“It suddenly occurred to me … to me …

“It suddenly occurred to me … Les Wexner: “It suddenly occurred to me …

“It suddenly occurred to me … that in the space of two or three hours he never talked about cars.”

“Tom, let me tell you the definition of a good lending officer. …

After church on Sunday, on the way home with his family, he takes a little detour to drive by the factory he just lent money to. Doesn’t go in or any such thing, just drives by and takes a look.” “Tom, let me tell you the definition of a good lending officer. After church on Sunday, on the way home with his family, he takes a little detour to drive by the factory he just lent money to. Doesn’t go in or any such thing, just drives by and takes a look.”

Conrad Hilton, at a gala celebrating his life, was asked, “What was the most important lesson you learned in your long and distinguished career?” His immediate answer …

His immediate answer: “remember to tuck the shower curtain inside the bathtub.”

Container store: 2x training$$$

Tom Peters’ EXCELLENCE. ALWAYS. Leaders in Dubai/17 November 2008

NOTE: To appreciate this presentation [and ensure that it is not a mess ], you need Microsoft fonts: “Showcard Gothic,” “Ravie,” “Chiller” and “Verdana”

Slides at … tompeters.com

Context. excellence.

EXCELLENCE.

“Insanely great” “Insanely great” Steve Jobs

“Radically thrilling” “Radically thrilling” BMW

“astonish me” “astonish me” Sergei Diaghilev

! ! TP

Context. core beliefs. Bad Times. Good Times. All times.

MBWA

5K/5M

“We have a ‘strategic plan.’ It’s called doing things.” “We have a ‘strategic plan.’ It’s called doing things.” — Herb Kelleher

“FAIL, FAIL AGAIN. FAIL BETTER.” “FAIL, FAIL AGAIN. FAIL BETTER.” —Samuel Beckett

“Execution is strategy.” —Fred Malek

Socks = 10K

In touch. relationships. tries. Screw-up s. Execution. K.I.S.S. Hands o In touch. relationships. tries. Screw-up s. Execution. K.I.S.S.

Context. BLACK SWAN.

The Black Swan has landed!

The Black Swan 43: Tactical Rules for Survival (and success) in Ugly times

Black Swan Tactical Rules 1. K.I.S.S. 2. Hammer on the basics. 3. Focus on us, not the competition. 4. Puzzle-solving: How to turn this into an opportunity. into an opportunity. 5. MBWA/X. 6. MBWA/I. 7. MBWA/Vendors. 8. Waaaaay over-communicate.

Black Swan Tactical Rules 9. All work is team work. 10. Transparency. 11. Work the phones. 12. Perception of fairness. 13. Share the pain. 14. Thoughtfulness. 15. Grace!! 16. “Thank you.” 17. Calm. Cool. Collected. 18. Constant attitude checks—you.

Black Swan Tactical Rules 19. Dress for success. 20. Avoid burnout/you, the team, the entire organization. the entire organization. 21. Re-emphasize the company values-philosophy. (Now, more than values-philosophy. (Now, more than ever.) ever.) 22. Quality!!!!!! (Now, more than ever.) 23. No corner cutting. (Now, more than ever.) than ever.) 24. Constant reviews/War room. 25. Celebration of small wins.

Black Swan Tactical Rules 34. Increase customer-service training. training. 35. In general, minimize training cuts. 36. Be(very)ware R&D cuts; fund R&D quick pay SWAT teams. R&D quick pay SWAT teams. 37. Beware such things as sales travel cuts, ad cuts. travel cuts, ad cuts. 38. “Across the board” = Dumb. 39. Is this a time to over-invest if cash is at hand? (E.g., distressed innovative start-ups?) (E.g., distressed innovative start-ups?)

Black Swan Tactical Rules 40. Stealth work on the likes of XF communication. XF communication. 41. This could last a long time— LT prep is necessary now. LT prep is necessary now. 42. Prepare/Be prepared for more Black Swans. Black Swans. 43. Excellence. (Now, more than ever.) more than ever.)

“ I do not accept the explanation of a recession negatively effecting the [new] business. There are still people traveling. We just have to get them to stay in our hotel.” —Horst Schulze, former president of Ritz Carlton, on the launch of his new luxury hotel chain, Capella, from Prestige (06.08)

Context. Organizations exist to serve.

Organizations exist to serve. Period. Leaders live to serve. Period. serve. Period.

Why in the World did you go to Siberia? go to Siberia?

Enterprise* ** (*at its best): An emotional, vital, innovative, joyful, creative, entrepreneurial endeavor that elicits maximum concerted human concerted human potential in the wholehearted service of others **Employees, Customers, Suppliers, Communities, Owners, Temporary partners potential in the wholehearted service of others.** **Employees, Customers, Suppliers, Communities, Owners, Temporary partners

Organizations exist to serve. Period. Leaders live to serve. Period. Passionate servant leaders, determined to create a legacy of earthshaking transformation in their domain create/must necessarily create organizations which are … no less than “Cathedrals” in which the full and awesome power of the Imagination in which the full and awesome power of the Imagination and Spirit and native Entrepreneurial flair of diverse individuals is unleashed … In passionate pursuit of jointly perceived soaring purpose and personal and community and client service Excellence. and Spirit and native Entrepreneurial flair of diverse individuals is unleashed … In passionate pursuit of jointly perceived soaring purpose and personal and community and client service Excellence.

"We all start out in life loving our fathers and mothers above everything else in the world, but that does not close the doors of love. That prepares us to love our wives and husbands and children and friends and to cooperate with and show respect to all worthy individuals with whom we come in contact or have an opportunity to reach in other ways. We must apply that to nations and to other businesses. "We in IBM must not confine our thoughts just to IBM. We must extend our cooperation to all other businesses whether we do business with them or not. We are one cog in the industrial wheel. "Then as citizens we must extend our respect to all worthy people in all nations. We are moving along in troublesome times, but the love of these various things of which I have spoken and of the people in whom we are interested is going to be the great force which will make us all appreciate the spiritual values which constitute the only solid foundation on which we can build." Thomas J. Watson, Sr. address to IBM Sales and Service Class 525 and Customer Engineers Class 528, IBM Country Club, Endicott, NY, October 30, 1941

Organizations exist to serve. Period. Leaders live to serve. Period. serve. Period.

people power: The talent 30

1. people! People! people! People!

“The most important decisions businesspeople make are not ‘what’ decisions but ‘who’ decisions.” —Jim Collins, Good to Great

TP: TP: “How to flush $500,000 down the toilet in one easy lesson!!”

People! People!

Wegmans

2. The “Customer” is “Job #1”!

And that principal customer is …

“You have to treat your employees like customers.” —Herb Kelleher, complete answer, upon being asked his “secrets to success” Source: Joe Nocera, NYT, “Parting Words of an Airline Pioneer,” on the occasion of Herb Kelleher’s retirement after 37 years at Southwest Airlines (SWA’s pilots union took out a full-page ad in USA Today thanking HK for all he had done; across the way in Dallas American Airlines’ pilots were picketing the Annual Meeting)

The Customer Comes Second —Hal Rosenbluth

3. “Soft” Is “Hard.”

Excellence1982: The Bedrock “Eight Basics” Excellence1982: The Bedrock “Eight Basics” 1. A Bias for Action 2. Close to the Customer 3. Autonomy and Entrepreneurship 4. Productivity Through People 5. Hands On, Value-Driven 6. Stick to the Knitting 7. Simple Form, Lean Staff 8. Simultaneous Loose-Tight Properties” Properties”

“Breakthrough” 82* People! People!Customers!Action!Values! *In Search of Excellence

Hard Is Soft Soft Is Hard

“Hard” Is Soft (Plans, # s ) “Soft” Is Hard (people, customers, values, relationships)

4. The “Find ’em” obsession: Biz “Strategic” Priority #1 ?!.

“ Development can help great people be even better— but if I had a dollar to spend, I’d spend 70 cents getting the right person in the door.” — Paul Russell, Director, Leadership & Development, Google

C ta O talent acquisition C ta O* *Chief talent acquisition Officer

#1. Strategic. Priority. Period.

5. Focus on the #1 determinant of employee satisfaction (or the lack thereof)

Employee retention & satisfaction: Overwhelmingly, based on the first- line manager! Source: Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman, First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently

6. “Legacy” = 10!

2/year = legacy.

“Big Three” Recruit-Hire. 1 st line supervisors. Promotion decisions. And?????

7. Talent “Excellence” Stretches Far Beyond Our Borders.

We are the company we keep we keep

Measure “Strangeness”/Portfolio Quality Staff Consultants Vendors Out-sourcing Partners (#, Quality) Innovation Alliance Partners Customers Competitors (who we “benchmark” against) Strategic Initiatives Product Portfolio (LineEx v. Leap) IS/IT Projects HQ Location Lunch Mates Language Board

The “We are what we eat” axiom: At its core, every (!!!) relationship-partnership decision (employee, vendor, customer, etc) is a strategic decision about: “Innovate, ‘Yes’ or ” The “We are what we eat” axiom: At its core, every (!!!) relationship-partnership decision (employee, vendor, customer, etc) is a strategic decision about: “Innovate, ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ ”

“[CEO A.G.] Lafley has shifted P&G’s focus on inventing all its own products to developing others’ inventions at least half the time. One successful example Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, based on a product found in an Osaka market.” —Fortune

8. Expand the definition of “our” talent pool: Master “Crowd-sourcing,” “Wikiworld”!

CEO/ Goldcorp Inc./ Red Lake Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams Rob McEwen/CEO/ Goldcorp Inc./ Red Lake gold Source: Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams

“The Billion-man Research Team: Companies offering work to online communities are reaping the benefits of ‘crowdsourcing.’” —Headline, FT,

“Technology massively multiplies soft power—particularly video technology, and particularly in the hands of non-state actors. … The power and distinction of a government’s voice is lost in the competing chatter, and in some ways it becomes the least compelling simply because it’s the least novel. It’s not just words competing against words. Images are now competing against images. People are visual creatures, and they tend to respond to videos and pictures on a much less rational and much more visceral level. … YouTube (and whatever follows it) will soon have greater global influence over narratives about international events (if it doesn’t already) than any government information source could hope to have.” —Foreign Policy, Nov-Dec 2008

obama vs M c Cain

We ARE NAKED. The entire distributed community is part of our “corporate culture.” The entire distributed community is part of our “Brand.” We are accountable to the entire distributed community. Our power can multiply overnight. Our power can dissipate in a click. to the entire distributed community. Our power can multiply overnight. Our power can dissipate in a click.

9. Diversity of every sort!

“ Diverse groups of problem solvers — groups of people with diverse tools — consistently outperformed groups of the best and the brightest. If I formed two groups, one random (and therefore diverse) and one consisting of the best individual performers, the first group almost always did better. … Diversity trumped ability. ” — Scott Page, The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies Diversity

Carnegie Mellon Prof Richard Florida on “Creative Capital”: “You cannot get a technologically innovative place … unless it’s open to weirdness, eccentricity and difference.” Source: New York Times

10. Women Dominate Economics !

“Forget China, India and the Internet : Economic Growth Is Driven by Women. ” —Headline, Economist, April 15, 2006, Leader, page 14

“One thing is certain: Women’s rise to power, which is linked to the increase in wealth per capita, is happening in all domains and at all levels of society. Women are no longer content to provide efficient labor or to be consumers with rising budgets and more autonomy to spend. … This is just the beginning. The phenomenon will only grow as girls prove to be more successful than boys in the school system. For a number of observers, we have already entered the age of ‘womenomics,’ the economy as thought out and practiced by a woman.” —Aude Zieseniss de Thuin, Financial Times

11. Talent Masters Focus on Talent’s Intangibles.

EMPHASIZE THE “SOFT SKILLS.”

12. Hire enthusiasm!

“Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.” “Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.” —Samuel Taylor Coleridge

13. Hire for _____!

14. Embrace the “action Faction”!

“We made mistakes, of course. Most of them were omissions we didn’t think of when we initially wrote the software. We fixed them by doing it over and over, again and again. We do the same today. While our competitors are still sucking their thumbs trying to make the design perfect, we’re already on prototype version # 5. By the time our rivals are ready with wires and screws, we are on version ready with wires and screws, we are on version # 10. It gets back to planning versus acting: We act from day one; others plan how to plan— for months.” —Bloomberg by Bloomberg # 10. It gets back to planning versus acting: We act from day one; others plan how to plan— for months.” —Bloomberg by Bloomberg

15. Cheer [and promote for!] the worthy failures!

“In business, you reward people for taking risks. When it doesn’t work out you promote them-because they were willing to try new things. If people tell me they skied all day and never fell down, I tell them to try a different mountain.” —Mike Bloomberg

16. Exalt the “dull” Doers!!

“eighty percent of success is showing up.” —Woody Allen

17. Hire and Promote for “relationship excellence.”

Highest R.O.I.R. Wins!

Return on investment in relationships

18. HR Sits at The Head Table.

A review of Jack and Suzy Welch’s Winning claims there are but two key differentiators that set GE “culture” apart from the herd: *** Separating financial forecasting and performance measurement. Performance measurement based, as it usually is, on budgeting leads to an epidemic of gaming the system. GE’s performance measurement is divorced from budgeting—and instead reflects how you do relative to your past performance and relative to competitors’ performance; i.e., it’s about how you actually do in the context of what happened in the real world, not as compared to a gamed-abstract plan developed last year. *** Putting HR on a par with finance and marketing.

19. Goal: Amazing quests! Life Success! Dreams Come true! [for everyone ]

“The role of the Director is to create a space where the actors and actresses can become more than they’ve ever been before, more than they’ve dreamed of being.” —Robert Altman, Oscar acceptance speech

“We are a ‘Life Success’ Company.” “We are a ‘Life Success’ Company.” Dave Liniger, founder, RE/MAX

We All Have Dreams! Collective Dream Fulfillment = Business Performance EXCELLENCE “What is an employee’s purpose? Most would say, ‘to help the company achieve its purpose’—but they would be wrong. That is certainly part of the employee’s role, but an employee’s primary purpose is to become the-best-version-of- himself or –herself.” —Matthew Kelly, The Dream Manager We All Have Dreams! Collective Dream Fulfillment = Business Performance EXCELLENCE “What is an employee’s purpose? Most would say, ‘to help the company achieve its purpose’—but they would be wrong. That is certainly part of the employee’s role, but an employee’s primary purpose is to become the-best-version-of- himself or –herself.” —Matthew Kelly, The Dream Manager

20. Re-name “HR.”

Talent Department

Dream Realization Department

21. Training I: Train! Train! Train!

26.3HPY

It’s a numbers game! (mostly)

22. Training II: MBA S relevant to GTD! [Getting things Done]

The GTD* MBA *Getting Things Done

Core *Managing people I, II, III, IV *Creating and managing systems with high impact with high impact *Leadership I, II * Servant leadership * Execution I, II, III *Creating a “Try it now”-“Fail Forward Fast”-“Ready. Fire. Aim.” “culture” Fast”-“Ready. Fire. Aim.” “culture” *Maximizing ROIR [Return On Investment in Relationships] in Relationships] * Sales I, II, III, IV *Service basics I, II *Creating incredible customer experiences experiences

Core *The art and science of influence I, II *Crucial conversations-Crucial confrontations confrontations *Accounting* I, II [*acctg., not “finance”] *Accountability I, II *Calendar mastery/Mastering “to don’t” * MBWA I, II *Nurturing and harvesting curiosity in one and all in one and all *Giving great presentations I, II * Active listening I, II * Excellence as aspiration, Excellence everywhere, Excellence everywhere, Excellence all the time Excellence all the time

Other *Recruiting top talent for 100% of enterprise jobs enterprise jobs * Recruiting for smiles, enthusiasm, energy energy *Nurturing top talent * Helping people (employees, customers, vendors, customers, vendors, communities) grow and realize communities) grow and realize their dreams their dreams *The promotion decision *Women as pre-eminent leaders *The power of decentralization—and the barriers thereto the barriers thereto

Other * The art of finding and loving freaks freaks *Creating an environment of respect and decency and decency *The pre-eminent role of emotion in everything everything * Saying “thank you” I, II * Aggressive apologizing * Giving good phone, working the phones phones *Creating and nurturing lasting win-win alliances alliances *The real “stuff”-basics of cross- functional excellence functional excellence

Other *The Art of the Nudge *Rapid prototyping of everything, and the Art of Serious Play and the Art of Serious Play * Rewarding failures *Increasing a business’s metabolic rate *Diversity power everywhere *The power of universal transparency

23. Training III: The REAL Bedrock of the “Talent Thing.”

“My wife and I went to a [kindergarten] parent-teacher conference and were informed that our budding refrigerator artist, Christopher, would be receiving a grade of Unsatisfactory in art. We were shocked. How could any child—let alone our child—receive a poor grade in art at such a young age? His teacher informed us that he had refused to color within the lines, which was a state requirement for demonstrating ‘grade-level motor skills.’ ” —Jordan Ayan, AHA!

24. Re- spect!

“It was much later that I realized Dad’s secret. He gained respect by giving it. He talked and listened to the fourth-grade kids in Spring Valley who shined shoes the same way he talked and listened to a bishop or a college president. He was seriously interested in who you were and what you had to say.” Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Respect

25. Encourage Dis -respect!

All You Need to Know About “Sources of Innovation”: Angry people! [angry with the status quo]

26. Talent Excellence! Leaders who ask! Leaders who listen!

“The four most important words in any organization are … ‘What do you think?’ ” are … ‘What do you think?’ ” Source: courtesy Dave Wheeler, posted at tompeters.com, source of posted at tompeters.com, source of original unknown ( ) original unknown ( )

18”

27. Thank You !

“The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.” William James

28. We Are All Unique.

“The key difference between checkers and chess is that in checkers the pieces all move the same way, whereas in chess all the pieces move differently. … Discover what is unique about each person and capitalize on it.” —Marcus Buckingham, The One Thing You Need to Know

The mediocre manager believes that most things are learnable and therefore that the essence of management is to identify each person’s weaker areas and eradicate them. The great manager believes the opposite. He believes that the most influential qualities of a person are innate and therefore that the essence of management is to deploy these innate qualities as effectively as possible and so drive performance.” —Marcus Buckingham, The One Thing You Need to Know “ The mediocre manager believes that most things are learnable and therefore that the essence of management is to identify each person’s weaker areas and eradicate them. The great manager believes the opposite. He believes that the most influential qualities of a person are innate and therefore that the essence of management is to deploy these innate qualities as effectively as possible and so drive performance.” —Marcus Buckingham, The One Thing You Need to Know

29. Talent = Brand.

To develop and manage talent; to apply that talent, throughout the world, for the benefit of clients; to do so in partnership; to do so with profit. Our Mission To develop and manage talent; to apply that talent, throughout the world, for the benefit of clients; to do so in partnership; to do so with profit. WPP

Brand = Talent.

30. excellence.

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. Michelangelo