruitful weekend, amidst Vermont's luscious Spring, re-reading The Servant-Leader Within, by Robert Greenleaf (edited by Hamilton Beazley, Julie Beggs, and Larry Spears). I was reminded anew of the power of the idea.

Here are a few of the highlights for me, in no particular order:

*The leader is servant—and is served. That is, the effective leader helps others and learns how to receive help in her or his own journey.

*The servant leader's Final Exam: "Do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?"

*"True leadership emerges from those whose primary motivation is a deep desire to help others."

*The servant leader's premier trait is ... LISTENING. E.g.: "a deep commitment to listening intently to others," "seeks to identify the will of a group and helps clarify that will," "listens receptively to what is being said (and not said!)." "Listening is much more than just keeping quiet. Listening begins with attention and the search for understanding. ..."

*Ken Kesey knew! Greenleaf delightfully acknowledges that Hesse's fiction is not the only clue to servant leadership. He also cites Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. "Big Nurse" is "strong, able, dedicated, dominating, authority ridden, manipulative, exploitive." MacMurphy, on the other hand: "The net effect of his influence is to build people up and make both patients and the doctor in charge of the ward grow bigger, stronger, healthier." (Greenleaf acknowledges that MacMurphy dies for his troubles—as, of course, did Gandhi and King and others. Serving with heart and soul is no walk in the park!)

Servant Leadership
From The Little BIG Things

My take:

Our goal is to serve our customers brilliantly and profitably over the long haul.

Serving our customers brilliantly and profitably over the long haul is a product of brilliantly serving, over the long haul, the people who serve the customer.

Hence, our job as leaders—the alpha and the omega and everything in between—is abetting the sustained growth and success and engagement and enthusiasm and commitment to Excellence of those, one at a time, who directly or indirectly serve the ultimate customer.

We—leaders of every stripe—are in the "Human Growth and Development and Success and Aspiration to Excellence Business."

"We" [leaders] only grow when "they" [each and every one of our colleagues] are growing.

"We" [leaders] only succeed when "they" [each and every one of our colleagues] are succeeding.

"We" [leaders] only energetically march toward Excellence when "they" [each and every one of our colleagues] are energetically marching toward Excellence.

Period.

(Above: Spring GREEN/VT. Below: Baby chicks settling in.)

Comments Repaired

Our commenting system is now back up and running. Again, apologies to anyone who attempted to comment but was unable to. Looking forward to hearing what you think of Tom's blog posts from earlier this week.

TLBT Video #23: You Are Your Story

Gandhi says that your life is your message. In the latest addition to The Little BIG Things video series, Tom says that your brand is your story.

You can click on the title to watch the video, Brand You: You Are Your Story (2 minutes, 27 seconds), or download a PDF transcript.

Comments Trouble

We're experiencing some technical difficulties with our commenting system. Huge apologies to anyone who has tried to comment but has been unable to. We'll let you know when it's back up and functioning. If you have something that you just can't wait to say to Tom, feel free to use Twitter, or email him at Tom at tompeters.com. Thanks, and sorry.

Jim Warren's Message!
And You?

I'm a lucky guy. Over the years, lots of people have said lots of nice things to me.

But few can top Jim Warren.

Who's he?

No idea.

Jim Warren left a phone message.

I guess I mentioned that I live in Tinmouth, VT somewhere in The Little BIG Things.

Jim W was in O'Hare.

Guess he used directory assistance or some app or another.

I'm listed in the phone book.

He called and left a message on our home phone answering machine.

He gushed and gushed about TLBT.

Wow!

There's a message or three or seven in Jim W's message:

1. One never gets tired of positive feedback/appreciation/recognition. (More precisely, "Thank yous.")


2. Spontaneous Acts of Thoughtfulness are Mighty Love Bombs.


3. SATs are MLBs that can lead to stratospheric profitability.


4. SATs are at the Heart of repeat business.


5. I'll [literally] remember Jim Warren, "the O'Hare guy," until my last breath.


6. I'll talk about Jim Warren until my last speech.


7. The fact that JW went to the effort (a) to call, (b) to call from the airport, (c) to go to the trouble of finding me adds multiplicative power to the act.

So:

1. When was the last time you "did a Jim Warren"?


2. Will you promise me to "Do a Jim Warren" at least once today, at least three times this week?


3. Will you use/urge "Jim Warren-ism" at your next ops meeting?


4. Will you measure your "Jim Warren-isms"?


5. Will you remember to tell your folks that the likes of me will remember Jim Warren approximately forever?


6. Will you tell your folks that this is TMALBTs? (The Mother of All Little BIG Things.)

NB1: Jim ... THANK YOU.

NB2: JW was not at all sure he'd gotten the "real me." Well, Bubba, you did!!!

The Awesome Act of Attention

"To be in the present with someone is a gift. The gift of attention is perhaps the most precious and envied of all. ...

"Think of someone who, while you are talking to him, is looking elsewhere, mentioning a subject that is irrelevant to what you are saying. Inattention has a disruptive, depressing aspect, which saps our vitality and robs us of our self-confidence."

From: The Power of Kindness, by Piero Ferrucci.

Message: Pay attention to the way you pay attention today/this week.

Consider: "Paying attention" is "the most precious gift."

Follow-up: Talk explicitly about the act of and power of paying attention. It is not only a "gift," but it is a "tool" that pays enormous practical dividends.

Tom Reads The Little BIG Things (Cont.)

The next section of Tom's book is now available as audio files. The section is titled "Connections," and it's comprised of these items:

#33. Only Connect ...
#34. They Liked Ike (Because Ike Liked Them).
#35. Always Make It Personal.
#36. Commit "Acts of Deliberate Relationship Enhancement."

Or go to the audio player to find all the items leading up to these as well.

New video of Tom, also:

"Strategy: The Power of 'I'm Sorry'": Part of Tom's push for Excellence in the health care industry is this suggestion for a very little thing that makes a very BIG difference in patient satisfaction.

You can watch the video here (2 minutes, 45 seconds) or get a PDF transcript of its content.

The Engineer Runs Amok!
Again!

Engineers love equations. I have an entire section in my new book which tries to reduce implementation to a set of equations. Two days ago I posted an equation that several in TwitterWorld seemed to have found useful:

K = R = P
(Kindness = Repeat Business = Profit.)

It is so clean that I should probably leave well enough alone.
But I can't.

So here's a set of three:

K = R = P
K + Q = R = P+
K + Q + W = R + N = P++

Kindness = Repeat Business = Profit.
Kindness + Quality = Repeat Business = Profit Plus.
Kindness + Quality + Wow! = Repeat Business + New Business = Profit Plus Plus.

And then, just to confuse things:

K(I) > K(O)
(Kindness to employees is more important than kindness to customers because kindness to employees is the best way to maximize long-term kindness to customers.)

Why I Spent Last Summer Inside Writing a Book

I spent last summer inside, writing a book so that I could get notes like this:

"Thanks to your book, and the hit upside the head about the importance of flowers; we now have flowers every week in our offices AND I've arranged to have flowers delivered to my mom every two weeks—duh, why didn't I do that years ago. She's loving them!!

"Thank you for the continued inspiration."

That's from my colleague and friend Verne Harnish. Verne is CEO of Gazelles, and is the undisputed champion of growth companies.

And then there was the Tweet from a businessperson who had taken to heart my item on the power of a smile. He said he'd thought about it and was consciously applying "smile power" with remarkable results. I accused him of putting me on. He swears that he is not and that the change has been transformative.

Forget the "better human beings" bit. I'm not your pastor, so I'll settle for a more turned on-tuned in work force serving customers more effectively—courtesy smiles and flowers! (Well, I admit that I also do get off on the fact that Verne scored mega-points with his Mom!!)

Cable POWER!

From my de facto Bible, Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's Half the Sky:

"[A study] focused on television's impact on rural India. Robert Jensen of Brown University and Emily Oster of the University of Chicago found that after cable television arrived in a village, women gained more autonomy—such as the ability to leave the house without permission and the right to participate in household decisions. There was a drop in the number of births ... wife-beating became less acceptable, and families were more likely to send daughters to school." (A similar study in Brazil produced similar results. A new TV network featured soap operas, which became wildly popular, starring empowered women with few children. Again, birth rates sagged, especially among women "of lower socioeconomic status.")

Interesting, eh?

Almost Biblical Significance!

Peerless trio:

Enough! (Jack Bogle)
Half the Sky (Nick Kristof/Sheryl WuDunn)
Whole Earth Discipline (Stewart Brand)

Our Credo/A Work in Progress

I drafted this "Credo" months ago, and used a version of it in The Little BIG Things. I recently revisited it and added a few things. It is obviously too long to fit on a wallet-sized plastic card. On the other hand, it is a set of ideas ("Principles for doing business well and profitably"? "Elements of Excellence"?) worthy of attention and emulation. Use it as you will—and my apologies for the length. (We are also making it available as a PDF.) (My apologies for the length of the Post.)

Herewith, "Our Credo":

• We are thoughtful in all we do.
• We are excellent listeners—to each other and to all members of our extended family, including vendors, customers, communities, etc. We will make the development of listening skills a primary component in our training portfolio. (It is not coincidental that listening per se is so near the beginning of this document.)
• We will make the four words "What do you think?" an automatic instinct in all of our internal and external dealings; moreover, "What do you think?" will precede the explication of our own view in 99 out of 100 instances.
• We are dedicated to and measure our success to a significant degree by our unwavering commitment to the extreme personal growth of every one of our employees.
• We will only be "delighted" with our managers if their employees are universally surprised by the level of their personal and professional growth. We will measure this.
• We will be clear that we view leadership at every level as a sacred trust—and that leaders are indeed the servants of their employees just as the effective classroom teacher is servant to the lives and growth of her or his students.
• We believe that "people development" is everyone's responsibility. Hence, everyone will have a peer mentor from the start; and within a relatively short period after joining the organization will become themselves mentors; effectiveness as mentors will be a significant element in everyone's evaluation.
• We see senior officers as primarily in the "people development business." Hence we will place the particulars of development success as the #1 item in evaluating senior officers.
• We will not rest until we are widely acknowledged as an "employer of choice."
• We believe that it is possible to make the evaluation process a positive rather than a negative. We will provide training in evaluation, devote significant time to evaluation, and will place significant weight on effectiveness as an evaluator. We will measure this.
• We will be fanatic practitioners of MBWA, or managing by wandering around. Staying in touch is a top priority.
• We are smitten with the word "mastery." We expect everyone to pursue mastery of some skill from the outset, just as a military specialty is pursued from day #1.
• We believe it is our role to foster independence that will serve each employee well in her or his career wherever he or she may alight.
• We believe that everyone should become a leader; hence, leadership assignments of some sort will be undertaken within 90 days of coming aboard.
• We believe in the "inverted organization chart"—with the "leaders" at the "bottom" of a reverse pyramid.
• We believe that 1st-line supervisors, like corporals and sergeants in the military, are the lynchpins of morale and productivity and employee development and maintenance of the "corporate culture." Hence, we will seek to create a matchless 1st-line supervisorial cadre. We will, in effect, manage this cadre as a separate strategic priority.
• We will be a leader in research and development in every aspect of our business—and we will work primarily with vendors who are also fanatical about research and development; and work to attract a set of core customers willing to play at the edge of things and become our co-developers.
• We will aim to make our customer engagements adventures beyond the comfort zone, or adventures in growth to use a less intimidating phrase—we will aim to add value in novel ways that surprise and stretch our customers and ourselves.
• We expect to be renowned for our "insane" devotion to customer service. We shall measure this constantly.
• We will bring to bear overwhelming and instant and collective force to redress any customer problem, real or imagined.
• We will use the three words "Try it! Now!" almost as often as "What do you think?" We revere the experimental method, and believe success is mostly correlated with the number of things one tries.
• We wholeheartedly acknowledge the value of analysis, but in the end swear by "Actions speak louder than words."
• We "encourage" failures (actually "celebrate" failures); that is, we acknowledge that a near-religious devotion to "Try it! Now!" necessarily invites the failures that are part and parcel of trying new things.
• We will in fact look askance at those whose records include few or no failures—such a spotless record suggests an unwillingness to brave the unknown.
• We will, to summarize the last few items, all view ourselves as explorers-adventurers, proceeding toward individual and collective growth by actively engaging at the edge of things; we unstintingly believe that our customers will reap enormous value from our commitment to constant, restless exploration.
• We will cut "overhead" to zero—every "department" shall aim to be best-in-class in its arena, and hence a full-scale participant in our concerted effort to add value in all we do.
• We will exude integrity, individually and collectively.
• We will encourage and insist upon constant and vociferous disagreement, but be absolutely intolerant of disagreement in the form of personal attacks.
• We will exemplify the word transparency in all of our internal and external dealings—and bend over backwards to give new meaning and breadth to the term "information sharing."
• We will individually and collectively accept blame for our mistakes, or even our rather minor contribution to others' mistakes—and apologize accordingly and with dispatch.
• We will under no circumstance badmouth a competitor.
• We will aim to turn every customer contact into a memorable experience, remembering that all of life is indeed a stage.
• We honor the word "design" in all we do, in every nook and every cranny of our organization; every system, every web page, every customer invoice, every employee restroom is part of our purposefully designed "signature," and stands out and exudes exceptionalism in one way or another.
• We understand that difficult decisions must be made, but we will bend over backwards to implement such decisions with kindness and grace—the dignity of the individual will always be foremost in our mind.
• We will not intrude into our employees' lives, but we are committed to aggressively helping employees achieve a healthy lifestyle.
• We will master the art of appreciation and be profuse in our use of the words "Thank you" to honor assistance or achievement of even the most minor sort.
• We will acknowledge through celebration even small successes—and always cast a wide net in our "Thank yous" to include bit players, especially from other functions.
• We aim for others to always be surprised by our "vibrancy" and "vitality"—we view enthusiasm as the key to success in anything, and take particular care in leader selection to ensure that every one of our leaders is a "remarkable" "carrier" of enthusiasm through thick and, especially, thin.
• We will drop whatever we are doing and rush to the aid of those involved in tight-deadline activities—even if those involved caused some of their own problems.
• We will be careful in our planning, but also understand that nothing ever unfolds as planned—hence we will be known for our ability to muster resources in an instant, without fuss and from everywhere, to deal with the unexpected; participating in these ad hoc response activities will not be seen as a distraction from our "real work," but as a significant part of our "real work" and an opportunity to contribute to others and build our own skills in ways we might not have imagined.
• We live in an uncertain world. And resilience is a matchless survival trait. We will design every system and develop every person with a constant eye on overall and individual resilience.
• We fully acknowledge that other units-departments-functions have other points of view than ours, but we will bend over backwards to develop social connections with those in other functions so that dealings over warring perspectives are dealings among friends.
• We unequivocally believe that cross-functional communication is the #1 key to both execution and producing "value-added" for our Clients. We will therefore move heaven and earth to insure that barriers are removed and that cross-functional communication becomes a profound competitive advantage. Each unit in the organization shall visibly celebrate acts of noteworthy support from outside their department. We will insure that incentives, positive and, alas, negative, support this top priority.
• We acknowledge that agreed upon deadlines are holy writ, and will attempt to balance requisite urgency and requisite realism in all of our commitments.
• We will fight tooth and nail to minimize the complexity that "necessarily" comes with growth and the mere passage of time.
• We will declare total war on our own systems to insure that they do not strangle us.
• We gladly acknowledge that anyone in the organization has the duty as well as the right to challenge anyone else when he or she believes they have a valid and useful perspective to offer—this is particularly true regarding any issue that has to do with safety, quality or meeting agreed upon deadlines; such challenges may be firm but not rude.
• We will be civil in all our dealings with one another.
• We will bend over backwards to bring truly (not superficially) diverse views of every stripe imaginable to bear on plans and decisions of every sort.
• We will pursue "diversity" in part so that the composition of our workforce and leadership from top to bottom is a "pretty good" reflection of the demographics of the markets we serve or aim to serve.
• We will use new technology tools to extend the definition of "our family" to every corner of the globe—we will welcome ideas and participation in our affairs from anyone and everyone.
• We will aim for gender balance in all we do and from tippy top to bottom—for reasons commercial more than reasons moral.
• We will be responsive in every way to the overwhelmingly large women's market—ignored by so many.
• We will be responsive in every way to the overwhelmingly large boomer/boomer+ market—ignored by so many.
• We will never, in any way, compromise on the quality of our products or services—regardless of difficulties in our marketplace and economy.
• We wholeheartedly acknowledge that in the short term (as well, obviously, as the long term) we must be profitable and exhibit stellar financial performance that is consistent with the audacious efforts to serve our people and our clients as described above.
• We aim to be seen by others as "conservative" in our financial practices.
• We shall talk about EXCELLENCE constantly.
• We shall unfailingly aim for EXCELLENCE in all we do.
• We shall use EXCELLENCE as the principal benchmark in the assessment of ourselves and our work and our impact on our Clients.
• We shall never forget that the bedrock of EXCELLENCE is the unwavering commitment to growth of 100% of our employees—and in fact all of those with whom we come in contact.*

*Perhaps some subset of these items will become a true "Credo." If so, I would suggest that something like the full list be enumerated as organizational "objectives."

DOSOMETHING!
NOW!

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The KRP Factor

This, KRP, began as a 140-character Tweet:

K = R = P
(Kindness = Repeat business = Profit)

Kindness:

Kind.
Thoughtful.
Decent.
Caring.
Attentive.
Engaged.
Listens well/obsessively.
Appreciative.
Open.
Visible.
Honest.
Responsive.
On time all the time.
Apologizes with dispatch for screw-ups.
"Over"-reacts to screw-ups of any magnitude.
"Professional" in all dealings.
Optimistic.
Understands that kindness to staff begets kindness to others.
Applies throughout the "supply chain."
Applies to 100% of customer's staff.
Explicit part of values statement.
Basis for evaluation for 100% of our staff.
Starts with the boss/bosses.

Q.E.D.

(Above, after a long Vermont winter, there's nothing boring about a Dandelion.)

Carly!

Rupert Murdoch is taking dead aim at the New York Times with his new Saturday Wall Street Journal magazine, WSJ. Yesterday's inaugural issue had a feature on Carly Fiorina's run for the Republican nomination to oppose Senator Barbara Boxer. The article was reasonably positive, and homed in as usual on Fiorina's tenure at HP.

I am a lifelong Democrat, and if I were still a California voter, I would probably not vote for Ms. Fiorina. Nonetheless I am a staunch defender of her HP record. (I called her "CEO of the Year" at one point in this space.) After reading the WSJ piece, I sent her an email offering a public statement from me on her HP tour of duty.

To wit:

"HP, circa 2010, is the 600-lb gorilla astride the computer industry. Why? The Compaq acquisition. PERIOD. Carly Fiorina, without a lot of help at times, fought the Hewlett and Packard families in a bitter, protracted battle to do the deal. And won. In doing so she both saved and transformed one of America's greatest companies. And if that's not enough, she also took one of earth's least consumer-oriented companies and converted it into a consumer dynamo, almost single-handedly (again). The greatest criticism of Fiorina was that Dell, then the #1 PC manufacturer, outstripped HP in profitability. Or at least Dell did until, after Fiorina left, they were forced to 'restate' (erase) a huge share of those profits. Ms. Fiorina doubtless made missteps, but anyone who disses or discounts or dismisses the profound positive impact of her tenure at HP is blind or an idiot or both."—Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence (Peters lived in Silicon Valley for 30+ years, but did not consult to or work with or even meet Fiorina until after she had left HP.)