“ I am often asked …

1. “I am often asked …

2. “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 …

3. “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

4. Excellence. Always. Gartner Group/PPM & IT Governance Summit Tom Peters/San Diego/22 June 2011 (Slides @ tompeters.com)

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

6. “Breakthrough” 82* People! Execution! Excellence! *In Search of Excellence

7. Hard Is SoftSoft Is Hard

8. The Pursuit of … BalanceHard Is Soft (Plans, Systems, #s)Soft Is Hard (people, Culture, customers,* values, relationships)* “sales” > “marketing”“service” > “sales”

9. What Works.What Doesn’t.

10. No.“Optimization”“Centralization” “We’ve got to get this right.”“Let’s get organized.” “Perfectly compatible”“Synergy”“Benchmarking”“Best practices”“Low standard deviation”“Big”

11. Yes. “Satisfice”“Requisite variety”“RADICAL decentralization”“High standard deviation”“Resilience”“Focus”/“Niche”/“Mid-size”“Let’s get DIS-organized.”

12. Yes. “Satisfice”“Requisite variety”“RADICAL decentralization”“High standard deviation”“Resilience”“Focus”/“Niche”/“Mid-size”“Let’s get DIS-organized.”

13. “Mr. Foster and his McKinsey colleagues collected detailed performance data stretching back 40 years for 1,000 U.S. companies.They found thatnoneof the long-term survivors managed to outperform the market. Worse, the longer companies had been in the database, the worse they did.”—Financial Times

14. Dick Kovacevich:You don’t get better by being bigger. You get worse.”

15. “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

16. Public Enemy #1: I.C.D. Immutable Centralist Drift “Once a system grows sufficiently complex and centralized, it doesn’t matter how badly our best and brightest foul things up. Every crisis increases their authority, because they seem to be the only ones who understand the system well enough to fix it.But their fixes tend to make the system even more complex and centralized, and more vulnerable to the next national-security surprise, the next natural disaster, the next economic crisis.”—Ross Douthat/NYTimes

17. #4 Japan#3 USA#2 China#1 Germany

18. MittELstand* • *“agile creatures darting between the legs of the multinational monsters"

19. “Be the best. It’s the only market that’s not crowded.” From: Retail Superstars: Inside the 25 Best Independent Stores in America, George Whalin

20. Jungle Jim’s International Market, Fairfield, Ohio: “An adventure in ‘shoppertainment,’as Jungle Jim’s call it, begins in the parking lot and goes on to 1,600 cheeses and, yes, 1,400 varieties of hot sauce —not to mention 12,000 wines priced from $8 to $8,000 a bottle; all this is brought to you by 4,000 vendors. Customers come from every corner of the globe.” Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland, Frankenmuth, Michigan, pop 5,000:98,000-square-foot “shop” features the likes of 6,000 Christmas ornaments, 50,000 trims, and anything else you can name if it pertains to Christmas. Source: George Whalin, Retail Superstars

21. “Rose gardeners face a choice every spring. The long-term fate of a rose garden depends on this decision. If you want to have the largest and most glorious roses of the neighborhood, you will prune hard. This represents a policy of low tolerance and tight control. You force the plant to make the maximum use of its available resources, by putting them into the the rose’s ‘core business.’ Pruning hard is a dangerous policy in an unpredictable environment. Thus, if you are in a spot where you know nature may play tricks on you, you may opt for a policy of high tolerance. You will never have the biggest roses, but you have a much-enhanced chance of having roses every year. You will achieve a gradual renewal of the plant. In short, tolerant pruning achieves two ends: (1) It makes it easier to cope with unexpected environmental changes. (2) It leads to a continuous restructuring of the plant. The policy of tolerance admittedly wastes resources—the extra buds drain away nutrients from the main stem. But in an unpredictable environment, this policy of tolerance makes the rose healthier in the long run.”—Arie De Geus, The Living Company

22. “The secret of fast progress is inefficiency, fast and furious and numerous failures.”—Kevin Kelly

23. “Never forget the all-important … last 98%.”

24. Conrad Hilton …

25. Conrad Hilton, 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 …

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

27. “Execution isstrategy.”—Fred Malek

28. “Costco figured out the big,simple things and executedwith total fanaticism.”—Charles Munger, Berkshire Hathaway

29. “When assessing candidates, the first thing I looked for was energy and enthusiasm for execution. Does she talk about the thrill of getting things done, the obstacles overcome, the role her people played—or does she keep wandering back to strategy or philosophy?”“I saw that leaders placed too much emphasis on what some call high-level strategy, on intellectualizing and philosophizing, and not enough on implementation. People would agree on a project or initiative, and then nothing would come of it.”Source: Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan/Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

30. “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

31. #1.Period.

32. XFX = #1* *Cross-Functional eXcellence

33. Never waste a lunch!* *The “sacred 220 at bats”

34. “Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grow.”—Ben Stein

35. “Allied commands depend on mutual confidence and this confidence is gained, above all through thedevelopment offriendships.” —General D.D. Eisenhower, Armchair General* *“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.”

36. R.O.I.R.* >R.O.I. *Return On Investment In Relationships

37. “XFXSocialAccelerators.” 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. Invite counterparts in other functions to your team meetings. Religiously. Ask them to present “cool stuff” from “their world” to your group. (B-I-G deal; useful and respectful.) 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 “Annual All-Star Supporters [from other groups] Banquet” modeled after superstar salesperson banquets. 7. Discuss—A SEPARATE AGENDA ITEM—good and problematic acts of cross-functional co-operation at every Team Meeting.

38. “His habit was to let the locals get primary credit—unheard of! Sometimes he disappeared into the woodwork entirely. He had the whole __PD working their butts off for him, including the [temperamental] Chief.”—close colleague of senior federal law enforcement officer

39. Women’s Negotiating Strengths*Ability to put themselves in their counterparties’ shoes*Comprehensive, attentive and detailed communication style*Empathy that facilitates trust-building*Curious and attentive listening*Less competitive attitude*Strong sense of fairness and ability to persuade*Proactive risk manager*Collaborative decision-makingSource: Horacio Falcao, cover story, World Business, “Say It Like a Woman: Why the 21st-century negotiator will need the female touch”

40. “AS LEADERS, WOMEN RULE*:New Studies find that female managers outshine their male counterparts in almost every measure”TITLE/ Special Report/ BusinessWeek*Projected to be 80% middle managers by approx 2020

41. Loser:“He’s such a suck-up!”Winner:“He’s such a suck-down.”

42. “I got to know his[Icahn’s]secretaries. They are always the keepers of everything.”—Dick Parsons, then CEO Time Warner, on dealing with an Icahn threat to his company“Parsons is not a visionary. He is, instead, a master in the art of relationship.”—Bloomberg Businessweek (03.11)

43. “I believe that it is more important for a leader to be trained in psychiatry than cybernetics. The head of a big company recently said to me, ‘I am no longer a Chairman. I have had to become a psychiatric nurse.’ Today’s executive is under pressure unknown to the last generation.”—David Ogilvy

44. “Don’t ever use that word ‘synergy.’ It’s a hideousword. The only thing that works is natural law. Given enough time, natural relationships will develop between our businesses.”—Barry Diller, responding to a student question, address at the Harvard Business School (from Marshall Goldsmith, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

45. #1.Period.

46. “The doctor interrupts after …* *Source: Jerome Groopman, How Doctors Think

47. 18 seconds

48. [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 organizational effectiveness.) [cont.]

49. Could It Be This Simple? In-effective leaders … TALK. Effective leaders … LISTEN. Inspiration: Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, Liz Wiseman [Some “hard” evidence that effective leaders, in terms of % of elapsed meeting time, talk less than half as much as less effective leaders.]

50. "When I was in medical school, I spent hundreds of hours looking into a microscope—a skill I never needed to know or ever use. YetI didn't have a single class that taught me communication or teamwork skills—something I need every day I walk into the hospital.”—Peter Pronovost, Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals