Tom Peters’ Excellence. Always. Trinity University Policy Maker Breakfast 20 March 2009

1. Tom Peters’ Excellence. Always. Trinity University Policy Maker Breakfast 20 March 2009

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

3. #1

4. “It suddenly occurred to me …

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

6. Message from a banker, circa 1988: “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.”

7. “Managers have lost dignity over the past decade in the face of wide spread institutional breakdown of trust and self-policing in business. To regain society’s trust, we believe that business leaders must embrace a way of looking at their role that goes beyond their responsibility to the shareholders to include a civic and personal commitment to their duty as institutional custodians. In other words, it is time hat management became a profession.”—Rakesh Khurana & Nitin Nohria, “It’s ime To Make Management a True Profession,” HBR/10.08

8. “Too Much Cost, Not Enough Value” … “Too Much Speculation, Not Enough Investment” … “Too Much Complexity, Not Enough Simplicity” … “Too Much Counting, Not Enough Trust” … “Too Much Business Conduct, Not Enough Professional Conduct” … “Too Much Salesmanship, Not Enough Stewardship” … “Too Much Focus on Things, Not Enough Focus on Commitment” … “Too Many Twenty-first Century Values, Not Enough Eighteenth-Century Values” … “Too Much ‘Success,’ Not Enough Character” —chapter titles from John Bogle, Enough. The Measures of Money, Business, and Life (Bogle is founder of the Vanguard Mutual Fund Group)

9. #2

10. “I am often asked by would-be entrepreneurs seeking escape from life within huge corporate structures, ‘How do I build a small firm for myself?’ The answer seems obvious:Buy a very large one and just wait.”—Paul Ormerod, Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics

11. “Data drawn from the real world attest to a fact that is beyond our control:Everything in existence tends to deteriorate.”—Norberto Odebrecht, Education Through Work

12. #3

13. #4 Japan#2T USA#2T China

14. #4 Japan#3 USA#2 China#1 Germany

15. Reason!!!Mittelstand

16. #4

17. Jim’s Mowing Canada Jim’s Mowing UK Jim’s Antennas Jim’s Bookkeeping Jim’s Building Maintenance Jim’s Carpet Cleaning Jim’s Car Cleaning Jim’s Computer Services Jim’s Dog Wash Jim’s Driving School Jim’s Fencing Jim’s Floors Jim’s Painting Jim’s Paving Jim’s Pergolas [gazebos] Jim’s Pool Care Jim’s Pressure Cleaning Jim’s Roofing Jim’s Security Doors Jim’s Trees Jim’s Window Cleaning Jim’s Windscreens Note: Download, free, Jim Penman’s book: What Will They Franchise Next? The Story of Jim’s Group

18. *Basement Systems Inc.*Larry Janesky*Dry Basement Science (115,000!)*1990: $0; 2003: $13M; 2007: $62,000,000

19. The “Unlucky Thirteen”:Big companies!Public companies!“Cool” industries!Stability!Famous CEOs!“Hard” stuff!Plans!“Success”!Men!Young!Incrementalism-KaizenMinimization!Uniformity!

20. The “Lucky Thirteen”:SMEs!Private companies!“Dull” industries!Churn!laudable CEOs!“Soft” stuff!Excellence!Action-Execution!Women!Boomers-Geezers!Imagination Unbound!Accentuate the Positive!Individuality!

21. #5

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

23. “remember to tuck the shower curtain inside the bathtub”

24. “Execution is strategy.”—Fred Malek

25. MBWA

26. CBVA**Command By Visiting About/U.S. Grant/circa 1865 (“In these days of telegraph and steam I can commandwhile traveling and visiting about.”)

27. #6

28. 1982

29. 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”

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

31. Hard Is SoftSoft Is Hard

32. Hard Is Soft (Plans, #s)Soft Is Hard (people, customers, values, relationships))

33. “The 7-S Model”StrategyStructureSystemsStyleSkillsStaffSuper-ordinate goal

34. “The 7-S Model”“Hard S’s”(Strategy, Structure, Systems)“Soft S’S”(Style, Skills, Staff, Super-ordinate goal)

35. “The 7-S Model”StrategyStructureSystemsStyle(Corporate “Culture,” “The way we do things around here”)Skills(“Distinctive Competence/s)Staff(People-Talent)Super-ordinate goal(Vision, Core Values)

36. “If I could have chosen not to tackle the IBM culture head-on, I probably wouldn’t have. My bias coming in was toward strategy, analysis and measurement. In comparison, changing the attitude and behaviors of hundreds of thousands of people is very, very hard.[Yet] I came to see in my time at IBM that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.” —Lou Gerstner, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance

37. 2007Siberia

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

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

40. 2007Sydney

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

42. “Leaders‘SERVE’ people. Period.”—inspired by Robert Greenleaf

43. … no less than Cathedralsin which the full and awesome power of the Imagination and Spirit and native Entrepreneurial flairof diverse individualsis unleashed in passionate pursuit of … Excellence.

44. #7

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

46. “Managing winds up being the management of the allocation of resources against tasks. Leadership focuses on people. My definition of a leader is someone who helps people succeed.”—Carol Bartz, Yahoo!

47. The Dream Manager—Matthew Kelly“An organization can only become the-best-version-of-itself to the extent that the people who drive that organization are striving to become better-versions-of-themselves.” “A company’s purpose is to become the-best-version-of-itself. The question is: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 primarypurpose is to become the-best-version-of-himself or –herself.… When a company forgets that it exists to serve customers, it quickly goes out of business.Our employees are our first customers, and our most important customers.”

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

49. “No matter what the situation, [the great manager’s]first response is always to think about the individual concerned and how things can be arranged to help that individual experience success.”—Marcus Buckingham, The One Thing You Need to Know

50. #8