Tom Peters’ Leadership2002 Taking Leadership to the Next Level MCAA/4Feb2002

The Context.

“There will be more confusion in the business world in the next decade than in any decade in history. And the current pace of change will only accelerate.” Steve Case

The Leadership 50

The Basic Premise.

1. Leadership Is a … Mutual Discovery Process.

Leaders-Teachers Do Not “Transform People”! Instead leaders-mentors-teachers (1) provide a context which is marked by (2) access to a luxuriant portfolio of meaningful opportunities (projects) which (3) allow people to fully (and safely, mostly—caveat: “they” don’t engage unless they’re “mad about something”) express their innate curiosity and (4) engage in a vigorous discovery voyage (alone and in small teams, assisted by an extensive self-constructed network) by which those people (5) go to-create places they (and their mentors-teachers- leaders) had never dreamed existed—and then the leaders-mentors-teachers (6) applaud like hell, stage “photo-ops,” and ring the church bells 100 times to commemorate the bravery of their “followers’ ” explorations!

1A. Leaders … Cede Control.

“I don’t know.”

1B. Leaders Try … Not to Screw Things Up

“ Ninety percent of what we call ‘management’ consists of making it difficult for people to get things done.” – P.D.

The Leadership Types.

2. Great Leaders on Snorting Steeds Are Important – but Great Talent Developers (Type I Leadership) are the Bedrock of Organizations that Perform Over the Long Haul.

25/8/53

2A. “Just One”: Great Leading = Great Mentoring.

Goal of the Year No. 1*: Find- Develop-Mentor ONE Extraordinary Person. *CEO, large financial advisory firm, April 2001

3. But Then Again, There Are Times When This “Cult of Personality” (Type II Leadership) Stuff Actually Works!

“A leader is a dealer in hope.” Napoleon (+TP’s writing room pics)

4. Find the “Businesspeople”! (Type III Leadership)

I.P.M. (Inspired Profit Mechanic)

4A. All Organizations Need the Golden Leadership Triangle.

The Golden Leadership Triangle: (1) Creator- Visionary … (2) Talent Fanatic-Mentor-V.C. … (3) Inspired Profit Mechanic.

5. Leadership Mantra #1: IT ALL DEPENDS!

Renaissance Men are … a snare, a myth, a delusion!

6. The Leader Is Rarely/Never the Best Performer.

33 Division Titles. 26 League Pennants. 14 World Series: Earl Weaver—0. Tom Kelly—0. Jim Leyland—0. Walter Alston—1AB. Tony LaRussa—132 games, 6 seasons. Tommy Lasorda—P, 26 games. Sparky Anderson—1 season.

The Leadership Dance.

7. Leaders … SHOW UP!

Rudy!

8. Leaders … LOVE the MESS!

“If things seem under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” Mario Andretti

8A. Leadership Is Improv!

Duct Tape Rules! “Andrew Higgins, who built landing craft in WWII, refused to hire graduates of engineering schools. He believed that they only teach you what you can’t do in engineering school. He started off with 20 employees, and by the middle of the war had 30,000 working for him. He turned out 20,000 landing craft. D.D. Eisenhower told me, ‘Andrew Higgins won the war for us. He did it without engineers.’ ” Stephen Ambrose/Fast Company

9. Leaders DO!

The Kotler Doctrine: : R.A.F. (Ready.Aim.Fire.) : R.F.A. (Ready.Fire!Aim.) 1995-????: F.F.F. (Fire!Fire!Fire!)

10. BUT … Leaders Know When to Wait.

Tex Schramm: The “too hard” box!

11. Leaders Are … Optimists.

Hackneyed but none the less true: LEADERS SEE CUPS AS “HALF FULL.”

Half-full Cups: “[Ronald Reagan] radiated an almost transcendent happiness.” Lou Cannon, George ( )

12. BUT … Leaders Are Realists/Leaders Win Through LOGISTICS!

The “Gus Imperative”!

13. Leaders FOCUS!

“To Don’t ” List

14. Leaders … Set CLEAR DESIGN SPECS.

JackWorld/ : (1) Neutron Jack. (Banish bureaucracy.) (2) “1, 2 or out” Jack. (Lead or leave.) (3) “Workout” Jack. (Empowerment, GE style.) (4) 6-Sigma Jack. (5) Internet Jack. (Throughout) TALENT JACK!

Danger: S.I.O. (Strategic Initiative Overload)

15. Leaders … Send V-E-R-Y Clear Signals About Design Specs!

Ridin’ with Roger: “What have you done to DRAMATICALLY IMPROVE quality in the last 90 days?”

It’s Relationships, Stupid.

16. Leaders Trust in TRUST !

Credibility !

17. Leaders … Understand the Ultimate Power of RELATIONSHIPS.

18. Leaders Know … Women Roar/ Women Rule.

“AS LEADERS, WOMEN RULE: New Studies find that female managers outshine their male counterparts in almost every measure” Title, Special Report, Business Week,

Women’s Strengths Match New Economy Imperatives: Link [rather than rank] workers; favor interactive-collaborative leadership style [empowerment beats top-down decision making]; sustain fruitful collaborations; comfortable with sharing information; see redistribution of power as victory, not surrender; favor multi-dimensional feedback; value technical & interpersonal skills, individual & group contributions equally; readily accept ambiguity; honor intuition as well as pure “rationality”; inherently flexible; appreciate cultural diversity Source: Judy B. Rosener, America’s Competitive Secret

If It Ain’t Broke … Break It.

19. Leaders … FORGET!/ Leaders … DESTROY!

Forget>“Learn” “The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out.” Dee Hock

Forbes100 from 1917 to 1987: 39 members of the Class of ’17 were alive in ’87; 18 in ’87 F100; 18 F100 “survivors” underperformed the market by 20%; just 2 (2%), GE & Kodak, outperformed the market 1917 to S&P 500 from 1957 to 1997: 74 members of the Class of ’57 were alive in ’97; 12 (2.4%) of 500 outperformed the market from 1957 to Source: Dick Foster & Sarah Kaplan, Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market

“Good management was the most powerful reason [leading firms] failed to stay atop their industries. Precisely because these firms listened to their customers, invested aggressively in technologies that would provide their customers more and better products of the sort they wanted, and because they carefully studied market trends and systematically allocated investment capital to innovations that promised the best returns, they lost their positions of leadership.” Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma

20. BUT … Leaders Have to Deliver, So They Worry About “Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater.”

“Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t, Just Plain Damned.” Subtitle in the chapter, “Own Up to the Great Paradox: Success Is the Product of Deep Grooves/ Deep Grooves Destroy Adaptivity,” Liberation Management (1992)

21. Leaders … HONOR THE USURPERS.

Saviors-in-Waiting Disgruntled Customers Upstart Competitors Rogue Employees Fringe Suppliers Wayne Burkan, Wide Angle Vision

22. Leaders … HANG OUT WITH FREAKS!

The Cracked Ones Let in the Light “Our business needs a massive transfusion of talent, and talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among non-conformists, dissenters and rebels.” David Ogilvy

“Are there enough weird people in the lab these days?” V.Chmn., pharmaceutical house, to a lab director (06.01)

23. Leaders Make [Lotsa] Mistakes – and MAKE NO BONES ABOUT IT!

Sam’s Secret #1!

24. Leaders Make … BIG MISTAKES!

“Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.” Phil Daniels, Sydney exec (and, de facto, Jack)

Create.

25. Leaders Push Their Organizations W-a-y Up the Value-added/ Intellectual Capital Chain

: HP bids $18,000,000,000 for PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting business!

“These days, building the best server isn’t enough. That’s the price of entry.” Ann Livermore, Hewlett-Packard

HP … Sun … GE … IBM … UPS … UTC … General Mills … Springs … Anheuser-Busch … Carpet One … Delphi … Etc. … Etc.

Who was the number one employer of architecture school grads in the U.S. last year?

“VISIONS OF A BRAND-NAME OFFICE EMPIRE. Sam Zell is not a man plagued by self doubt. Mr. Zell controls public companies that own nearly 700 office buildings in the United States. … Now Mr. Zell says he will transform the real estate market by turning those REITs into national brands. … Mr. Zell believes [clients] will start to view those offices as something more than a commodity chosen chiefly by price and location.” –New York Times ( )

26. Leaders LOVE the New Technology!

100 square feet

Cisco! 90% of $20B (=$50M/day) Annual savings in service and support from customer self-management: $550M (P.S.: C.Sat e >> C.Sat h)

WebWorld = Everything Web as a way to run your business’s innards Web as connector for your entire supply-demand chain Web as “spider’s web” which re-conceives the industry Web/B2B as ultimate wake-up call to “commodity producers” Web as the scourge of slack, inefficiency, sloth, bureaucracy, poor customer data Web as an Encompassing Way of Life Web = Everything (P.D. to after-sales) Web forces you to focus on what you do best Web as entrée, at any size, to World’s Best at Everything as next door neighbor

Read It Closely: “We don’t sell insurance anymore. We sell speed.” Peter Lewis, Progressive

Talent.

27. When It Comes to TALENT … Leaders Always Swing for the Fences!

Message: Some people are better than other people. Some people are a helluva lot better than other people.

28. Leaders Don’t Create “Followers”: THEY CREATE LEADERS!

Brand You, Big Time! I AM AN ARMY OF ONE

29. Leaders “Win Followers Over”

WHAT AN IDIOT: “Instead of employees being in the driver’s seat, now we’re in the driver’s seat.”

PJ: “Coaching is winning players over.”

30. Leaders Believe in … TRAINING.

26.3

3 Weeks in May “Training” & Prep: 187 “Work”: 41 (“Other”: 17)

1% vs. 367%

Divas do it. Violinists do it. Sprinters do it. Golfers do it. Pilots do it. Soldiers do it. Surgeons do it. Cops do it. Astronauts do it. Why don’t businesspeople do it [very much]?

Conclusion: “We” are not serious!

31. Leaders “Manage” Their EVP/ Internal Brand Promise.

MantraM3 Talent = Brand

EVP = Challenge, professional growth, respect, satisfaction, opportunity, reward Source: Ed Michaels et al., The War for Talent

32. Leaders LOVE RAINBOWS – for Pragmatic Reasons.

“Diversity defines the health and wealth of nations in a new century. Mighty is the mongrel. … The hybrid is hip. The impure, the mélange, the adulterated, the blemished, the rough, the black-and-blue, the mix-and-match – these people are inheriting the earth. Mixing is the new norm. Mixing trumps isolation. It spawns creativity, nourishes the human spirit, spurs economic growth and empowers nations.” G. Pascal Zachary, The Global Me: New Cosmopolitans and the Competitive Edge

Passion.

33. Leaders … Out Their PASSION!

!

34. Leaders Know: ENTHUSIASM BEGETS ENTHUSIASM!

BZ: “I am a … Dispenser of Enthusiasm!”

35. Leaders Focus on the SOFT STUFF!

“Soft” Is “Hard ” - ISOE

The “Job” of Leading.

36. Leaders Know It’s ALL SALES ALL THE TIME.

TP: If you don’t LOVE SALES … find another life. (Don’t pretend you’re a “leader.”) (See TP’s The Project50.)

37. But … Leaders Also Break a Lot of China

If you’re not pissing people off, you’re not making a difference!

Characteristics of the “Also rans”* “Minimize risk” “Respect the chain of command” “Support the boss” “Make budget” *Fortune, article on “Most Admired Global Corporations”

38. Leaders Give … RESPECT!

“It was much later that I realized Dad’s secret. He gained respect by giving it. He talked and listened to the fourth-grade kids in Spring Valley who shined shoes the same way he talked and listened to a bishop or a college president. He was seriously interested in who you were and what you had to say.” Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Respect

39. Leaders Say “ Thank You.”

“The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.” William James

40. Leaders Are … Graceful.

“My favorite word is grace – whether it’s amazing grace, saving grace, grace under fire, Grace Kelly. How we live contributes to beauty – whether it’s how we treat other people or the environment.” Celeste Cooper, designer

Rodale’s on “Grace” … elegance … charm … loveliness … poetry in motion … kindliness.. benevolence … benefaction … compassion … beauty

41. Leaders Are … Curious.

TP/ : The Three Most Important Letters … WHY?

42. Leadership Is a … Performance.

“It is necessary for the President to be the nation’s No. 1 actor.” FDR

43. Leaders … Are The Brand

“WHO ARE YOU [these days] ?” TP to Client

The BRAND lives (OR DIES) in the “minutiae” of the leader’s moment- to-moment actions.

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Gandhi

44. Leaders … Have a GREAT STORY!

“A key – perhaps the key – to leadership is the effective communication of a story.” Howard Gardner Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership

45. Leaders Seed & Pursue & Recognize (Weird) “Demos.”

Demos! Heroes! Stories!

Introspection.

46. Leaders … Enjoy Leading.

Warren’s “Whoops Moment” …

46A. Leaders … KNOW THEMSELVES.

Individuals (would-be leaders) cannot engage in a liberating mutual discovery process unless they are comfortable with their own skin. (“Leaders” who are not comfortable with themselves become petty control freaks.)

46B. But … Leaders have MENTORS.

The Gospel According to TP: Upon having the Leadership Mantle placed upon thine head, thou shalt never hear the unvarnished truth again!* (*Therefore, thy needs one faithful compatriot to lay it on with no jelly.)

47. Leaders Know … “It’s My Fault.”

You recruited ’em. You hired ’em. You trained ’em. You evaluated ’em. You “motivated” ’em.

48. Leaders … Take Breaks.

Zombie! Zombie!

The End Game.

49. Leaders ??? :

“Leadership is the PROCESS of ENGAGING PEOPLE in CREATING a LEGACY of EXCELLENCE.”

“Hire smart – go bonkers – have grace – make mistakes – love technology – start all over again.”

“LEADERS NEED TO BE THE ROCK OF GIBRALTAR ON ROLLER BLADES”

50. Leaders Know WHEN TO LEAVE!