Excellence Unveiled: Lessons for Organizational Success

1. NOTE:To appreciate this presentation [and insure that it is not amess], you need Microsoft fonts:“Showcard Gothic,”“Ravie,”“Chiller”and “Verdana”

2. Part 1.1Tom Peters’ EXCELLENCE. ALWAYS.NEW MASTER/21 August 2008

3. Slides at …tompeters.com

4. Ten PartsP1.1, P1.2, P1.3, P1.4/GenericP2/LeadershipP3/TalentP4/“Value-added Ladder”P5/“New” Markets P6/“The Equations”P7.1/ImplementationP7.2/ActionP8/13 “Guru Gaffes”P9/Health“care”P10/“The Lists”

5. Part 1.1

6. The “model” for my MASTER presentation has historically been Linear—consistent with my engineering background and perhaps my 50% or so of German genetic material. (Peters, for heaven's sake—Granddad Peters, a contractor-engineer, came to the U.S. in the 1870s.) But in my oral presentations I found I often never got around to the punchline. So in November 2007, preparing for a speech in Madrid, I decided, “The hell with it, I’m going to organize by importance of the topic by my reckoning, and put first things first”—and the heck with linearity. That in turn coincided with my decision to re-emphasize “the basics” that often go missing but which are the bedrock for getting things done in the real world. The result, for now, seven months later, is this New Annotated Master. All yours …

7. “We Have …Thank you, Howard (Starbucks)!

8. Starbucks, more or less for the first time, and before the Recession, began to have some significant problems. The “good news,” as it were, is that Howard Schultz’s S’bucks has no new competition; hence we are left with only one possible cause for Starbucks’ slump—Starbucks!

9. Sports: You beat yourself!

10. Sure, your opponent in sports can be having a “lucky day”—but mostly, when one stinks up, say, the presentation … one beats oneself! Principal diagnostic tool for Starbucks or you and me? Spend $2.95, and buy a mirror.

11. Internal organizational excellence* ** = Deepest “Blue Ocean”

12. *A “Blue ocean” is by definition very profitable … and will be quicklycopied. “sustainableblue” (Internal organizational excellence) is far more difficult to copy.

13. **Internal organizational excellence = “Brandinside”

14. B(I) > B(O)

15. Sure, I am well aware of internally focused organizations. Nonetheless, I still (mostly) cast my vote for XX … eXcellence in eXecution.

16. When The “Enemy” Really Wins “Lose Your Nemesis”: “Obsessing about your competitors, trying to match or best their offerings, spending time each day wanting to know what they are doing, and/or measuringyour company against them—these activities have no great or winning outcome. Instead you are simply prohibiting your company from finding its own way to be truly meaningful to its clients, staff and prospects. You block your company from finding its own identity and engaging with the people who pay the bills. … Your competitors have never paid your bills and they never will.” —Howard Mann, Your Business Brickyard: Getting Back to the Basics to Make Your Business More Fun to Run* *Mr Mann also quotes Mike McCue, former VP/Technology at Netscape: “At Netscape the competition with Microsoft was so severe, we’d wake up in the morning thinking about how we were going to deal with them instead of how we would build something great for our customers. What I realize now is that you can never, ever take your eye off the customer. Even in the face of massive competition, don’t think about the competition. Literally don’t think about them.”

17. Thank you , Michael (sorta)

18. “New technology, by itself, has little economic benefit. … The economic benefits arise not from innovation itself, but from the entrepreneurs who eventually discover ways to put innovation to practical use— and, most critically, from the organizational changes through which businesses reshape themselves to take advantage of new technology.”—Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

19. Thank you ,Lou

20. “… it is the game.”

21. “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

22. Thank you ,Herb

23. “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 picketing the Annual Meeting)

24. Consistent with the idea that underscoring Brand Inside is the best way to keep the ocean deep & blue, the Sole Secret (he says) of Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher is putting his people First—making them his principal customers. The likes of Dave Liniger (RE/MAX founder) and Hal Rosenbluth (superstar boss of travel giant Rosenbluth International) spout and live this same idea, using practically the same words—e.g., Hal’s book Putting the Customer Second.

25. Thank you Ben, Norm, Ike and Delaware

26. Give good tea!

27. “In the same bitter winter of 1776 that Gen. George Washington led his beleaguered troops across the Delaware River to safety, Benjamin Franklin sailed across the Atlantic to Paris to engage in an equally crucial campaign, this one diplomatic. A lot depended on the bespectacled and decidedly unfashionable 70-year-old as he entered the world’s fashion capitol sporting a simple brown suit and a fur cap. … Franklin’s miracle was that armed only with his canny personal charm and reputation as a scientist and philosopher, he was able to cajole a wary French government into lending the fledgling American nation an enormous fortune. … The enduring image of Franklin in Paris tends to be that of a flirtatious old man, too busy visiting the city’s fashionable salons to pursue affairs of state as rigorously as John Adams. When Adams joined Franklin in Paris in 1779, he was scandalized by the late hours and French lifestyle his colleague had adopted, says [Stacy Schiff, in A Great Improvisation] Adams was clueless that it was through the dropped hints and seemingly offhand remarks at these salons that so much of French diplomacy was conducted. … Like the Beatles arriving in America, Franklin aroused a fervor—his face appeared on prints, teacups and chamber pots. The extraordinary popularity served Franklin’s diplomatic purposes splendidly. Not even King Louis XVI could ignore the enthusiasm that had won over both the nobility and the bourgeoisie. …”Source: “In Paris, Taking the Salons By Storm: How the Canny Ben Franklin Talked the French into Forming a Crucial Alliance,” U.S. News & World Report, 0707.08

28. The ragtag and victory-less Continental Army was retreating, George Washington notwithstanding. For the Americans, finding an ally was a life or death proposition. Short, fat old Benjamin Franklin was our man in Paris. Short, fat and old though he may have been, he was a Charmer. He won the hearts and devotion of the ladies of high society with his mastery of Tea & Flattery. The Americans eked out a success at Saratoga which Franklin turned into an epic victory—and the besotted ladies convinced their mighty husbands to get behind the Americans. The rest, as they say, is history. The launchpad for Gulf War I was Saudi Arabia. Despite the Saudis need to have Iraq’s Kuwaiti incursion reversed, the Kingdom was touchy about the massive American military presence on their Holy soil. Allied supreme commander Norm Schwarzkopf says, tongue only half in cheek, that his principal contribution to the war effort was nightly marathon sessions sipping tea with the Crown Prince. The point: No matter how weighty the cause, “giving good tea”—an incredible and expensive (in terms of time) investment in key relationships is typically invaluable and of decisive strategic importance. Message: Master the Art of Tea—metaphorically at least—and make it in to the history books.

29. “Allied commands depend on mutual confidence [and this confidence] is gained, above all through the development of friendships.” —General D.D. Eisenhower, Armchair General* (05.08)*“Perhaps his most outstanding ability [at West Point] was the ease with which he made friends and earned the trust of fellow cadets who came from widely varied backgrounds; it was a quality that would pay great dividends during his future coalition command

30. Do tea. Make friends. Could it be that simple? At some level, the answer is yes. You need the troops. And you need the guns. But as D-Day approached in 1944, you mostly needed to have a modicum of peace among Churchill, Montgomery, Patton, Bradley and Roosevelt. As Schwarzkopf kept the Saudis on board through tea, Ike’s affability, for which he was often criticized or dismissed or disdained, kept the British and Americans from killing each other long enough to kill the Germans.

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

32. “See How Simple What You Cannot Do Is”: The 320% Factor! Woody Allen/“Eighty percent of success is showing up” was the topic of a recent Post. Rob (Comment, tompeters.com): “And I reckon a large part of the remaining 20% is Refusing to Go Away Again.” Ernest Hemmingway’s The Garden of Eden: “ … Finishing is what you have to do. If you don’t finish, nothing is worth a damn.” “ … Write the hardest story there is to write that you know. Start it tomorrow. The hell with tomorrow. Go and start it now. He sat down and wrote the first paragraph of the new story that he had always put off writing. … The very beginning was written and all he had to do was go on. That’s all, he said. See how simple what you cannot do is?” Message-Lesson/s:The first 80% of success is showing up! The second 80% is starting … now. The third 80% is sticking around and refusing to leave! The final 80% is finishing! (“See how simple what you cannot do is?”)

33. Delaware was the smallest state in the Union in 1787 as the process of writing the Constitution got underway. For a number of reasons, some states, such as New Hampshire, were absent from the Convention, members of various delegations were away as much as present (e.g., Alexander Hamilton). In any event, about thirty Delegates were present and at work at any point in time. States could decide on the size of their delegations, and Delaware chose five—a very large number. Moreover, wee Delaware’s five never missed a day’s work and were in their seats gavel to gavel. Needless to say, wee Delaware had a wildly disproportionate impact on the Convention and the document itself. In a nutshell, Delaware’s secret: Show up! (I like this example because it illustrates the impact of this “trivial” idea-tactic-strategy, available to all of us all of the time, in the most Monumental of affairs.)

34. Do tea! Make friends! Show up!

35. On the basis of such apparently humble “basics,” the world turns—the American Revolution, Gulf War I, D-Day and the fate of the world, the U.S. Constitution. Think about it!

36. Thank you Rich!

37. “Mapping your competitive position”*or …*Rich D’Aveni/HBR

38. The “Have you …” 50**See Appendix One

39. While waiting last week [early December 2007] in the Albany airport to board a Southwest Airlines flight to Reagan/DCA, I happened across the latest Harvard Business Review, on the cover of which was a yellow sticker. The sticker had on it the words “Mapping your competitive position.” It referred to a feature article by my friend Rich D’Aveni. His work is uniformly good—and I have said as much publicly on several occasions dating back 15 years. I’m sure this article is good, too—though I didn’t read it. In fact it triggered a furious negative “Tom reaction” as my wife calls it. Of course I believe you should worry about your “competitive position”! (I do.)But instead of obsessing on competitive position and other abstractions, as the B-schools and consultants would always have us do, I instead wondered about some “practical stuff” which I believe is more important to the short- and long-term health of the enterprise, tiny or enormous. E.g. …

40. 1. Have you in the last 10days …visited a customer?2. Have you called a customer … TODAY? * * *

41. Want to “map” your “competitive position”? Start by going to visit a customer … ASAP! Or at least calling! You’ll find the other 48 items on the “Have you … ?” list at #5.2.2.

42. Thank you Dr. Groopman

43. 18”

44. In How Doctors Think, Harvard Med doc Jerome Groopman tells us that the best way to get a fix on what ails a patient is to get the patient talking openly about his-her problem. Great. But the research shows that docs, on average, leap to a conclusion and interrupt their patients after … 18 seconds. (Docs are hardly alone. This is a disease present in almost all specialists and professionals. “Listening” for a professional invariably means … talking.)

45. Thank you Dick & Dan

46. Dick (Build!)Dan (Report on what not built—tangible v. palpable)

47. Thank you “Great One” (and Phil)

48. “You miss 100% of the shots you never take.”—WayneGretzky

49. “Rewardexcellent failures. Punishmediocre successes.”Phil Daniels, Sydney exec

50. Thank you Walter