Tom Peters’ Re-Imagine EXCELLENCE ! Firebirds Annual Managers Awards Meeting

1. Tom Peters’ Re-ImagineEXCELLENCE! Firebirds Annual Managers Awards Meeting Marriott Harbor Beach Resort & Spa/30 March 2015 (For more see tompeters.com and our fully annotated 23-part Master Compendium [“Mother of All Presentations”] at excellencenow.com)

2. YOUR CUSTOMERS WILL NEVER BE ANY HAPPIER THAN YOUR EMPLOYEES.

3. Conveyance:Kingfisher AirLocation:Approach/New Delhi

4. “May I clean your glasses, sir?”

5. “Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.”—Henry Clay"Let's not forget that small emotions are the great captains of our lives."—Van Gogh

6. Kindness = Repeat Business = Profit.

7. “What employees experience, Customers will. The best marketing is happy, engaged employees.YOUR CUSTOMERS WILL NEVER BE ANY HAPPIER THAN YOUR EMPLOYEES.”—John DiJulius, The Customer Service Revolution: Overthrow Conventional Business, Inspire Employees, and Change the World

8. “It may sound radical, unconventional, and bordering on being a crazy business idea. However— as ridiculous as it sounds—joy is the core belief of our workplace. Joy is the reason my company, Menlo Innovations, a customer software design and development firm in Ann Arbor, exists. It defines what we do and how we do it. It is the single shared belief of our entire team.” —Richard Sheridan, Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love

9. Monocle:“Do you want to be liked or respected?” Yoshiharu Hoshino, Hoshino Resorts:“Management should be liked.’

10. Master or Mauled in the Age of Social Media: “What used to be ‘word of mouth’ is now ‘word of mouse.’ You are either creating brand ambassadors or brand terrorists doing brand assassination.” —John DiJulius, The Customer Service Revolution: Overthrow Conventional Business, Inspire Employees, and Change the World

11. People: 1/4,096

12. “You have to treat your employees like customers.”—Herb Kelleher, upon being asked his “secret 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 picketingAA’s Annual Meeting)

13. "When I hire someone, that's when I go to work for them.”—John DiJulius, "What's the Secret to Providing a World-class Customer Experience"

14. “We look for ... listening, caring, smiling, saying ‘Thank you,’ being warm.” — Colleen Barrett, former President, Southwest Airlines

15. “It’s simple, really, Tom. Hire fors, and, aboveall, promote fors.”—Starbucks regional manager, on why so many smiles at Starbucks shops

16. “May I help you down the jetway.”

17. “hostmanship”/ “consideration renovation”

18. “The path to a hostmanshipculture paradoxically does not go through the guest. In fact it wouldn’t be totally wrong to say that the guest has nothing to do with it. True hostmanship leaders focus on their employees. What drives exceptionalism is finding the right people and getting them to love their work and see it as a passion. ... The guest comes into the picture only when you are ready to ask, ‘Would you prefer to stay at a hotel where the staff love their work or where management has made customers its highest priority?’”“We went through the hotel and made a ... ‘consideration renovation.’ Instead of redoing bathrooms, dining rooms, and guest rooms, we gave employees new uniforms, bought flowers and fruit, and changed colors.Our focus was totally on the staff.They were the ones we wanted to make happy.We wanted them to wake up every morning excited about a new day at work.” —Jan Gunnarsson and Olle Blohm, Hostmanship: The Art of Making People Feel Welcome.

19. “ … The guest comes into the picture only when you are ready to ask, ‘Would you prefer to stay at a hotel where the staff love their work or where management has made customers its highest priority?’”

20. Rocket Science. NOT. “If you want staff to give great service, give great service to staff.” —Ari Weinzweig, Zingerman’s Source: Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, Bo Burlingham

21. 1996-2014/12 companies every year/ 341,567 new jobs/+172%:PublixWhole FoodsWegmansNordstromCisco SystemsMarriottREIGoldman SachsFour SeasonsSAS InstituteW.L. GoreTDIndustriesSource: Fortune/ “The 100 Best Companies to Work For”/0315.15

22. 100 Best Companies to Work for, 1984-2009:Plus 3.5% per annum risk adjusted returnsSource: Fortune/“The 100 Best Companies to Work For”/0315.15/Alex Edmunds, Wharton

23. “Contrary to conventional corporate thinking, treating retail workers much better may make everyone (including their employers) much richer.”* ** *Duh! **Cited in particular, The Good Jobs Strategy, by M.I.T. professor Zeynep Ton.

24. “I didn’t have a ‘mission statement’ at Burger King. I had a dream. Very simple. It was something like, ‘Burger King is 250,000 people, every one of whom gives a shit.’ Every one. Accounting. Systems. Not just the drive through. Everyone is ‘in the brand.’ That’s what we’re talking about, nothing less.”— Barry Gibbons, former CEO, Burger King

25. Training = Investment#1!

26. 6/2/3* *It takes Jerry Seinfeld SIX MONTHS to develop TWO or THREE MINUTES of new material (documentary: Comedian)

27. 2X

28. In the Army, 3-star generals worry about training. In most businesses, it's a “ho-hum” mid-level staff function.

29. Basketball coach John Wooden, perhaps the best coach of anything, ever:“I was never much of a game coach, but I was a pretty good practice coach.” Hall of fame football coach Bill Walsh on preparation: “The score takes care of itself.”

30. Bet:> 8 of 10 CEOs, in 45-min “tour d’horizon” of their biz, would NOT mention training.

31. Is your CTO/Chief Training Officer your top paid “C-level” job (other than CEO/COO)? If not, why not? Are your top trainers paid as much as your top marketers and engineers? If not, why not? Are your training courses so good they make you giggle and tingle? If not, why not? Randomly stop an employee in the hall: Can she/he meticulously describe her/his development plan for the next 12 months? If not, why not? Why is your world of business any different than the (competitive) world of rugby, football, opera, theater, the military? If “people/talent first” and hyper-intense continuous training are laughably obviously for them, why not you?

32. What is the best reason to go bananas over training?GREED. (It pays off.)

33. Is your CTO/Chief Training Officer your top paid “C-level” job (other than CEO/COO)? If not, why not? Are your top trainers paid as much as your top marketers and engineers? If not, why not? Are your training courses so good they make you giggle and tingle? If not, why not? Randomly stop an employee in the hall: Can she/he meticulously describe her/his development plan for the next 12 months? If not, why not? Why is your world of business any different than the (competitive) world of rugby, football, opera, theater, the military? If “people/talent first” and hyper-intense continuous training are laughably obviously for them, why not you?

34. “G-E-N-I-U-S” Getting more and more cantankerous (short tempered!) about this:Job #1(& #2 & #3) is to abet peoples' personal growth. All other good things flow there from. My idea of a gen-u-ine "genius“ "breakthrough" idea:If you work your heart out to helppeople grow, they'll work their hearts out to give customers a great experience.

35. 1/4,096: excellencenow.com “Business has to give people enriching, rewarding lives … or it's simply not worth doing.” —Richard Branson

36. CORPORATE MANDATE #1 2015:Your principal moral obligation as a leader is to develop the skillset, “soft” and “hard,” of every one of the people in your charge (temporary as well as semi-permanent) to the maximum extent of your abilities. The good news: This is also the#1 mid- to long-term … profit maximization strategy!

37. “The topic is probably the oldest and biggest debate in Customer service. What is more important: How well you hire, or the training and culture you bring your employees into? While both are very important, 75 percent is the Customer service training and the service culture of your company. Do you really think that Disney has found 50,000 amazing service-minded people? There probably aren’t 50,000 people on earth who were born to serve. Companies like Ritz-Carlton and Disney find good people and put them in such a strong service and training environment that doesn’t allow for accept anything less than excellence.” —John DiJulius, The Customer Service Revolution: Overthrow Conventional Business, Inspire Employees, and Change the World

38. WOMEN RULE!

39. “Research suggests that to succeed, start by promoting women.” Source: Nicholas Kristof, “Twitter, Women, and Power,” NYTimes, 1024.13

40. “In my experience, women make much better executives than men.” —Kip Tindell, CEO, Container Store, from UNCONTAINABLE

41. “Women are rated higher in fully 12 of the 16 competencies that go into outstanding leadership. And two of the traits where women outscored men to the highest degree — taking initiative and driving for results — have long been thought of as particularly male strengths.” —Harvard Business Review

42. For One (BIG) Thing … “McKinsey & Company found that the international companies with more women on their corporate boards far outperformed the average company in return on equity and other measures. Operating profit was …56%higher.” Source: Nicholas Kristof, “Twitter, Women, and Power,” NYTimes, 1024.13

43. Women BUY (Everything)!

44. “Forget CHINA, INDIA and the INTERNET: Economic Growth Is Driven by WOMEN.” Source: Headline, Economist

45. W > 2X (C + I)* • *“Women now drive the global economy. Globally, they control about $20 trillion in consumer spending, and that figure could climb as high as $28 trillion in the next five years. Their $13 trillion in total yearly earnings could reach $18 trillion in the same period. In aggregate, women represent a growth market bigger than China and India combined—more than twice as big in fact. Given those numbers, it would be foolish to ignore or underestimate the female consumer. And yet many companies do just that—even ones that are confidant that they have a winning strategy when it comes to women. Consider Dell’s …” • Source: Michael Silverstein and Kate Sayre, “The Female Economy,” HBR, 09.09

46. “Women areTHEmajority market”—Fara Warner/The Power of the Purse

47. Sales/After-sales Process 1.    Kick-off  – Women 2.    Research – Women 3.    Purchase  – Men 4.    Ownership – Women 5.    Word-of-mouth – Women(2.6/21) Source: Martha Barletta, Marketing to Women: How to Increase Your Share of the World’s Largest Market

48. TGRs:8/80

49. Customers describing their service experience as “superior”: 8% Companies describing the service experience they provide as “superior”: 80% —Source: Bain & Company survey of 362 companies

50. <TGWand …>TGR(Things Gone WRONG-Things Gone RIGHT)