TLBT Video #73
Strategy: Measure Innovation

We've posted the latest video in The Little BIG Things series on YouTube. Do you think it's impossible to measure innovation? In this video, Tom offers a brilliantly simple, easy-to-implement method for ensuring that a good portion of your work meets the mark on innovation.

You can find the video in the right-hand column of this page or watch it at YouTube (time: 2 minutes 3 seconds). Or, get a PDF transcript of the video's content: Strategy: Measure Innovation.

MOAP #4

The latest installment of Tom's "Mother of All Presentations," or MOAP, is now available at ExcellenceNow.com. You can download the PowerPoint version or a PDF. We'll be releasing a section every other week throughout 2012.

Part 4 introduces Tom's conviction that encouraging your people to make friends in other functions of the organization should be a top priority. Tom says you should reward such behavior, make it an agenda item. Download Part 4 of Tom's Mother of All Presentations, and learn how and why cross-functional socialization (read, idea-sharing) is essential to business excellence.

MOAP #3

The next installment from Tom's "Mother of All Presentations" or MOAP, at ExcellenceNow.com is now available. You can download the PowerPoint version or a PDF. We'll be releasing a section every other week throughout 2012.

What's Part 3 all about? Given that worker satisfaction in the job is intricately tied to worker satisfaction with their supervisor, Tom sees selecting, training, and nurturing your first-line supervisors as a mandatory strategic part of business practice. I put it mildly. Download Part 3 of Tom's Mother of All Presentations to get his take—that is, care of first-line supervisors should be an obsession.

TLBT Video #72
Brand You: Three-Minute Apologies

We add another video to The Little BIG Things series on YouTube. In the spirit of the coming New Year, it offers, perhaps, a suggestion for change you might plan to make in the year to come. According to Tom, one of the most important practices you adopt should be the apology. Three minutes, BIG impact.

You can find the video in the right-hand column of this page or watch it at YouTube (time: 1 minute 49 seconds). Or, get a PDF transcript of the video's content: Brand You: Three-Minute Apologies.

Why Now Is The Time to Give Your Business Some Zoom

[Guest post by Ian Sanders, who has posted here before. He is an author, ideas guy, and marketing expert. His new book, co-written with David Sloly, is Zoom! The Faster Way To Make Your Business Idea Happen (published by Financial Times Prentice Hall). See more at www.iansanders.com.]

When I was researching my new book Zoom!, I got in touch with Tom to get his take on the essential ingredient for success. Despite all the demands on Tom's time, he sent me a reply just a couple of days later.

Tom's speed of response was echoed by a line in his email: "I've only learned one thing in 40 years of business: 'He who tries the most stuff the fastest wins.'"

This was music to my ears. Being rapid in business has a bad press. If you're launching a business fast or turning an idea into reality in days not weeks, people assume that by fast-tracking, quality suffers. Not so. Speed is the factor that can make a difference in the marketplace, speed can beat the competition, speed can get you customers.

Because it's not having the idea that wins; it is—of course—about how quickly you execute. Software start-ups have known this for a long time, where in the long tail of the apps market, developers make their products fit for purpose and launch early, rather than wait until they're perfect. "Fit for purpose" means while it's still a prototype, you're shipping a product of value—it has to do its job, solve the problem, fix the headache. Getting it out early, listening to user feedback, and making adaptations as you go keep you ahead of the competition.

Speed is a business lesson that any organisation can learn; it's not just for start-ups. Whether it's a product launch or a new division being started, making it happen fast is critical. Too many organisations get so stuck in internal procedures they lose focus on just getting it done. Ideas are mulled over in meetings, those meetings run overtime, and decisions get carried over to the next month. What would have been a brilliant, "WOW" idea if it was launched in 10 or 30 days becomes weak when it is finally launched, diluted, 100 days later. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Venture capitalist and former chief evangelist of Apple Guy Kawasaki backs this up. When I spoke to him for Zoom!, Guy said that making your business happen fast is about shipping your product to real life customers. "I'm not saying you should ship a piece of crap: you should ship something great. But if you try to ship something great that is perfect, you're going to take too long. You'll learn more about your product in the first week after shipping than 52 weeks thinking about and studying and doing focus groups."

So whatever business you're in, try thinking like a software company and apply speed to make your idea happen. It's better to launch "in beta" rather than to procrastinate and get stuck in business planning. Or should that be 'business guessing"—after all, who knows what will happen in five years' time? The idea that launches fastest is the one that succeeds; "done" is often better than "perfect."

Don't be one of those people who had a great business idea but got beaten to launch. Put your foot on the accelerator and make it happen: give it some Zoom!

Skill/Goal #1:
"Adaptive" Organizations

There is a lot of talk about "adaptive organizations," as there should be. In these perilous and fast-changing times, adaptivity is arguably Skill/Goal #1—and the bones of those, old and young, who failed to adapt litter the landscape.

Books can be and have been and will be written about the topic. Dozens of 'em. But I want to pound a stake into the ground. I doubtless wildly over-simplify, but I insist that there is a one-variable answer to the adaptivity issue—moreover, treatment of that variable is "the" answer to this conundrum and it has been with us, unchanged, for eons. It has been the determining success-fail, life-death factor for companies and armies alike.

In short: Adaptivity is more or less a 100% function of the workforce and how it is recruited and developed and encouraged and appreciated—or not.

Adaptive organizations will have workforces which ...

*Are hired for attitude and character and proven teamwork as much or more than for skill
*Are respected and trusted and visibly appreciated and celebrated
*Are in on pretty much everything in an environment of information sharing and transparency
*Are trained and re-trained ad infinitum—you can, in effect, never spend too much time or money on training and re-training
*Treat "learning new stuff"—each and every day—as a near holy responsibility
*Believe that every one of us and every outsider has something worthy to teach us
*Are routinely exposed to an "insane" variety of outsiders who offer constant stimulation and direct challenges to conventional organizational/marketplace wisdom
*Are given the autonomy (with concomitant accountability) to and encouragement to "try it," almost any "it," at the drop of a hat—and then try it and try it again and again
*Are guaranteed that "useful failures" are cheered rather than jeered
*Are bound by a coda that shouts "good enough is never good enough"
*Are all "dreamers with deadlines," committed to pursuit of the novel and disruptive—and equally committed to flawless and timely execution
*Laugh a lot at themselves and their foibles and pratfalls
*Are, while civil to a fault, irreverent about damn near anything other than integrity and decency
*Are responsible for each other's mentoring and growth
*Believe that their role—each and everyone—is to serve, to serve each other and to serve each member of our family of organizations (vendors, customers, communities, etc.)
*Are diverse to a fault—not legalistically diverse, but from every background imaginable
*Are insistent that each and every one is treated as an utterly indispensable member
of the team—there are no bit players
*Relentlessly pursue no less than EXCELLENCE in all we do, in tough times even more than in times of economic good health

And that's it!
(Or some list more or less like this.)

Of course the above requires inspired leadership which truly puts people first.
Blah.
Blah.
Blah.

Bottom line: If the workforce encapsulates the above ideas—adaptivity will be virtually automatic and a walk in the park.* (*Of course it won't be any such thing—but presumably you get the drift.)

FYI/I repeat: This is an incredibly un-new idea. (It's achievement is, alas, exceedingly unusual—but it has unmistakably been "the secret" for ages.)

Translation (if I was unclear):

A soaring vision is desirable.
An effective strategy is important.
Super-processes are a necessity.

But in the end, it's all about ... THE PEOPLE!*

*It's ALWAYS all about ... THE PEOPLE!

[Ed. This blog is also available as a PDF: "Adaptive" Organizations.]

(Above and below, taking trip #1 in my new 12-foot Vermont Packboat amidst fall foliage on Lake St. Catherine. Photo courtesy Susan Sargent; boat designed and built by Adirondack Guideboat, North Ferrisburgh VT.)

Forget Overnight Success and Learn to Be Persistent

(This is a guest post from Alexandra Levit, whose new book, Blind Spots: The 10 Business Myths You Can't Afford to Believe on Your New Path to Success, is released today. She is Money Magazine's 2010 Online Career Expert of the Year and a winner of Forbes' 2011 Best Websites for Women. She interviewed Tom, and he invited her to submit this post.)

Forget Overnight Success and Learn to Be Persistent

Overnight success is one of the most widely held beliefs in the business world. It's also hugely misleading, and adopting this idea that you can easily become an overnight success could actually be quite damaging for your career and life. The truth is simple. There are very few—if any—genuine cases of overnight success. The majority of successful people have dedicated themselves to a goal and persevered for a long time before reaching a high level of achievement that is finally noticed and talked about by others.

Perseverance is defined as remaining constant to a purpose, idea, or task in spite of obstacles. Some people are born with the tendency to persevere. In fact, I can already see it in my young son. He likes to push his wagon around our backyard, but he doesn't always have enough strength and control to move it where he wants it to go. However, instead of giving up and crying, he faithfully pushes at the wagon from different angles until it's free of the tree or fence.

Pick up any one of Horatio Alger's rags-to-riches stories, and you'll be virtually hit over the head with the lesson that earlier generations didn't expect instant gratification the way we do today. If they had, we wouldn't have had the opportunity to evolve as fully as a society, with the most critical cultural and technological advances marinating over decades. We've become a society of now, now, now, but the truth is that most things worth having take a little bit of process and a lot of time. You shouldn't assume that if something doesn't manifest overnight that it won't happen at all, and, in fact, you will do wonders for your personal development if you can learn to be patient, maintain faith in your own potential, and increase your perseverance in driving important aspects of your career forward.

While it admittedly sounds a bit corny, the first step in this journey is to believe in yourself and what you want to do. If you try for a goal, but in the back of your mind you don't actually think you can accomplish it, you will wreck havoc on and sabotage your motivation. You will probably give up more easily, which will result in even poorer self-esteem. If you're like me and believing in yourself is sometimes challenging, you might talk to family members, friends, a psychologist, or a coach to address your doubts and insecurities head on.

Self-awareness is a critical part of developing perseverance. Admitting that you're the type to give up on a goal before you've completed it is the first step in changing that pattern. Then, practice keeping promises to yourself by setting small goals and refusing to quit until you've achieved them.

Another component is self-control. And how do you improve that? As John Tierney reported in the New York Times in 2008, research from University of Miami psychologists Michael McCullough and David Willoughby concludes that finding your religion may be the right move, since religiosity is correlated with higher self-control. Brain scans show that when people pray, the parts of the brain responsible for self-regulation and control of attention and emotion get a major workout. If you tend toward the agnostic, you can still get the self-control benefit by meditating privately or by getting involved with an organization that shares your values.

The final component in enhancing your perseverance is to think positively. Because you're human and not a cartoon character, it is difficult to have a positive attitude 100 percent of the time. When something unfortunate occurs, it's natural to feel negative emotions like anger, frustration, and sadness at first. But holding on to these until they result in constant depression and anxiety will make it all that much harder to persevere at a difficult goal.

(Read more about the book Blind Spots at
Penguin.ca and see Alexandra's blog at alexandralevit.typepad.com.)

A First!
Please!

"Gawd I do good work."
Disgusting!

Nonetheless ...

I rarely say such things, but I think your organizational world would work more effectively if you "obsessed" on those "REALLY First Things Before First Things." Please consider discussing this doc with colleagues.

I really cannot remember the last time—maybe this is the first time?—I have felt so determined about something I've written.

Sorry if the self-promotion puts you off—at least it's for a free product/pdf.

Size Matters

[Our guest blogger is Cool Friend Steve Yastrow. He's an author, speaker, consultant, and we've enjoyed his work for many years. Find out more about him at Yastrow.com.]

In a recent post, Tom quoted David Lascelles to show how corporate mergers are contrary to nature. Lascelles uses bees as an example, relating that bee colonies split into separate colonies as they grow, before becoming too big. Lascelles says that nature is more about "growth, fragmentation, and dispersal" than it is about merging. "What the bees are telling us is that the corporate world has got it all wrong."

Beyond Lascelles's bees, there is another example, even closer to home, to demonstrate this point: humans.

For about 90% of the 200,000 years we have been anatomically modern humans we lived in bands that maxed out at about 150 people. When our groups started to grow beyond 150 people, we split into smaller groups that then continued to grow on their own, until they once again split. Anthropologist Robin Dunbar says that this number of 150 was meaningful: It represents the maximum number of relationships each of us can have with other people. The "Dunbar Number," as it is called, is a natural limit based on our cognitive capacity. (Dunbar shows that other primates, such as chimps, bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas, have proportionally smaller group sizes based on their smaller brains.)

Then, about 12,000 years ago we started to settle down into a sedentary "civilized" lifestyle, and shortly thereafter developed agriculture. This led us to live in larger groups, well past Dunbar's limit of 150 people, eventually leading to the urban centers we see today.

Although we usually think of the transition to agriculture and civilization as wonderful progress, it isn't so simple. In his book, Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization, Spencer Wells paints a very vivid picture of the ills that civilized life has brought us. Wells describes archaeological evidence that shows how human size, health, and life expectancy actually decreased after the transition to settled living and agriculture. (Wells says that life expectancy for humans who made it past childhood didn't catch up with hunter-gatherer levels until the 19th century.) He claims that warfare, mental illness, and social strife, in addition to many diseases, are all byproducts of the unnatural situations we have lived in for the past 10,000 years. We evolved to live one way, and now are trying to live another way. What we see every day as our natural setting is, in fact, a very unnatural way for us to live.

So, if we are looking for evidence from nature that our belief in corporate mergers and unchecked growth is misplaced, Lascelles's bees are only the starting point. We can also look into the not-so-distant mirror of our own history and recognize that our real success on this planet has been based on small, nimble groups who "spin off" new groups before growing too big.

REALLY First Things Before First Things

Tom, as is his usual habit, continued to work on his article for the Financial Times after he posted it here last week. So, we'd like to present the new intro along with a link to a PDF of the final product, complete with four appendices. Here, then:

REALLY First Things Before First Things

I was initially trained as an engineer. (And have an MBA as well.) That essentially means that I am a slave to linear, logical analysis. Hence my presentations start at the start and I carefully build a logical structure for all that follows.

Fair enough. Except I frequently find that critical things I want to say are buried or not gotten around to. Hence, about a year ago I shrugged off my logical halter and decided to say what I thought was important, come what may, at the top of my remarks.

Hence what follows ...

Consideration of business strategy, approaches to product development, and the like are of the utmost importance to enterprise success. Yet there are other factors—perhaps mundane at first glance—that are the true differentiators between mediocrity and excellence. I'll touch upon four, which I call "REALLY First Things Before First Things." Most will agree that each one is important. But my goal is to induce you to convert them into strategic obsessions—if you do, I sincerely believe the world will be your oyster, or at least your enterprise will function quite a bit more effectively.

Get the PDF to read more ...

Financial Times EXPANDED
First Things Before First Things

(Note: The Financial Times published a column of mine on 29 August. Editors must edit—and they did. All writers think editors are heartless; some writers, lucky enough to have blogs, can post the version they first submitted. Here it is, 1,200 words rather than the 700 that eventually appeared in print.)

There is no logic to this column.
Which is precisely the point.

I was initially trained as an engineer. (And have an MBA as well.) That essentially means that I am a slave to linear, logical analysis. Hence my presentations start at the start and I carefully build a logical structure for all that follows.

Fair enough. Except I frequently find that critical things I want to say get left out or buried. Hence, about a year ago I threw off my logical halter and decided to say what I thought was important, come what may, at the top of my remarks.

Consideration of business strategy, approaches to product development, and the like, are of the utmost importance to enterprise success. Yet there are other factors—perhaps mundane at first glance—that are the true differentiators between mediocrity and excellence. I'll touch upon four, which I call "First Things Before First Things." Most will agree that each one is important. But my goal is to induce you to convert them into strategic obsessions.

Front-line managers. If the regimental commander lost most of his 2nd lieutenants and 1st lieutenants and captains and majors, it would be a tragedy. If he lost his sergeants it would be a catastrophe. The Army is fully aware that success on the battlefield is dependent to an extraordinary degree on its sergeants. Does industry "get it"?

Research by the likes of Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, reported in First, Break All the Rules, demonstrates that the first-line manager is the single most important key to employee satisfaction, retention—and productivity. No matter how fine the organization, if the employee is sour on his immediate boss, her or his performance will significantly suffer. I am not suggesting that execs don't take the front-line boss seriously. I am suggesting that, unlike the Army, they are not obsessed with developing their full cadre of front-line managers as a primary strategic asset and engine of enterprise performance! For starters: Are your font-line boss selection and training and mentoring processes unmistakably "knock-your-socks-off"/"best-in-class"?

Cross-functional excellence. Look at any organizational failure, and poor cross-functional integration is more often than not the chief culprit. Within an engineering company, for example, research, marketing and finance are routinely at each other's throats. The result is a critical new product comes to market 18 months late. Or take the local police and federal police: Each have the fight against terrorism as their pre-eminent goal—but frequently refuse to share all their data with one another. I chose in introducing this topic the word "excellence," as in "cross-functional excellence." That is, the idea here is not merely about "removing barriers." It is about what I believe is no less than the #1 opportunity to achieve competitive dominance—e.g., cut new-product development by, say, 50 percent or even more.

I have the utmost respect for Oracle and SAP. But this is not primarily a software issue. Or, rather, it is—but a softer form of software. Secret #1 (yes, I'll go that far) is "Let's do lunch." In fact I insist that bosses literally measure their direct reports on the number of lunches per month they have with members of other functions!

It works like this: Joe in procurement invites Sam in finance to lunch. Odds are high that along the way they discover a host of connections—e.g., both have eighth-graders in the same school. Joe will still tenaciously represent his "function" and Sam his—but the tenor of interactions is likely to change significantly, if not dramatically, from "gotcha" to something approaching "How can we jointly add maximum value?"

I call thing like "doing lunch" the "social accelerants" of cross-functional excellence. I can muster a list of 25 in a flash—e.g., present small weekly awards to those in other functions who have helped your team-function move forward. One should not promise miracles lightly, but taken together these notions can lead to miracles of the first order.

"Strategic" listening. Harvard M.D. Jerome Groopman wrote a fascinating book titled How Doctors Think. Dr. Groopman claims, not terribly surprisingly, that the best source for a doctor concerning the patient's complaint is—the patient. Yet he goes on to cite research showing that on average the doctor interrupts the patient after ... 18 seconds. I'll bet you a bundle that the average manager does not surpass the 18-second mark!

Like developing first-line managers and trying to improve cross-functional coordination, most bosses would agree that listening is "important." But, again, do they make it a strategic obsession? Because beyond a shadow of doubt that is precisely what listening per se should be.

I made a list of the things that flow from effective listening ("strategic listening" or "aggressive listening" as I prefer to call it). Listening is ...

the heart and soul of engagement,
the heart and soul of recognition,
the heart and soul of strategic partnering,
the heart and soul of learning,
the heart and soul of customer connections.
And on.
And on.

As with all things important, the key is becoming a serious student and practitioner. In fact I'll go so far as to say that listening per se is/can be a "profession" ... as much as playing the cello or flying a commercial aircraft.

Meetings. Find me a boss (or non-boss) who doesn't constantly bitch about "too many meetings"—I've never found one. But here is the irreducible fact of "boss-world": Meetings are what bosses do. There is no escape. And if that is true, then, also by definition, meetings are therefore the principal platform, or theater, in which every boss projects her or his leadership skills.

Immutable "bottom line": Every meeting that does not stir the imagination and curiosity of attendees, and increase bonding and co-operation and engagement and sense of worth, and motivate rapid action and enhance enthusiasm is a permanently lost opportunity. Call that a stretch if you wish—but then please explain to me why it is not the self-evident truth!

Let me be clear: This is not a rant about "conducting better meetings." This is a rant about the heart and soul and hour-to-hour reality of leadership effectiveness. One obvious implication: Prepare for a meeting/every meeting as if your professional life and legacy depended on it. Because it does.

There they are: "First things before first things." None, I strongly suspect, would disagree with the fact that all four are "important," even "very important." But it is my claim here that the four are in fact the "guts" of effective organizations—and, in fact, sustainable competitive advantage. Make each of these an "obsession"—and watch the bottom line soar.

TLBT Video #67
Strategy: Best Practices, Love 'Em and Hate 'Em

Now at YouTube, the latest video of The Little BIG Things Video Series, in which Tom explains that following best practices as a business strategy can be effective ... or not.

You can find the video in the right-hand column of our front page, or watch it here (Time: 2 minutes 21 seconds). Also available is a PDF transcript of the video's content: Strategy: Best Practices.

Gospel!

I have about 3K slides in my "Master Presentation." These are either "the most important," or, surely, in the Top 1%:

Arie De Geus, The Living Company (father of "scenario planning" at Royal Dutch Shell): "Rose gardeners face a choice every spring. The long-term fate of a rose garden depends on this decision. If you want to have the largest and most glorious roses of the neighborhood, you will prune hard. This represents a policy of low tolerance and tight control. You force the plant to make the maximum use of its available resources, by putting them into the rose's 'core business.' Pruning hard is a dangerous policy in an unpredictable environment. Thus, if you are in a spot where you know nature may play tricks on you, you may opt for a policy of high tolerance. You will never have the biggest roses, but you have a much-enhanced chance of having roses every year. You will achieve a gradual renewal of the plant. In short, tolerant pruning achieves two ends: (1) It makes it easier to cope with unexpected environmental changes. (2) It leads to a continuous restructuring of the plant. The policy of tolerance admittedly wastes resources—the extra buds drain away nutrients from the main stem. But in an unpredictable environment, this policy of tolerance makes the rose healthier in the long run."

David Lascelles, Co-director of The Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation [UK]: "Since merger mania is now the rage, what lessons can the bees teach us? A simple one: Merging is not in nature. [Nature's] process is the exact opposite: one of growth, fragmentation and dispersal. There is no megalomania, no merging for merging's sake. The point is that unlike corporations, which just get bigger, bee colonies know when the time has come to split up into smaller colonies which can grow value faster. What the bees are telling us is that the corporate world has got it all wrong."

Little BIG Video #61
Strategy:
Brand Equals Talent

This week we add number 61 from The Little BIG Things Video Series. In this video at YouTube, Tom reminds us that branding efforts go only so far unless accompanied by an emphasis on people, i.e., the talent.

You can find the video in the right column of the front page of tompeters.com or you can watch the video on YouTube. [Time: 1 minute 55 seconds] You can also download a PDF transcript of the video's content: Strategy: Brand Equals Talent.

The Little BIG Things
Synopsis Series
#46 The Heart of Business Strategy

It's time for a new section in The Little BIG Things Synopsis Series. The next section in The Little BIG Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence is titled "Special Section: The Heart of Business Strategy.'" Here's how Tom describes this section:

I humbly offer the following 51 pieces of "commonplace advice"—"reminders of the obvious" (as opposed to marketing "cleverness" or "devious 'strategic' maneuvers" or financial legerdemain) for creating a "winning" "strategy" that is inherently sustainable.

You can download a free pdf of this section from The Little BIG Things Synopsis Series* by clicking below:

#46 Special Section: The Heart of Business Strategy

*The Synopsis Series is an adaptation that gives you a taste of the BIG idea in each of the 163 Little BIG Things. More information on the book can be found on this page. The Synopsis Series as released thus far can be found here.

The Little BIG Things
Synopsis Series
#39 Grunge
#40 Enterprise

It's time for two new sections in The Little BIG Things Synopsis Series. The next two sections in The Little BIG Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence are titled "Grunge" and "Enterprise." The Grunge section covers execution and common sense while Enterprise is a guide to the principles of doing Excellent work.

You can download free pdfs of those sections from The Little BIG Things Synopsis Series* by clicking below:

#39 Grunge
#40 Enterprise

*The Synopsis Series is an adaptation that gives you a taste of the BIG idea in each of the 163 Little BIG Things. More information on the book can be found on this page. The Synopsis Series as released thus far can be found here.

Little BIG Video #54
Strategy:
Women & Relationships

Here's video number 54 from The Little BIG Things Video Series. According to Tom: "Women look at relationships with more depth and complexity than men do." It's essential to understand this if you're working with women in leadership positions or if you're developing products for women.

You can find the video in the right column of the front page of tompeters.com or you can watch the video on YouTube. [Time: 2 minutes, 21 seconds] You can also download a PDF transcript of the video's content: Strategy: Women & Relationships.

Little BIG Video #50
Strategy:
Kindness is Free

Happy Holidays!

Here's a video with a message for this season. It's video number 50 from The Little BIG Things Video Series. Kindness is free. Tom uses a surprising example from the healthcare industry to highlight the kind of impact kindness can have, without any financial investment.

You can find the video in the right column of the front page of tompeters.com or you can watch the video on YouTube. [Time: 3 minutes, 24 seconds] You can also download a PDF transcript of the video's content: Strategy: Kindness is Free.

The Little BIG Things
Synopsis Series
#22 Customers
#23 Action

It's time for two new sections in The Little BIG Things Synopsis Series. The next two sections in The Little BIG Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence are titled "Customers" and "Action." In Customers, the message is the importance of communication - have you called a customer today? Action is, of course, all about doing. "She or he who tries the most stuff wins."

You can download free pdfs of those sections from The Little BIG Things Synopsis Series* by clicking below:

#22 Customers
#23 Action

*The Synopsis Series is an adaptation that gives you a taste of the BIG idea in each of the 163 Little BIG Things. More information on the book can be found on this page. The Synopsis Series as released thus far can be found here.

Little BIG Video #48
Strategy:
Hold 'em and Fold 'em

Here's video number 48 from The Little BIG Things Video Series. Persistence. You've gotta have more than your share to succeed. There's plenty of advice out there about knowing when to give up. Tom's advice? Hold out longer than anyone thinks is wise.

You can find the video in the right column of the front page of tompeters.com or you can watch the video on YouTube. [Time: 1 minute, 50 seconds] You can also download a PDF transcript of the video's content: Strategy: Hold 'em and Fold 'em.

Mickey Drexler/J.Crew

I could teach an entire MBA course using as source material the 20 September 2010 New Yorker profile of J.Crew CEO Mickey Drexler—titled "The Merchant: It's All About the Eye—And the Numbers."

In shorthand form, I have extracted a list of some of the items that are central to Drexler's approach. I present them here, and as a PowerPoint slide.

• Bias for instant action/Towering impatience with in-action
• Impatient but not brutal
• Relentless/Speed-of-light experimentation; more ASAP if works, drop if not
• Vibrates with energy (literally)
• Always on the prowl—anywhere, everywhere—for ideas
• Lots of team-standing-around-making-instant-assessments-decisions—all contributing
• Likes working with women more than men because F more intuitive than M
• Dresses like the brand—at 66
• Offense, not defense
• Communicates all the time [removes fear from hearing "famous" CEO]. Everyone, including most junior, made part of the decision-making team
• Listens attentively regardless of age/seniority
• Obvious in his transparent respect for young employees
• Trusts intuition plus fanatic about the numbers
• Expects everyone to know their numbers cold from memory
• Always aware of "the business case"—as well fashion-master
• Aggressive pricing
• MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around
• Open with everyone, from youth to folks at Earnings Call
• Constant customer contact/Dialogues with customer/Reacts instantly to customer feedback
• Willing to act (experiment) based on one datapoint
• Engages with most junior people
• At 66, comfortably uses "hot" words like "Cool" "Wow"

There is no doubt that these notions are especially fit for retailers. Yet I will unequivocally assert that this list with little modification applies to any flavor of business.

(For what it's worth, I'm also attaching this in PowerPoint.)

Little BIG Video #44
Strategy:
12 x 20 = 240

In video number 44 from The Little BIG Things Video Series, Tom does the math for you. It all comes down to lunch. Never Waste a Lunch!

You can find the video in the right column of the front page of tompeters.com or you can watch the video on YouTube. [Time: 2 minutes, 18 seconds] You can also download a PDF transcript of the video's content: Strategy: 12 x 20 = 240.

X2: REALLY First Things Before First Things

I have a new habit. Before flashing my title slide up on the screen these days, I offer up two others first—or "REALLY First Things Before First Things." I label them "X2." Or: "The Excellence TWO." They encompass two central ideas that often get lost in a list of 10 or 20 key ideas—or never make the list at all.

They encompass two notions of ... Surpassing Strategic Importance.

Two notions we all "care about"—but two notions that we frequently fail to ... OBSESS ... on. And it is precisely ... OBSESSION ... that is called for.

The X2:

EXCELLENCE in Cross-functional Communication and Integration.
EXCELLENCE in 1st-line management.

Check out the attached pdf.
Then act ... TODAY.

The Little BIG Things
Synopsis Series
#5 Opportunity
#6 Resilience

It's time for two new sections in The Little BIG Things Synopsis Series. The next two sections in The Little BIG Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence are titled "Opportunity" and "Resilience." Both new sections focus on how to respond to difficult times.

You can download free pdfs of those sections from The Little BIG Things Synopsis Series* by clicking below:
#5 Opportunity
#6 Resilience

*The Synopsis Series is an adaptation that gives you a taste of the BIG idea in each of the 163 Little BIG Things. More information on the book can be found on this page. The Synopsis Series as released thus far can be found here.

Little BIG Video #40
Strategy: Sock Solution

In video number 40 from The Little BIG Things Video Series, Tom asks us to look for solutions that are astonishingly powerful, yet astonishingly unsexy.

You can find the video in the right column of the front page of tompeters.com or you can watch the video on YouTube. [Time: 2 minutes, 54 seconds] You can also download a PDF transcript of the video's content: Strategy: Sock Solution.

The Retail Edge

Following up on my seminar last week, aboard the "Seabourn Spirit" and aimed at independent retailers under attack from their "big box" brethren, I drafted "The Independent Retailer Edge." It is attached here as a pdf. I believe it holds to some extent beyond retail. Enjoy!

Little BIG Video #38
Strategy: The Story is More Powerful than the Brand

In video number 38 from The Little BIG Things Video Series, Tom describes just how powerful storytelling can be and argues that's why it's essential to turn your brand into a story.

You can find the video in the right column of the front page of tompeters.com or you can watch the video on YouTube. [Time: 1 minutes, 55 seconds] You can also download a PDF transcript of the video's content: Strategy: The Story is More Powerful than the Brand.

Strategy: War on Systems

Systems are necessary. But they shouldn't strangle you. Tom's all in favor of attacking your own systems, in order to serve the customer better. He gives a perfect example in a new video from The Little BIG Things Video Series.

You can find the video in the right column here at tompeters.com or you can watch the video on YouTube. [Time: 1 minute, 29 seconds] You can also download a PDF transcript of the video's content: Strategy: War on Systems.

The Military.
Life.
Politics.

The day General McChrystal was canned, I was in Baltimore Washington International airport. Putting on my shoes after security, I found myself sitting next to a USMC major. I commented about McChrystal's calling former USMC Commandant Jim Jones a "clown." (I have very strong USMC ties, including an uncle who retired as a lieutenant general and served as a lieutenant colonel on Guadalcanal.) I expected the major to erupt. Instead he said, "Once they become generals, they all are mainly politicians." He said it in a matter-of-fact fashion, with no discernable rancor.

In fact he's right. McChrystal was a career special ops guy, and, as is characteristic of the genre, was known for being blunt and impolitic—it's a miracle he made it as far as he did. General Petraeus is, to the contrary, know as a superb politician. Many attach automatic opprobrium to the term "politician." They are sorely mistaken. General Powell was a masterful politician, as was General Eisenhower, whose political skills in holding the Allies together for the assault on the European mainland were far more important than his tactical skills. All the above pale by contrast to perhaps America's greatest political general—George Washington. In David McCullough's masterful 1776, we find Washington virtually every night alone in his tent writing numerous letters to members of the Continental Congress. Garnering their support for his faltering efforts was as important as fending off the British.

Implementation—at the level of "chief" of a 4-person project team in IS—is and always has been and always will be primarily about politics.

In fact it is axiomatic: Effective implementers are effective politicians, regardless of any synonym you may choose to substitute for politics.

My dentist in Boston doesn't think much of my former dentist (and college roommate) in San Jose; and she makes no bones and minces no words about it. So, too, most specialists. And that includes generals. World War II was marked by a clear focus, unlike, say, Vietnam or Afghanistan. And yet the generals battled with and disparaged one another constantly. I am highly amused by the following quotes from one of my favorite books, David Irving's The War Between the Generals: Inside the Allied High Command:

"A man of great mediocrity."—General George Patton about General Omar Bradley (Bradley commanded U.S. ground forces on D-Day and beyond)

"A third-rate general. He never did anything or won any battle that any other general could not have won as well or better."—General Omar Bradley about Field Marshall Sir Bernard Montgomery

"If you want to end the war in any reasonable time, you will have to remove Ike's hand from the control of the land battle."—Sir Bernard Montgomery about General Dwight Eisenhower

"One thing that might help win this war is to get someone to shoot King."—General Dwight Eisenhower about Admiral Ernest King, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations

"Eisenhower, though supposed to be running the land war, is on the golf links at Rhiems—entirely detached and taking practically no part in running the war."—Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of Staff, British Army about General Dwight Eisenhower

"If the unhelpful British attitude continues, then I shall go home."—General Dwight Eisenhower

Thus is the nature of human affairs, in peace or war. As I hinted before, if you don't want to participate in the politics, then choose to follow a path that is not associated with leadership, or pretty much anything else—e.g., I've seen politicking for a Nobel prize up close, and it's not pretty.

(You may find exceptions to this rule, but if you do, be sure to specify the planet or galaxy from which they emanate.)

(FYI: You might look at Thomas Ricks' related "Lose a General, Win a War," in yesterday's New York Times.)

Strategy: Space Matters

Who sits next to you? In this video called Strategy: Space Matters, Tom explains why who sits next to whom in your office can make a huge difference. The video is part of the The Little BIG Things Video Series.

You can find the video in the right column here at tompeters.com or you can watch the video on YouTube. [Time: 2 minutes, 41 seconds] You can also download a PDF transcript of the video's content: Strategy: Space Matters.

"I Know This Guy Joe ..."

My economics prof introduced me to "Joe" years ago. He called it the "I know a man who" theory. I'll comment, "Statistically more lefthanders per capita get into injury-causing accidents." To which you respond, "Yeah, but my best friend, Alonzo, is a leftie without a mar on his record at age 32." In your mind, Alonzo overrides my analysis based on, say, a 3,000-accident sample.

I felt like Man-who Joe had me in an armlock the other day. I was tweeting about the economic value of kindness, thoughtfulness, etc. To which someone responded with a short list of names of wildly successful entrepreneurs and artists (symphony conductors) who are out-and-out jerks.

I know such folk, too. Many thereof. Yet my "defense"—which I fervently believe—was: "Yup, X & Y & Z are indeed v. successful jerks.

"But ...

"But you and I and the vast majority of us are simply not good enough to be able to overcome significant jerk-hood. That is, for those of us who are mortal (let's say 99% ++), thoughtfulness-kindness-attentiveness is a winning strategy, perhaps the only possible winning strategy."

I refuse to be trapped by "I know this guy Joe"!

The Letter Laws

3H

Howard-Hilton-Herb. Howard Schultz, Starbucks founder, visits 25 stores a week. Master hotelier Conrad Hilton says his only advice is "Don't forget to tuck the shower curtain into the bathtub." Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher says his only advice is "You have to treat your employees as your primary customers."

My translation, more or less "all you need to know to succeed":

Stay in touch. [Howard]
Sweat the details. [Hilton]
Put your people first. [Herb.]

KRP

K = R = P
Kindness = Repeat business = Profit

LTYA

Listen.
Say "Thank you."
Apologize.

If you can become a full-fledged "professional" listener and master the arts of appreciation and apology [accountability], you will be 75 yards down the 100-yard path to success.

WDYT

What.
Do.
You.
Think.

"What do you think?" = Arguably the four most important words in business/leadership success.

RR

Resilience.
Relentlessness.

The successful person's "top 2" key traits.

RFA

Ready.
Fire.
Aim.

Vigorous action-relentless experimentation = [Only] effective foundation of progress, personal or organizational.

FFF

Fail.
Forward.
Fast.

(This is RFA's necessary handmaiden.)

ROIR

Return On Investment in Relationships.
Medium- to long-term: Relationships = Everything.
Hence: Purposeful investment in relationships is the most important "ROI."

C(I)>C(E)

Internal customers are more important than external customers when it comes to execution.

And, of course, always to be repeated in this space as my "signoff":

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

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!

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.)

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.

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!!)

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."

Superb!

Tweeted this morning. Worthy of Blog post, too. Courtesy Steve Case, who pointed to this must-read posted by Clay Shirky: "The collapse of complex business models."

Never Look Back!
Never Look Back?

I will not tell you what got me thinking about this. And a lot of other data will be suppressed as well ...

It seems to me, as I look at my career over the last 40 years and reflect on a lifetime of biography reading, that a key to success—and maybe pretty high on the list—is an ability to more or less "never look back." While reflection is imperative, too much reflection is paralyzing. In my case I know that I err, by a sizeable margin, on the "too little" end of the spectrum.

The plus is a strong action bias—holiest of holies per me.

The negative is upon occasion making the same mistake twice (little reflection after the 1st cock-up); and a de facto willingness to tolerate collateral damage.

It is the latter that's bugging me at the moment—probably triggered by the agonies of a Richter 8.0 sinus infection, not amenable to the strongest of painkillers. That is, there is a lot of collateral damage along the way that at the moment feels pretty unacceptable.

If I had to do it all over again ...

If I had to do it all over again, I think I'd pay more attention—maybe even a lot more—to that collateral damage. The result thereof is totally unpredictable—that is, there are so so many parallel universes.

But the "If I had ..." is mostly a silly exercise. If I'd been a lot more reflective then I wouldn't be who I am, and I wouldn't be writing this post.

I simply conclude that it is probably true that success, which invariably requires bulldozing skills, requires the "ability" to more or less "never look back"—and the costs can run pretty damned high.

Comments?

Strategies: Diversity Wins

In the latest addition to the video series, Tom reports that mixed-bag groups do better work than those made up of experts.

You can watch the video (2 minutes, 55 seconds) or download a transcript: Diversity Wins.

It's All About the Friendships!

I'd love to have a blurb from Bill Clinton. Lee Child does. "I love Jack Reacher."—Bill Clinton. I'm a Child-Reacher fan. Was reading The Enemy on the way home from Costa Rica. Came across this:

"Nearly a million men in the army, hundreds of billions of dollars, and it all came down to who liked who. Hey, what can you do?"

What can you do?

Nothing!

(It's the way things are.)

Everything!

(You can acknowledge reality—and attempt to make it your ally.)

In the case under consideration, there's a terrible conspiracy afoot. But forget that. The bigger fact is that while skill, etc., counts, in the end it is (more or less) all about the friendships.

(Not quite as awful—to some—as it sounds. At any given level, say, the skills are probably pretty equal, so the question is, What's the differentiator?)

All this is a dull and boring reminder that regardless of stakes or subject matter it's the collecting of allies and the maintenance and nurturing of supporters that determines whether or not things you care about get done.

So:

Check your lunch schedule this week, check your calendar. Think R.O.I.R.—Return On Investment in Relationships. What's your "investment plan" for the week?

Strategy: Be Extraordinary

The video series continues with Tom describing a meeting with Barry Gibbons, former chief of Burger King. Asked to speak to the collected BK managers, Tom sparks Barry's realization that anything is better than being ordinary.

You can watch the video (time: 3 minutes, 5 seconds).

Or get a PDF of the video transcript: Strategy: Be Extraordinary.

Strategies: First-line Supervisors, the Video

On 24 February Tom gave us his "First-line Manager20/1LM20" and declared the choice and nurturing of first-line supervisors a Peerless Strategic Opportunity. In this video, Tom explains why choosing first-line supervisors is among the most important decisions a business can make.

You can watch the video on YouTube (time:
2 minutes, 38 seconds) or download a PDF transcript.

A Peerless Strategic Opportunity:
The First-line Manager20/1LM20

The evidence is clear: Employee satisfaction and like variables are significantly, even overwhelmingly, linked to the employee's relationship with her or his first-line manager. While first-line managers are considered to be of great importance, in my experience few companies truly obsess on every aspect of their care and feeding. In fact, my observations suggest that such things as first-line manager training regimes are often of questionable quality. This is a strategic mistake. More important, a lost strategic opportunity.

What follows is a long way from the "last word"—in fact it is the "first word" from me, and simply an indicative list aimed to stir your analytic juices.

Herewith, my First-line Manager20:

1. The selection process for 1st-line managers (1LMs) should be as rigorous as that of, say, vice presidents. "360" evaluations are a must. Perhaps a selection committee should be appointed, which includes other 1LMs.


2. New hires should be selected in part on the likelihood of subsequent promotion to 1LM, and this goal should be formally emphasized from the start of their tenure.


3. 1LM slots that are open should not be filled until an appropriate (superior beyond a shadow of doubt) candidate is found.


4. 1LMs should be given long probation periods—perhaps 6 months.


5. New 1LMs should "shadow" senior 1LMs for a significant period of time.


6. 1LM training programs should be evaluated far and wide, and, based on "best practices," a stellar/"Wow" 1LM training program should be developed. The "basic" course and intensive continuing-ed curriculum should aim to win "best in class" awards.


7. 1LM designees should receive superior evaluations in "basic training" or be put on probation.


8. Given the abiding importance of cross-functional communication and coordination and synergy, 1LM selection and training and subsequent evaluation should emphasize measurable performance on this dimension. (Poor marks on XF performance should be cause at any time for probation or, after fair notice, removal from the job.)


9. Senior officers (including the CEO) and highly rated-regarded 1LMs should present parts of 1LM training modules, especially the "basic training" program.


10. "People development" should be the central element of 1LM training. (The "people development" training modules should be award-winning.)


11. Success as precisely measured in "people development" should be the central element of 1LM evaluation.


12. "Business" training should also be a central part of 1LM training.


13. 1LMs should be treated as the company's principal "culture carriers" and principal "change agents"—and be treated and trained and "used" accordingly.


14. The abiding importance–Excellence of our portfolio of 1LMs should be considered a formal "core value" of the enterprise.


15. A portfolio of "outside" training courses for 1LMs should be available during the entire tenure in the job.


16. Every 1LM should have two assigned mentors, one from within the 1LM's department, one from outside. One of the two should be a fellow 1LM. The mentoring process should be carefully constructed, not "catch as catch can;" mentors should be evaluated on their results.


17. 1LM reviews should be monthly during the probationary period, quarterly thereafter; these reviews should be carefully designed and rigorous by any standard.


18. Every department head should evaluate her or his "portfolio" of 1LMs regularly; the quality and continuing development of the 1LM portfolio should in turn be a central element in the evaluation of department heads and division heads.


19. A senior HR exec and a senior "line" exec (and perhaps an outsider) should formally evaluate the company's 1LM portfolio annually.


20. After the 1st year of 1LM service, the 1LM should be trained for and become a mentor of new 1LMs. Henceforth, mentoring success or failure should be a central measure of the 1LM's performance.

GE Model 2010?
The World Model 2010?

On March 13th of this year, the Financial Times reported that Jack Welch had reversed course on the principle he had held most dear and that had, on the back of his success in the 80s and 90s, been adopted by many if not most of America's biggest enterprises: "On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy. ... Your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products."

The reaction by many, myself included, was nothing short of amazement. "Revising" your dogma is one thing, which most all of us have done and which is a sign of flexibility, but calling your principal claim-to-fame "the dumbest idea in the world," well that's ...

Jack's successor, Jeff Immelt, in the top slot since 2001, is a different cup of tea. He is, first and foremost, juicing up R&D and placing big bets on new products and new businesses. (He's been slowed down by putrid results at GE Capital, Welch's centerpiece and the source, in its heyday, of about half of GE's earnings—reducing dependence on GE Capital is another of Immelt's strategic goals.) The fact is that long before the Great Recession, Immelt was questioning rather directly some of GE's and indeed U.S. big business's emphasis in the prior 15 or so years. Consider this, from Mr. Immelt in 2005: "Almost every personal friend I have in the world works on Wall Street. You can buy and sell the same company six times and everybody makes money, but I'm not sure we're actually innovating. ... Our challenge is to take nanotechnology into the future, to do personalized medicine ..."

Which brings us all the way to this past Wednesday and Mr. Immelt's remarks, as reported by the FT, in an address at West Point: "We are at the end of a difficult generation of business leadership [TP query: defined by you know who, Jeff?] ... Tough-mindedness, a good trait, was replaced by meanness and greed, both terrible traits. ... Rewards became perverted. The richest people made the most mistakes with the least accountability." (To be fair, accountability has long been a GE trademark.) And if that stunner was not enough, Mr. Immelt, almost alone among high-visibility CEOs, deigned to address the struggling part of our population: "The bottom 25 percent of the American population is poorer than they were 25 years ago. That is just wrong. Ethically, leaders do share a common responsibility to narrow the gap between the weak and the strong." I'd chide Mr. I on the choice of the word "weak," but all in all, it is perhaps the most stunning-amazing-incredible reversal of course I've observed since I've began watching big business about 35 years ago—though Greenspan's acknowledgment that everything he believed most dearly, such as automatic self-regulation in the financial industry, had taken a shot below the water line, comes close to Immelt's 180-degree course change. (NB: I can't help but wonder if the strength of Immelt's remarks was tied to the setting at the USMA. It's hard to sling bullshit when you are addressing several thousand kids—and they are kids—who will be off to Afghanistan in pretty short order.)

"Meanness."
"Greed."
"Terrible."
"That is just wrong."

Wow!
And: Hooray for Jeff!
(And, about bloody time!)

Success In Five Words.
Success in Nineteen Words.

It wasn't really a sleepless night. But it was "one of those nights" (not that infrequent for me) when some words start rumbling around ... and around and around. I just wanted a list of "stuff" that gets to the essence of human behavior, and thence is directly related to individual effectiveness at pretty much anything. (NB: And, ain't it always the case, "stuff" that business schools either recklessly take for granted or decide is not sophisticated enough to merit their attention.)

So here are "the real basics"—in five words. Achieve Excellence at these five things and the world (of human organizations) will pretty much be your oyster. To wit:

1. Read.


2. Write.


3. Talk.


4. Listen.


5. Appreciate.

Once the keyboard was at my command, I ended up (surprise!) extending the list to 19 words. Herewith:

1. Read.
2. Write.
3. Talk.
4. Listen.
5. Appreciate.
6. Walk.
7. Work.
8. Sweat.
9. Sweat.
10. Enthuse.
11. People.
12. Frontline.
13. Act.
14. Anger.
15. Band.
16. Apologize.
17. Weird-out.
18. Network.
19. EXCELLENCE.

Here, also in very few words, is my more or less definition of the 19 words:

1. Read. (Outstudy 'em.)


2. Write. (Clear, concise, powerful.)


3. Talk. (Presentation mastery. Study. Practice-practice-practice. Storytelling, mastery of.)


4. Listen. (Study. Practice-practice-practice. Understand enormous power thereof.)


5. Appreciate. (Engaged. Thoughtful. Compassionate. Appreciative always, enormous power thereof.)


6. Walk. (MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around. In touch. Again, learning, and learning is required, through practice.)


7. Work. (Work harder than the next person. "Balance"? Uhm ...)


8. Sweat. (Sweat the details with maniacal passion!)


9. Sweat. (Sweat the details with maniacal passion!)


10. Enthuse. (Enthusiasm moves mountains.)


11. People. (Great and engaged people>>>Great strategy. Best bosses = Best people developers.)


12. Frontline. (Firstline supervisors, quality of, determine just about everything. Must become an obsession.)


13. Act. (Most tries wins. Hence "most failures" is a concomitant reality—celebrate 'em.)


14. Anger. (Raging impatience with dumb stuff. Constantly question the status quo.)


15. Band. (Small, passionate, relentless bands of people/renegades change the world. Period. Avoid the hierarchy—it tenaciously defends the past in 9.9 cases out of 10.)


16. Apologize. ("I'm sorry," enormous power thereof. And rare, particularly among men.)


17. Weird-out. (Multiple, unusual sources of information and feedback.)


18. Network. (Develop wider-deeper-downward relationships. Think "suck down for success." Think-obsess on R.O.I.R./Return on investment in relationships. Again, women take to this instinctively.)


19. EXCELLENCE. (The only standard. ALWAYS CAPITALIZE ALL LETTERS.)

Over to you ...

The "Eight Courtesies"

The toughest part of writing a new book is choosing the epigraph—a dozen words penned by someone else that perfectly encapsulate what one has been up to for the prior five years. Well, I am entirely happy, even ecstatic, about the epigraph to The Little BIG Things*:

Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.—Henry Clay

In fact, I'm now making what I call "The 'Eight Courtesies'" the centerpiece of my presentations. Below you'll find the List of Eight. Also, I have included a fully annotated version of The Eight Courtesies PowerPoint. (And a shorter version, from shorter presentations, The Five Courtesies PowerPoint.)

The "Eight Courtesies"

1. Stay in touch. (MBWA.)


2. Invest in relationships. (Make friends. Obsess.)


3. Listen. (Respect. Learn. Student. PROFESSIONAL. Sustainable Competitive Advantage #1)


4. Ask. (Engage. Inspire. Consult. React.)


5. Thank. (Appreciate. Acknowledge.)


6. Network. ("Suck down." C(I)>C(E).)


7. Apologize. (Unequivocal. Rectify. Over-react. Forgive.)


8. Practice thoughtfulness. (Kindness is free. This is ... STRATEGIC.)

The "Five Courtesies"

1. Listen. (Respect. Learn. Student. PROFESSIONAL. Sustainable Competitive Advantage #1.)


2. Ask. (Engage. Inspire. Consult. React.)


3. Thank. (Appreciate. Acknowledge.)


4. Apologize. (Unequivocal. Rectify. Over-react. Forgive.)


5. Practice thoughtfulness. (Kindness is free. This is ... STRATEGIC.)

[*Tom's new book, The Little BIG Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence, is to appear in early 2010.—CM]

The Business World's Biggest Wasted Opportunity

[Read more by guest blogger Steve Yastrow at yastrow.com.]

There are hundreds of thousands of retail stores in the world. Today, millions of customers will walk into those stores and interact with owners or employees. Within hours, most of those interactions will have been forgotten by those millions of customers. Why? Because most of the retail interactions that occur today will be flat, uninspired, perfunctory, and transactional. Most interactions won't create sales, and an even greater number will not build a relationship between the store and the customer.

This represents millions of missed opportunities. Imagine if thousands of these retail interactions could be improved, so they are not flat, but instead, interesting, enthusiastic, engaging, and memorable. Would more sales be created for today? Would more relationships be created for tomorrow?

I happened to meet an interesting retail salesperson a few days ago. His name is Jacob Lahr, and he is a manager at the CUSP store for women at Water Tower Place in Chicago. "Even when the store is filled with tourists, who we may never see again, it's possible to clientele," Jacob explained.

"To what?" I asked. "Did you say 'to clientele'?" "Sure," Jacob continued. "It's always possible to clientele. It depends on how you relate to your customers."

Well, that's certainly my favorite new verb of the week. I asked Jacob if he coined the phrase "to clientele," and he couldn't remember if he did or if he had heard it when learning to work in retail. I googled "to clientele" and only found it listed as a noun, so I'm willing to give neologism credit to Jacob. Here's how I'll define it: "To clientele is to create a relationship-building encounter with your customer, so that the customer's relationship with the store is better when she leaves than it was when she came in." Notice that the definition doesn't say anything about making a purchase.

Jacob doesn't want to waste retail interactions. He knows how valuable they are. Not to clientele is to let a precious opportunity slip through your fingers.

So, when you enter stores this week, see if the person who interacts with you is doing a good job "clienteling," or is he/she just going through the basics of serving you. If you work in retail, how often are you able to clientele?

Just imagine how much loyalty stores could create if they were better at clienteling? Too bad most aren't very good at it. Yes, the retail encounter may be the business world's biggest untapped, wasted opportunity.

The Follies of Marketing Measurement

[Our guest blogger is Cool Friend Steve Yastrow. Find out more about Steve at Yastrow.com.]

"If you can't measure it, you shouldn't do it," is one of the stupidest concepts in business.

Many things that can't be directly measured are worth doing.

Here's a really basic example: Should you ask your receptionist to smile when guests enter your office foyer? Of course you should! There is no way to measure the impact of a smile, but you are 100% certain that it is a good idea.

There are many decisions we make every day without being able to measure their direct impact. Should you clean your office before a client visits? Should you use the same logo on your website that you use on your printed brochures?

The answers to these questions seem obvious. But there are many other ideas that are terminated prenatally for one simple reason: The executive with control of the purse strings can't, from his vantage point, see a direct return on investment from this idea.

Important point: Just because this guy can't see a return on investment doesn't mean one doesn't exist.

Our world is very complex, and we create business results through combinations of actions. The receptionist's smile, the clean office, and the standardized logo on all marketing materials combine with hundreds, or thousands, of other customer touchpoints to create a cumulative story. This overall story is what motivates a customer to act, not any one point of contact.

So how do we make decisions in this complex world? We think. We strategize. We learn so much about our businesses and our customers that we are able to make good decisions. We create Brand Harmony.

You can't measure the effect of the receptionist's smile, but here's what you can do:

• Determine what the optimal business results are that you are trying to create, and measure if they are created.
  
• Determine the optimal customer behavior that you are trying to encourage, and measure if customers are doing what you want them to do.
  
• Determine what you want your customers to believe about you, and then measure if they believe it.
  
• Determine what the optimal customer experience should be, and then measure if you are creating it.
  
• Determine what you want your employees to do, and then measure if they are doing it.
  
• Determine what you want your employees to believe about your company, and then measure if they believe it.
  
• Determine the action steps that are on strategy, and then measure if they are happening.

Determining these things will give you a framework for making decisions and measuring if your actions are heading in the right direction. Good strategy and good understanding of your business will give you confidence that your decisions are the right decisions

Don't let your boss get away with being myopic, focusing only on metrics that are right in front of his face. Transcend the mundane measures, and create real ROI.