Leading in Totally Screwed Up Times: The Leadership 30 Tom Peters/13 October 2001

All Slides Available at … tompeters.com

“There will be more confusion in the business world in the next decade than in any decade in history. And the current pace of change will only accelerate.” Steve Case

BMcC: (1) Hierarchy vs. “Network organization.” (2) NWO = “Doctrine as center of gravity”/source of motivation; distributed support & decision- making;largely self-organizing; “outside the military sphere.”

“Our military structure today is essentially one developed and designed by Napoleon.” Admiral Bill Owens, former Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

From: Weapon v. Weapon To: Org structure v. Org structure

“In an era when terrorists use satellite phones and encrypted , US gatekeepers stand armed against them with pencils and paperwork, and archaic computer systems that don’t talk to each other.” Boston Globe ( )

Benchmarking, Perils of … “The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn’t prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot.” Mark Twain

“I don’t like the looks of this. Seeing as how crazy and scattered entrepreneurs have beaten the crap out of the monoliths over the last 44 years in almost every situation, I don’t like the situation. … The actual terms of engagement work against us. For some time, it’s going to be ugly.” Rich Karlgaard, Publisher, Forbes

The Leadership 30

1. Leaders Cede Control.

“I don’t know.”

Leaders-Teachers Do Not “Transform People”! Instead leaders-mentors-teachers (1) provide a context which is marked by (2) access to a luxuriant portfolio of meaningful opportunities (projects) which (3) allow people to fully (and safely, mostly—caveat: “they” don’t engage unless they’re “mad about something”) express their innate curiosity and (4) engage in a vigorous discovery voyage (alone and in small teams, assisted by an extensive self-constructed network) by which those people (5) go to-create places they (and their mentors-teachers- leaders) had never dreamed existed—and then the leaders-mentors-teachers (6) applaud like hell, stage “photo-ops,” and ring the church bells 100 times to commemorate the bravery of their “followers’ ” explorations!

2. Great Leaders on Snorting Steeds Are Important – but Great Managers/Talent Developers (Type I Leadership) are the Bedrock of Organizations that Perform Over the Long Haul.

Model 24/7: Sports Franchise GM

P.S.: Jack didn’t have a vision!

3. But Then Again, There Are Times When This “Cult of Personality” (Type II Leadership) Stuff Actually Works!

“A leader is a dealer in hope.” Napoleon

Half-full Cups: “[Ronald Reagan] radiated an almost transcendent happiness.” Lou Cannon, George ( )

4. Find the “Businesspeople”! (Type III Leadership)

I.P.M. (Inspired Profit Mechanic)

5. All Organizations Need the Golden Leadership Triangle.

The Golden Leadership Triangle: (1) Creator- Inventor-Visionary … (2) Talent Fanatic … (3) Inspired Profit Mechanic.

Renaissance Men are … a snare, a myth, a delusion!

6. Leaders LOVE the MESS!

prior 900 years 1900s: 1 st 20 years > 1800s 2000: 10 years for paradigm shift 21 st century: 1000X tech change than 20 th century (“the ‘Singularity,’ a merger between humans and computers that is so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history”) Ray Kurzweil, talk april2001

One Strike & You’re Out: CEOs appointed after 1985 are 3X more likely to be fired than CEOs appointed before 1985 Warren Bennis, MIT Sloan Management Review

7. Leaders DO!

The Kotler Doctrine: : R.A.F. (Ready.Aim.Fire.) : R.F.A. (Ready.Fire!Aim.) 1995-????: F.F.F. (Fire!Fire!Fire!)

[ ISOE #1: A Bias for Action]

8. BUT … Leaders Know When to Wait.

Tex Schramm: The “too hard” box!

Axioms: (1) Pick your battles carefully. (2) Sometimes inaction promotes sorting out & preserves options.

9. Leaders FOCUS!

“To Don’t ” List

JackWorld/ : (1) Neutron Jack. (Banish bureaucracy.) (2) “1, 2 or out” Jack. (Lead or leave.) (3) “Workout” Jack. (Empowerment, GE style.) (4) 6-Sigma Jack. (5) Internet Jack. (Throughout) TALENT JACK!

Leaders “dump the ones who brung ’em” — Nokia, HP, 3M, PerkinElmer, Corning, Enron, etc.

10. Leaders LOVE RAINBOWS – for Pragmatic Reasons.

“Diversity defines the health and wealth of nations in a new century. Mighty is the mongrel. … The hybrid is hip. The impure, the mélange, the adulterated, the blemished, the rough, the black-and-blue, the mix-and-match – these people are inheriting the earth. Mixing is the new norm. Mixing trumps isolation. It spawns creativity, nourishes the human spirit, spurs economic growth and empowers nations.” G. Pascal Zachary, The Global Me: New Cosmopolitans and the Competitive Edge

11. Leaders Know … Women Roar/ Women Rule.

“AS LEADERS, WOMEN RULE: New Studies find that female managers outshine their male counterparts in almost every measure” Title, Special Report, Business Week,

Women’s Strengths Match New Economy Imperatives: Link [rather than rank] workers; favor interactive-collaborative leadership style [empowerment beats top-down decision making]; sustain fruitful collaborations; comfortable with sharing information; see redistribution of power as victory, not surrender; favor multi-dimensional feedback; value technical & interpersonal skills, individual & group contributions equally; readily accept ambiguity; honor intuition as well as pure “rationality”; inherently flexible; appreciate cultural diversity Source: Judy B. Rosener, America’s Competitive Secret

12. Leaders FORGET! Leaders DESTROY!

Forget>“Learn” “The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out.” Dee Hock

Forbes100 from 1917 to 1987: 39 members of the Class of ’17 were alive in ’87; 18 are in ’87 F100; the 18 F100 “survivors” underperformed the market by 20%; just 2 (2%), GE & Kodak, outperformed the market from 1917 to S&P 500 from 1957 to 1997: 74 members of the Class of ’57 were alive in ’97; 12 (2.4%) of 500 outperformed the market from 1957 to Source: Dick Foster & Sarah Kaplan, Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market

“Good management was the most powerful reason [leading firms] failed to stay atop their industries. Precisely because these firms listened to their customers, invested aggressively in technologies that would provide their customers more and better products of the sort they wanted, and because they carefully studied market trends and systematically allocated investment capital to innovations that promised the best returns, they lost their positions of leadership.” Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma

The [New] G e Way DYB.com

The Gales of Creative Destruction +29M = -44M + 73M +4M = +4M - 0M

13. BUT … Leaders Have to Deliver, So They Worry About “Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater.”

“Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t, Just Plain Damned” Subtitle in the chapter, “Own Up to the Great Paradox: Success Is the Product of Deep Grooves/ Deep Grooves Destroy Adaptivity,” Liberation Management (1992)

14. Leaders … HONOR THE USURPERS.

Saviors-in-Waiting Disgruntled Customers Upstart Competitors Rogue Employees Fringe Suppliers Wayne Burkan, Wide Angle Vision: Beat the Competition by Focusing on Fringe Competitors, Lost Customers, and Rogue Employees

“Are there enough weird people in the lab these days?” V. Chmn., pharmaceutical house, to a lab director (06.01)

15. Leaders Make [Lotsa] Mistakes – and MAKE NO BONES ABOUT IT!

Sam’s secret #1!

16. Leaders Make BIG MISTAKES!

“Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.” Phil Daniels, Sydney exec (and, de facto, Jack)

17. Leaders Pursue DRAMATIC DIFFERENCE!

1 st Law Mktg Physics: OVERT BENEFIT (Focus: 1 or 2 > 3 or 4/“One Great Thing.” Source #1: Personal Passion) 2 ND Law: REAL REASON TO BELIEVE (Stand & Deliver!) 3 RD Law: DRAMATIC DIFFERENCE (Execs Don’t Get It: “intent to purchase” – 100%; “unique” – 0% to 5%) Source: Jump Start Your Business Brain, Doug Hall

“Acquisitions are about buying market share. Our challenge is to create markets. There is a big difference.” Peter Job, CEO, Reuters

18. Leaders LOVE the New Technology!

I’net … … allows you to dream dreams you could never have dreamed before!

100 square feet

19. Needed? Type IV Leadership: Technology Dreamer-True Believer

The Golden Leadership Quadrangle: (1) Creator- Inventor-Visionary … (2) Talent Fanatic … (3) Inspired Profit Mechanic. (4) Technology Dreamer-True Believer

20. When It Comes to TALENT … Leaders Always Swing for the Fences!

Message: Some people are better than other people. Some people are a helluva lot better than other people.

21. Leaders “Manage” Their EVP/Internal Brand Promise.

MantraM3 Talent = Brand

What’s your company’s … EVP? Employee Value Proposition, per Ed Michaels et al., The War for Talent

EVP = Challenge, professional growth, respect, satisfaction, opportunity, reward Source: Ed Michaels et al., The War for Talent

22. Leaders Out Their PASSION!

G.H.: “Create a ‘cause,’ not a ‘business.’ ”

BZ: “I am a … DISPENSER OF ENTHUSIASM!”

23. Leaders Know It’s ALL SALES ALL THE TIME.

TP: If you don’t LOVE SALES … find another life. (Don’t pretend you’re a “leader.”)

WHAT AN IDIOT: “Instead of employees being in the driver’s seat, now we’re in the driver’s seat.”

PJ: “Coaching is winning players over.”

24. Leaders LOVE “POLITICS.”

TP: If you don’t LOVE POLITICS … find another life. (Don’t pretend you’re a “leader.”)

25. Leaders Give … RESPECT!

“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

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

26. Leaders … SHOW UP!

Rudy!

“It is necessary for the President to be the nation’s No. 1 actor.” FDR

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” --M.G.

27. Leaders Have a GREAT STORY!

“A key – perhaps the key – to leadership is the effective communication of a story.” Howard Gardner Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership

Leaders don’t just make products and make decisions. Leaders make meaning. – John Seeley Brown

“Early in my career in the law I learned that … he who has the best story wins.” JQ Adams/A Hopkins to T Joadson/M Freeman

28. Leaders Create BUZZ!

L.B.I.W.D. (Leading By Inducing Weird Demos)

Leaders aimed on changing their world identify palpable heroes, who executed palpable projects —they point to these people and say to the masses, “See, here it is, done by one of your own.” (And then they “deep-dip” a few of those heroes to demo their seriousness.)

29. Leaders Focus on the SOFT STUFF!

“Soft” Is “Hard”

Message: Leadership is all about love! [Passion, Enthusiasms, Appetite for Life, Engagement, Commitment, Great Causes & Determination to Make a Damn Difference, Shared Adventures, Bizarre Failures, Growth, Insatiable Appetite for Change.] [Otherwise, why bother? Just read Dilbert. TP’s final words: CYNICISM SUCKS.]

30. Leaders Know WHEN TO LEAVE!