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W.A. Coppins Ltd. The Magicians of Motueka ! The MITTELSTAND Trifecta ! W.A. Coppins Ltd.* (Coppins Sea Anchors/ PSA/para sea anchors) *Textiles, 1898; thrive on “wicked problems”
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The Magicians of Motueka! The MITTELSTAND Trifecta! W.A. Coppins Ltd.* (Coppins Sea Anchors/ PSA/para sea anchors) *Textiles, 1898; thrive on “wicked problems” —e.g., U.S. Navy STLVAST/Small To Large Vehicle At Sea Transfer; custom fabric from W. Wiggins Ltd./Wellington; specialty nylon, “Dyneema,” from DSM/Netherlands
Going “Social”/Location and Size Independent: Rise of the … MICRO-MULTINATIONAL “Today, despite the fact that we’re just a little swimmingpool company in Virginia, we have the most trafficked swimming pool website in the world. Five years ago, if you’d asked me and my business partners what we do, the answer would have been simple, ‘We build in-ground fiberglass swimming pools’ Now we say,‘We are the best teachers … in the world … on the subject of fiberglass swimming pools, and we also happen to build them.’” —Jay Baer, Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is About Help, Not Hype
“The greatest satisfaction for management has come not from the financial growth of Camellia itself, but rather from having participated in the vast improvement in the living and working conditions of its employees, resulting from the investment of many tens of millions of pounds into the tea gardens’ infrastructure of roads, factories, hospitals, employees’ housing and amenities. … Within the Camellia Group there is a strong aesthetic dimension, an intention that it should comprise companies and assets of the highest quality, operating from inspiring offices and manufacturing in state of the art facilities.… Above all, there is a deep concern for the welfare of each employee. This arises not only froma sense of humanity, but also fromthe conviction that the loyalty of a secure and enthusiastic employee will in the long-term prove to be an invaluable company asset.”—Camellia: A Very Different Company[$600M/$160M/$100M]
1. Incredibly Clever 2. Exploit New-tech 3. People (REALLY) First (4. EXCELLENCE) (5. EXECUTION)
Michael Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed’: THE THREE RULES: How Exceptional Companies Think*: 1. Better before cheaper. 2. Revenue before cost. 3. There are no other rules. (*From a database of over 25,000 companies from hundreds of industries covering 45 years, they uncovered 344 companies that qualified as statistically “exceptional.”) Jeff Colvin, Fortune: “The Economy Is Scary … But Smart Companies Can Dominate”: They manage for value—not for EPS. They keep developing human capital. They get radically customer-centric.
Tom Peters’ Re-ImagineEXCELLENCE! The National Productivity and Competitiveness Council Port Louis/16 April 2014 (slides at tompeters.com; also see excellencenow.com)
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?
Is there ONE “secret” to productivity and employee satisfaction? YES! The Quality of your Full Cadre of … 1st-line Leaders.
Training [OBVIOUSLY!] #1: Police. Fire. Military. Opera. Symphony. Theater. Sports. BUT … in most businesses, it's “ho hum” mid-level staff function.
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?
Gamblin’ Man Bet: >> 5 of 10 CEOs see training as expense rather than investment. Bet: >> 5 of 10 CEOs see training as defense rather than offense. Bet: >> 5 of 10 CEOs see training as “necessary evil” rather than “strategic opportunity.” Bet:>> 8 of 10 CEOs, in 45-min “tour d’horizon” of their business, would not mention training.
Tom’s TIB* #1: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!* This I Believe (courtesy Bill Caudill)
Should be able to get immediate answer upon stopping anyone and asking,“What have you learned today?”
“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
“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 help people grow, they'll work their hearts out to give customers a great experience.
“Every child is born an artist. The trick is to remain an artist.”—Picasso “All human beings are entrepreneurs.”—Muhammad Yunus “Human creativity is the ultimate economic resource.” —Richard Florida "Creativity can no longer be treated as an elective.”—John Maeda
RADICAL curricular revision imperative. (STEM/STEAM.)RADICAL digital strategy.REVOLUTIONARY new approach to teacher recruitment/development.RADICAL re-assessment of tertiary education (E.g., “MOOC-ization.”)RADICAL re-assessment business ed.RADICAL role re-assessment by corporations.(Good news: Nobody’s got it right. Kids are doing it without you—if you’ll let them.)
The very best and the very brightest and the most energetic and enthusiastic and entrepreneurial and tech-savvy of our university graduates must—must, notshould—be lured into teaching!
A 15-Point Human Capital Asset Development Manifesto World Strategy Forum/ The New Rules: Reframing Capitalism Tom Peters/Seoul/0615.12
A 15-Point Human Capital Development Manifesto 1. “Corporate social responsibility” starts at home—i.e., inside the enterprise! MAXIMIZING GDD/Gross Domestic Development of the workforce is the primary source of mid-term and beyond growth and profitability—and maximizes national productivity and wealth. (Re profitability: If you want to serve the customer with uniform Excellence, then you must FIRST effectively and faithfully serve those who serve the customer—i.e. our employees, via maximizing tools and professional development.)
2. Regardless of the transient external situation, development of “human capital” is always the #1 priority. This is true in general, in particular in difficult times which demand resilience—and uniquely true in this age in which IMAGINATIVE brainwork is de facto the only plausible survival strategy for higher wage nations. (Generic “brainwork,” traditional and dominant “white-collar activities, is increasingly beingperformed by exponentially enhanced artificial intelligence.)
GeneticsRoboticsInformaticsNanotechnology**Decision #1: GRIN and BEAR it? GRIN and SAVOR it?
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” —Albert A. Bartlett
China too/Foxconn: 1,000,000 robots in next 3 years Source: Race AGAINST the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
“Meet Your Next Surgeon: Dr. Robot” Source: Feature/Fortune/15 JAN 2013/on Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci/multiple bypass heart-surgery robot (“Almost all health care people get is going to be done by algorithms within a decade or two.”—Michael Vassar/MetaMed)
“The combination of new market rules and new technology was turning the stock market into, in effect,awarof robots.”—Michael Lewis, “Goldman’s Geek Tragedy,” Vanity Fair, 09.13
“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.” —Nicholas Carr, The Atlantic, 11.13
“Human level capability has not turned out to be a special stopping point from an engineering perspective. ….” Source: Illah Reza Nourbakhsh, Professor of Robotics, Carnegie Mellon, Robot Futures
“The root of our problem is not that we’re in a Great Recession or a Great Stagnation, but rather that we are in the early throes of a Great Restructuring. Our technologies are racing ahead, but our skills and organizations are lagging behind.” Source: Race AGAINST the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”* —Albert A. Bartlett (*GRIN/Genetics + Robotics + Informatics + Nanotechnology) “The root of our problem is not that we’re in a ‘Great Recession’ or a ‘Great Stagnation,’ but rather that we are in the early throes of a GreatRestructuring.Our technologies are racing ahead, but our skills and organizations are lagging behind.” —Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Race Against the Machine “The median worker is losing the race against the machine.”—Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Race Against the Machine “Human level capability has not turned out to be a special stopping point from an engineering perspective. ...” —IIllah Reza Nourbakhsh, Robot Futures (“I believe that 90 percent of white-collar/‘knowledge-work’ jobs—which are 80 percent of all jobs—in the U.S. will be either destroyed or altered beyond recognition in the next 10 to 15 years.”—Cover/Time/22May 2000/Tom Peters)
XFX = #1* *Cross-Functional eXcellence
% XF lunches* *Measure! Monthly! Part of evaluation! [The PAs Club.]
XFX/Typical Social Accelerators 1. EVERYONE’s [more or less] JOB #1: Make friends in other functions! (Purposefully. Consistently. Measurably.) 2. “Do lunch” with people in other functions!! Frequently!! (Minimum 10% to 25% for everyone? Measured.) 3. Ask peers in other functions for references so you can become conversant in their world. (It’s one helluva sign of ... GIVE-A-DAMN-ism.) 4. Religiously invite counterparts in other functions to your team meetings. Ask them to present “cool stuff” from “their world” to your group. (Useful. Mark of respect.) 5. PROACTIVELY SEEK EXAMPLES OF “TINY” ACTS OF “XFX” TO ACKNOWLEDGE—PRIVATELY AND PUBLICALLY. (Bosses: ONCE A DAY … make a short call or visit or send an email of “Thanks” for some sort of XFX gesture by your folks and some other function’s folks.) 6. Present counterparts in other functions awards for service to your group. Tiny awards at least weekly; and an “AnnualAll-Star Supporters [from other groups] Banquet” modeled after superstar salesperson banquets.
“The doctor interrupts after …* *Source: Jerome Groopman, How Doctors Think
[An obsession with] Listening is ... the ultimate mark of Respect. Listening is ... the heart and soul of Engagement. Listening is ... the heart and soul of Kindness. Listening is ... the heart and soul of Thoughtfulness. Listening is ... the basis for true Collaboration. Listening is ... the basis for true Partnership. Listening is ... a Team Sport. Listening is ... a Developable Individual Skill.* (*Though women are far better at it than men.) Listening is ... the basis forCommunity. Listening is ... the bedrock of Joint Ventures that work. Listening is ... the bedrock of Joint Ventures thatgrow. Listening is ... the core of effective Cross-functional Communication* (*Which is in turn Attribute #1 of organization effectiveness.) [cont.]