Go to George Whalin's Cool Friends interview

Author of Retail Superstars: Inside the 25 Best Independent Stores In America, George Whalin points us to the most remarkable places to shop in this country. In his Cool Friends interview with Erik, he also recounts a story about George Harrison, a stolen guitar, and intrigue in Guadalajara. George Whalin is also the founder of Retail Management Consultants, and he blogs at Retailer Blog.

View our Archives for past interviews.

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Now Available on the Kindle

We're happy to announce that you can now subscribe to Tom's blog on the Kindle. We're still working out the kinks. For example, the graphics are not yet appearing, but we hope to have them up soon. The cost to subscribe is $1.99 USD per month. This amount is determined by the Kindle staff, we didn't have any input on that front. For those of you with iPhones, the Kindle app unfortunately does not yet allow subscriptions to periodicals or blogs. We'll let you know when that becomes available. Our thanks go out to all the readers who've expressed an interest in this as well as to David Vugteveen for very helpfully reporting back on performance. Enjoy!

Shelley Dolley posted this on 06/05.
Permalink | Comments (7) |

Another Career Option Bites the Dust

I guess I can never be a Supreme Court justice.

I am befuddled by the Sotomayor brouhaha over the view of the world from the eyes of a female Latina.

Of course it's different.
Duh!

For one [big] thing, women, Latina and others, are more compassionate then men—and behave accordingly.
Duh!
And: Praise the Lord!

Racism?
The system of laws under which we [Americans, Brits, etc.] live was built by white guys, for white guys, and is, by and large, administered by white guys to this day.
Duh!

I have made out like a bandit since birth courtesy racism; that is, by being a white guy, better yet Anglo-Saxon white guy, in a world designed for and controlled by white guys—that is, a world designed especially for me me me me!!
Duh!

Do Gingrich and others [read: other white guys] really feel that they are free of bias?
Nobody could be that blind or un-self aware.
Right?
(Gingrich is an historian for God's sake.)

I have biases piled on top of biases piled on top of biases—only a small share of which I am even aware, but which directly and indirectly affect everything I do.
Duh!

(I always start my speeches with the same disclaimer: "Many who do what I do pretend that they are totally rational beings. Well, I'm not. Not even close. I carry a big bag of biases which color every word I utter—for example, I lived in Silicon Valley for 35 years; hence, everything I say inadvertently passes through an absurdly influential 'Silicon Valley-California' filter. Etc.")

Every human being—including our nine Justices—carry to work ships full of biases which get expressed in a zillion ways.
Duh!

This post is only peripherally about Judge Sotomayor.
It is, in the main, about the biases we all bring to work every day—and our awareness thereof; or lack thereof.

The implications are staggering!
(I.e., they determine every decision we make!)

(By the way, just to set the record straight, if I haven't in the last 15 years: I do definitely think the world would be a better place if women constituted the majority—significant majority?—of Prime Ministers and Presidents and Judges. Among other things, I suspect there would be less war, less violence in general, less environmental degradation and, "OMG," more com-pass-ion.)

Imaginary headline, June 2011:

"Sotomayor Brings Compassion to the Supremes"
Horrid thought, eh?

Tom Peters posted this on 06/05.
Permalink | Comments (118) |

TomChirp #13

Alas, Detroit deserves virtually all the darts and arrows thrown its way. Nonetheless, I would point out that GM's May 2008-May2009 sales fell "only" 29%, while Toyota's (They-Who-Can-Do-No-Wrong) "dipped" 41%. (Honda was down 42%—only Chrysler-dear-Chrysler-uhm-Fiat was worse, at minus 47%.) (And if you want to know just how bad things are, the numbers above were generally considered good news!!??)

Tom Peters posted this on 06/04.
Permalink | Comments (22) |

Could It Be This "Simple" #1?

In his superb (What's new?) 2 June New York Times column, "The Quagmire Ahead," David Brooks begins his assessment of the GM fiasco by citing an internal memo written in 1988 by EVP Elmer Johnson:

"We have vastly underestimated how deeply ingrained are the organizational and cultural rigidities that hamper our ability to execute."

That quote reminds me of another, this one by Norberto Odebrecht, head of the Brazilian-based heavy-industrial conglomerate, Odebrecht:

"Data drawn from the real world attest to a fact that is beyond our control: Everything in existence tends to deteriorate."

"Simple" fact: Accompanying GM's longtime designation of "biggest" came Olympian accompanying "rigidities." One is reminded of yet another quote, this from Walt Kelly's Pogo:

"We have met the enemy and he is us."

Business schools, the always helpful whipping boys in my rants, focus on the "cool" FMS troika. (Finance-Marketing-Strategy.) And yet it is the internal organizational characteristics, MIA in B-schools (not sexy enough), that trip companies up. "Rigidities" that impede the ability to "execute" are the culprits behind shoddy performance in 9 out of 9.01 cases.

Toyota didn't do in GM.
Honda didn't do in GM.
Nissan didn't do in GM.

GM did in GM.

This is not news.
It is, however, worth restating.
And I shall do so.
Again.
And again.
And then again.

We have met the enemy.
He is us.

(NB: Brooks' analysis of the GM situation is frightening, and, I fear, accurate. Among other things, he suggests that we've put the foxes in charge of the chicken coop—e.g., same tired execs, same tired union bosses; and further distanced the company from outside winds.)

Tom Peters posted this on 06/04.
Permalink | Comments (28) |

100 Ways to Succeed #172:

Rigidity Watch!
Start Today!

"Rigidities" is not just the problem of Giants. Rigidity is a disease in 3-person accountancies and 11-table restaurants only one year old.

Stop what you are doing.
Right now.

Call your best customer.
Ask: How are we doing compared to a year ago? Six months ago? Are we making your life more complicated? Are we more bureaucratic in any way, shape, or form? Are we slowing down? Do we ever say, "I'd like to do that for you, but ..."? Etc.

Call your best vendor.
Repeat the above.

Visit your newest employee.
Ask: Have you run across procedures since you got here that you think are silly or over-complicated? If so, have you passed your concerns along? If you haven't, why not—do we make it intimidating to surface such concerns? If you have passed such concerns along, have you been praised for doing so? Has anything happened?

At every Exec Group meeting, set aside a 15-minute block to discuss a "dumbest thing we've done lately" item—insist that members bring a case along for discussion.

There's nothing special about my suggestions here—they are not necessarily meant to be followed, but merely to get you thinking about some anti-rigidity rituals you might invent.

Tom Peters posted this on 06/04.
Permalink | Comments (3) |

Could It Be This "Simple" #2?

Another of our very best business analysts, James B. Stewart, offered this "simple" commentary in the 3 June Wall Street Journal:

"It has been long in coming, this slow death of what was once the greatest and biggest corporation in the world. The myriad causes of its demise have been thoroughly chronicled, but to my mind one stands out: The custodians of GM simply gave up trying to build the best cars in the world. To accommodate a host of competing interests, from shareholders to bondholders to labor, they repeatedly compromised on excellence. [My italics.] Once sacrificed, that reputation has proved impossible to recapture. ... Can anyone say GM builds the best cars in any category?"

Tom Peters posted this on 06/04.
Permalink | Comments (7) |

100 Ways to Succeed #173:

EXCELLENCE Watch!
Start Today!
Repeat Daily!

Consider the 3 (or 2 or 5) meetings you've been to today. Consider the 3 project milestones just buttoned up—or the 3 on the near horizon:

Has the word "EXCELLENCE" per se been used as a basis for evaluating your actions? Could you personally call the outcome of each meeting or the nature of the milestone/s achieved or approaching "Excellent"?

Key idea: The "Excellence Standard" is not about Grand Outcomes. In Zen terms, all we have is today. If the day's work cannot be assessed as Excellent, then the oceanic overall goal of Excellence has not been advanced. Period.

That is, the "Excellence Watch" must be a daily affair—or you simply are not serious about the overall Standard of Excellence.

Tom Peters posted this on 06/04.
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The Quality 136:
All Yours!

The "Quality 10" became the "Quality 121," which I sent your way from India. Since getting home, I've added to it, and the Quality 121 has become the Quality 136. You'll find it here, with substantial edits since the original, in both PDF and PowerPoint formats.

Tom Peters posted this on 06/04.
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How Come?

A friend is going on a tough deployment for the U.S. Army. He is incredibly well trained. What's he doing? Training and training. And then training.

I acknowledge the Army situation is about life and death. But it is also a "profession."

Why does the Army, from recruit to general, train and train—but, mostly, the private sector does a smidgeon of individual training and virtually no unit training, let alone combined unit training?

(What would happen, for example, if you were a retail store owner, and were open one less day than normal each week—and devoted that full day you were closed, with full staff, yes, once a week, to training of various imaginative—and boring—sorts?)

Tom Peters posted this on 06/01.
Permalink | Comments (124) |

Memory Lane:
Long Time Comin'

During the heydays of In Search of Excellence, a Stanford economics professor under whom I'd studied invited me to a business economists' seminar—my one and only visit to a forum of professional economists.

I have only one memory. Namely, a GM staff economist, red-faced (literally), accosting my prof to castigate him for inviting me. During the prior couple of years, or prior 5 or 6 years (?), GM's market share had dropped from 45% to 36%. I had said that GM had "lost 20% of its market share in the last X years"—obviously accurate. (That is: 9/45 = .20.) This guy went on and on (and on!) about having "only" lost 9%. He was right in absolute terms—obviously. (Yes, 45 – 36 = 9.) And I was obviously right in relative terms.

The memory this morning is of this little-trivial "moment of denial" (dear god, 9% is awful) which, alas, has been characteristic of the last 30 years of GM's history. The depth of the GM malaise, of course, is why we the taxpayers are highly unlikely to get much or any of our $50 billion plus back that we are about to "invest."

(I know why we're doing what we're doing and concede it's probably necessary; but, at age 66, having just flown around the world in one week and eight hours, it is annoying to realize that a few minutes of those grueling hours will have been devoted to generating tax dollars going to GM to extend their public agony; I'd rather have said tax $$, which I don't begrudge Uncle Sam, going to, say, university biotech research—i.e., tomorrow rather than yesterday.)

I chose this morning to think about Cisco and Apple and Oracle and Google and Walmart and Whole Foods and Starbucks and Amgen and Medtronic and Basement Systems and all the other great American companies that now define us. And the unknown wee companies, founded yesterday or the day before, that will knock off the Starbucks and Ciscos—long live creative destruction, the true engine of longterm prosperity.

Tom Peters posted this on 06/01.
Permalink | Comments (34) |

TomChirp #12

Cisco replaces GM in DJIA!
Welcome to the 21st century!
GM, thanks for the memories! (And that is not not not a sarcastic remark!!)

Tom Peters posted this on 06/01.
Permalink | Comments (27) |

Quality!
Excellence!
New Delhi!

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

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

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

Tom Peters posted this on 05/29.
Permalink | Comments (65) |

Cool Friend #138: Diane Hessan

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

Cathy Mosca posted this on 05/29.
Permalink | Comments (8) |

Tom Meets His Neighbor, Cubist Pharmaceuticals ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tom Peters posted this on 05/27.
Permalink | Comments (41) |

Event: Seoul

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

Cathy Mosca posted this on 05/25.
Permalink | Comments (5) |

Memorial Day 2009

Note and flowers at the Vietnam Memorial

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

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

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

A very young Tom on a bridge in Vietnam

Tom Peters posted this on 05/23.
Permalink | Comments (8) |

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

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

Off to Seoul tomorrow!

Tom Peters posted this on 05/21.
Permalink | Comments (6) |

Science "Fiction"

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

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

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

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

Tom Peters posted this on 05/20.
Permalink | Comments (65) |

Go, Larry!

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

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

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

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

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

Busy:

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

Growth:

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

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

Tom Peters posted this on 05/20.
Permalink | Comments (7) |

TomChirp #11

Warning!
Strong Language Follows!

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

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

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

To the airlines I say: Stuff it!!!

Tom Peters posted this on 05/20.
Permalink | Comments (20) |

2009 Recalibration: Part 6

Is your internal brand clear and compelling?

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

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

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

6. How clear and compelling is your internal brand?

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

[read more]

Steve Yastrow posted this on 05/20.
Permalink | Comments (19) |

Cool Friend #137: Matthew May

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

Cathy Mosca posted this on 05/19.
Permalink | Comments (11) |

Update from a Cool Friend

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

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

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

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

Cathy Mosca posted this on 05/19.
Permalink | Comments (1) |

Oops!

Oops%21.jpg Another new book from one of the Cool Friends is Oops! from Aubrey Daniels. Its subtitle says it all: 13 Management Practices That Waste Time & Money (and what to do instead). Check it out and let us know your impression.