FIRST THINGS BEFORE FIRST THINGS 1 OF 2: CONRAD’S COMMANDMENT & “THE ALL-IMPORTANT ‘LAST 95%’”

1. FIRST THINGS BEFORE FIRST THINGS 1 OF 2:CONRAD’S COMMANDMENT & “THE ALL-IMPORTANT ‘LAST 95%’”

2. CONRADHILTON, at a gala celebrating his career, was called to the podium and asked,“What were the most important lessons you learned in your long and distinguished career?”His answer …

3. “Remember to tuck the shower curtain inside the bathtub.”

4. “Amateurs talk about strategy. Professionals talk about logistics.” —General Omar Bradley, commander of American troops/D-Day

5. FIRST THINGS BEFORE FIRST THINGS 2 OF 2: EXCELLENCE THE LAW OF 5

6. EXCELLENCE is not a “long-term” “aspiration.”

7. EXCELLENCE is not a “long-term” "aspiration.” EXCELLENCE is the ultimate short-term strategy. EXCELLENCE is … THE NEXT5MINUTES.* (*Or NOT.)

8. EXCELLENCE is not an "aspiration." EXCELLENCE is … THE NEXT FIVE MINUTES. Or not. EXCELLENCE is your next 3-minute chance conversation. Or not. EXCELLENCE is your next meeting. Or not. EXCELLENCE is your next email. Or not. EXCELLENCE is shutting up and listening—really, really listening. Or not. EXCELLENCE is asking the next person you encounter, “What do you think?” Or not EXCELLENCE is getting out of the office and wandering around for 30 minutes—right now. Or not. EXCELLENCE is your next customer contact. Or not. EXCELLENCE is saying “Thank you” for something “small.” Or not. EXCELLENCE is waaay over-reacting to a screw-up. Or not. EXCELLENCE is waaay “over”-preparing for a 3-minute presentation. Or not. EXCELLENCE is turning a “trivial” task into a model of … EXCELLENCE. Or not.

9. Tom Peters’ RE-IMAGINE! LEADERSHIP EXCELLENCE/2018 WOBI/Medellin 06 December 2017 (This presentation/10+ years of presentation slides at tompeters.com; also see our annotated 23-part Monster-Master at excellencenow.com)

10. PUT PEOPLE [REALLY!!] FIRST

11. Your Customers Will Never Be Any Happier Than Your Employees

12. “PEOPLE BEFORE STRATEGY” —Lead article, Harvard Business Review. July-August 2015, by Ram Charan, Dominic Barton, and Dennis Carey “YOU HAVE TO TREAT YOUR EMPLOYEES LIKE CUSTOMERS.” —Herb Kelleher “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: IF YOU WANT STAFF TO GIVE GREAT SERVICE, GIVE GREAT SERVICE TO STAFF.”—Ari Weinzweig, Zingerman’s

13. “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

14. EXCELLENT customer experience depends … entirely … onEXCELLENT employee experience! If you want to WOW your customers, FIRST you must WOW those who WOW the customers!

15. 1996-2014/Twelve companies have been among the “100 best to work for” in the USA every year, for all 16 years of the list’s existence; along the way, they’ve added/ 341,567 new jobs, or job growth of +172%:PublixWhole FoodsWegmansNordstromCisco SystemsMarriottREIGoldman SachsFour SeasonsSAS InstituteW.L. GoreTDIndustriesSource: Fortune/ “The 100 Best Companies to Work For”/0315.15

16. Hiring

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

18. “The ultimate filter we use [in the hiring process]is that we only hire nice people.… When we finish assessing skills, we do something called ‘running the gauntlet.’ We have them interact with 15 or 20 people, and everyone of them have what I call a ‘blackball vote,’ which means they can say if we should not hire that person. I believe in culture so strongly and that one bad apple can spoil the bunch. There are enough really talented people out there who are nice, you don’t really need to put up with people who act like jerks.” —Peter Miller, CEO Optinose (pharmaceuticals)

19. Observed closely during Mayo Clinic employment interviews (for renown surgeons as well as others): The frequency of use of“I”or“We.” Source: Leonard Berry & Kent Seltman, chapter 6, “Hiring for Values,” Management Lessons From Mayo Clinic

20. Be Explicit! LISTENING. CARING. SMILING. SAYING “THANK YOU.” BEING WARM. NICE. EMPATHY. CHARACTER. CURIOSITY. NO JERKS.

21. Training = Investment#1!

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

23. Why(whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy)is intensive-extensive training obvious for the army & navy & sports teams & performing arts groups—but notfor the average business?

24. Gamblin’ Man Bet #1: >> 5 of 10 CEOs see training as expense rather than investment. Bet #2: >> 5 of 10 CEOs see training as defense rather than offense. Bet #3: >> 5 of 10 CEOs see training as “necessary evil” rather than “strategic opportunity.”

25. Bet #4:>> 8 of 10 CEOs, in 45-min “tour d’horizon” of their biz, would NOT mention training.

26. Step #1 Is your CTO/Chief Training Officer (Do you even have a CTO?) your top paid “C-level” job (other than CEO/COO)? Are your top trainers paid/cherished as much as your top marketers/ engineers?

27. 1st-Line Leaders

28. If the regimental commander lost most of his 2nd lieutenants and 1st lieutenants and captains and majors, it would be a tragedy. IF HE LOST HIS SERGEANTS IT WOULD BE A CATASTROPHE.The Army and the Navy are fully aware that success on the battlefield is dependent to an extraordinary degree on its Sergeants and Chief Petty Officers. Does industry have the same awareness?

29. Employee retention & satisfaction:“Overwhelminglybased on the first-line manager!”—Marcus Buckingham/Curt Coffman, First, Break All the Rules“People leave managers not companies.”—Dave Wheeler

30. Women Rule!

31. “AS LEADERS, WOMEN RULE:New Studies find that female managers outshine their male counterparts in almost every measure”TITLE/ Special Report/ BusinessWeek

32. “Research[by McKinsey & Co.]suggests that to succeed, start bypromoting women.” —Nicholas Kristof

33. 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

34. “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/2014

35. THE MORAL IMPERATIVE:PEOPLE DEVELOPMENT

36. “Automation has become so sophisticated that on a typical passenger flight, a human pilot holds the controls for a grand total of … 3minutes. [Pilots] have become, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say, computer operators.” Source: Nicholas Carr, “The Great Forgetting,” The Atlantic, 11.13

37. “SOFTWARE IS EATING THE WORLD.”—Marc Andreessen “The intellectual talents of highly trained professionals are no more protected from automation than is the driver’s left turn.” —Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage: Automation and Us “If you think being a ‘professional’ makes your job safe, think again.” —Robert Reich

38. “Ten Million Jobs at Risk from Advancing Technology: Up to 35 percent of Britain's jobs will be eliminated by new computing and robotics technology over the next 20 years, say Deloitte experts.” —Headline, Telegraph (UK), 11 November 2014 “Almost half of U.S. jobs are at high risk of computerization over the next 20years, according to Oxford academics Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne.” —Harriet Taylor, CNBC, 9 March 2016

39. CORPORATE MANDATE #1 2016: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 bonus: This is also the#1 mid- to long-term … profit maximization strategy!

40. 1/4,096: excellencenow.com “Business has to give people enriching, rewarding lives … or it's simply not worth doing.” —Richard Branson

41. TURN THE ORGANIZATION INTO A PLAYGROUND: INNOVATION

42. INNOVATION/Lesson50:WTTMSW

43. WHOEVER TRIES THE MOST STUFF WINS

44. “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 #10.It gets back to planning versus acting: We act from day one; others plan how toplan—for months.” —Bloomberg by Bloomberg

45. “Fail. Forward. Fast.”—High Tech CEO, Pennsylvania“Fail faster. Succeed sooner.”—David Kelley/IDEO“REWARD* excellent failures. PUNISH mediocre successes.”—Phil Daniels, Sydney exec*REWARD! EMBRACE! CELEBRATE! PROMOTE!

46. “EXPERIMENT FEARLESSLY”Source: BusinessWeek, “Type A Organization Strategies: How to Hit a Moving Target”—TACTIC #1“RELENTLESS TRIAL AND ERROR” Source: Wall Street Journal, cornerstone of effective approach to “rebalancing” company portfolios in the face of changing and uncertain global economic conditions

47. “You can’t be a serious innovator unless and until you are ready, willing and able to seriously play.‘Serious play’is not an oxymoron; it is the essence of innovation.”—Michael Schrage,Serious Play

48. PURSUE EVERY FLAVOR OF VALUE-ADDED OPPORTUNITY

49. Addressing the “8/80” Fiasco:1. TGRs/Things Gone RightLBTs/Little Big Things

50. 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, reported in John DiJulius, What's the Secret to Providing a World-class Customer Experience?