Go to Martin Lindstrom's Cool Friends interview

Martin Lindstrom, our new Cool Friend, has sparked a debate over the ethics of neuromarketing with his book Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy. How much should brands tap into our subconscious in order to sell to us? Read the Cool Friends interview to find out what strategies brands can and are using to attract us at a subliminal level.

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blog archives

Ear Pablum!

The latest favored term from the Fed referring to pumping money into the banking system is "quantitative easing." BusinessWeek (12.15) columnist James Cooper tells us the definition of quantitative easing is "printing money."

Tom Peters posted this on 12/10.
Permalink | Comments (5) |

Beats Biofuels?!

Okay, I've stooped to reading ads. A United Technologies (Otis, Carrier, etc.) ad illustrates in detail the contours of a "zero net energy" building. There's nothing far out about it—and buildings today consume perhaps 40% of our energy.

I'm not conned by the ad—it just succinctly captured a ton of stuff I've been reading, and a ton of stuff underway in the green building "movement." Working on energy reduction in built environments is certainly on the prospective Obama stimulus list. But is it high enough on that list? Massive improvements can be made with proven technologies, far closer at hand than hydrogen cars or a national network of car battery recharging facilities. (And maybe the price of corn would fall in the process—thus saving starving people from bonehead Washington policies.)

Tom Peters posted this on 12/10.
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Note to Bill Gates

I've done all my Windows updates, Bill, but when I type "Obama" (as immediately above and preceding) I get the infamous wavy red underlining—which suggests that I replace Obama with "Osama."

Tom Peters posted this on 12/10.
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Whatever Are We "Gurus" Gonna Do?

Management gurudom seems to depend on GE excellence. GE is a monopoly supplier of case examples to Guruworld. With GE Capital wobbly, and with GE Capital's Immelt-era profits accounting for 50% of the whole firm's profits, I'd be surprised if the company ever returns to its Welchian glory. (Which is not to knock Immelt—Welch is the true architect of hyper GE Capital-centrism.)

Scratch GE.
Scratch Starbucks.
Uh, scratch Enron.
And Countrywide and WaMu.

There's always Wal*Mart.
Thank God.
Mr. Sam, we love you.

Tom Peters posted this on 12/10.
Permalink | Comments (8) |

"Scan" or "Scam"?

"'A patient comes in because he's in pain,' said Dr. Nelda Wray, a senior research scientist at the Methodist Institute for Technology in Houston. 'We see something in a scan and we assume causation. But we have no idea of the prevalence of the abnormality in routine populations.'"—Science Times/New York Times, 1209.08, "The Pain May Be Real, But the Scan Is Deceiving"

As I've said again and again (piggybacking on the "evidence-based medicine" "movement" championed by the likes of Michael Millenson and the peerless Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice), there's a lot that goes on in medicine, even in the most hallowed halls (especially in the most hallowed halls?), that has no basis in fact or hard evidence. This telling-frightening article is one more compelling example of medical witchcraft (sorry to use such strong language); and one more good reason to avoid hospitals whenever you can; and one more reason to question-the-living-bejesus out of any test the doc wants to perform; and one more reason to take charge of your own treatment—for God's sake, grow up, the guy in the white coat is flying blind half the time.

One growing response to the above, fostered by Web 2.0 and social networking, is patient involvement. BusinessWeek (12.15) offers "Can Patients Cure Healthcare?" Discussing websites such as PatientsLikeMe.com, sometimes collectively called "Health 2.0," the article explains that some groups of patients are going so far as doing their own clinical trials. Mounting health-establishment pushback is clear evidence that these increasingly informed patients, even when they get it wrong, are up to something good!

Tom Peters posted this on 12/10.
Permalink | Comments (5) |

FYI

The same BusinessWeek used above as a source has an article titled "What Top CEOs Are Thinking."

8 CEOs.
8 males.

(Sorry to waste your time, I realize this is not news.)

Tom Peters posted this on 12/10.
Permalink | Comments (8) |

Amen!

A commission formed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies recommended a Cyber Czar in the White House. While Mr. Bush did increase spending on cyberthreats, much, much more emphasis is called for—and the topic is too important to bury in DHS.

Tom Peters posted this on 12/09.
Permalink | Comments (11) |

Symbols, Smiles, and Walking the Talk

A debate raged (more or less) in a couple of sets of Comments on "style" versus "substance." In my opinion, it's a no-brainer, style is substance for leaders. I've always taken a shine to the oft-repeated Gandhi-ism, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." I ran across a companion expression recently, from St. Francis of Assisi: "It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching."

In honor of these ideas, I have created a PowerPoint/Special Presentation, lightly annotated, which is my best effort to make these points. It comes under the generic heading of my favorite me-ism, God forbid: Hard is soft. Soft is Hard.

I'd be honored if you'd look at the Special Presentation, titled "Symbolic Behavior/Smile/Respect," and continue the earlier dialogue.

(Incidentally, our collection of probably 25+ Special Presentations is not for my seminar Clients—the special PPTs exclusively appear at tompeters.com.)

Tom Peters posted this on 12/09.
Permalink | Comments (18) |

It Bogles the Mind

Our renaissance woman-commentator Judith Ellis recently mentioned Vanguard Mutual Fund Group founder John Bogle's Enough. The Measures of Money, Business, and Life. Judith's reference led me to add the 79-year-old Mr. Bogle's opus to my bookshelf. I will simply say that it is one of the best business books ("life" books?) I have ever read, an easy All-time Top 10. And its timing is, well, read it yourself ...

Rather than spend several sentences summarizing the short-but-very-sweet-and-very lucid tome, I'll let the brilliant chapter titles do the work for me. Here's a sample:

"Too Much Cost, Not Enough Value"
"Too Much Speculation, Not Enough Investment"
"Too Much Complexity, Not Enough Simplicity"
"Too Much Counting, Not Enough Trust"
"Too Much Business Conduct, Not Enough Professional Conduct"
"Too Much Salesmanship, Not Enough Stewardship"
"Too Much Focus on Things, Not Enough Focus on Commitment"
"Too Many Twenty-first Century Values, Not Enough Eighteenth-Century Values"
"Too Much 'Success,' Not Enough Character"

As to the overarching theme captured by the book's title, "Enough," Mr. Bogle begins with this vignette:

"At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, 'Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.'"

Amen!
And thank you, John Bogle!
(And Judith Ellis.)

Tom Peters posted this on 12/08.
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Upside Down

I am depressed, a word not used lightly. Part of it may be winter-in-Vermont. But the larger part, I think, is the world of business ideas, that I've participated in as more than a bit player, is being turned upside down. I feel somewhat like Alan Greenspan, who said his core beliefs are undergoing close examination. This is not a "hair shirt" Post—it is a musing of importance to me, and perhaps you. The following are not "assertions," for they are not definitive by any means. They are instead Question Marks, and I've illustrated each one with a single anecdote, offered without analysis:

***The guiding premise of ubiquitous Globalization, of which I have been among the most vociferous champions, is under assault:

"The world has become normal again. The years immediately following the Cold War offered a tantalizing glimpse of a new kind of international order, with nation states growing together or disappearing, and increasingly free commerce and communications. ... People and their leaders longed for 'a world transformed.' ...

"But that was a mirage. The world has not been transformed. In most places, the nation-state remains as strong as ever, and so, too, nationalist ambitions, the passions, and the competition among nations that have shaped history. ... Nationalism and the nation itself, far from being weakened by globalization, have now returned with a vengeance."

From: Robert Kagan, The Return of History and the End of Dreams. The title of the 2008 book is, in effect, a stinging rebuke to The End of History and the Last Man, a wildly influential 1992 book by Francis Fukuyama, in which he argues, "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." (Kagan is on most anybody's top five list of influential foreign affairs intellectuals—as is-was Fukuyama, a leading "neocon.") (Not so incidentally, the "exponentially interrelated global commerce ends the likelihood of war" theme was predominant among Europe's "leading intellectuals" in 1910–1912.)

***The Ubiquity of the benefits of extensive outsourcing and new organizational forms emerging is turning out to be a much more complex "transformation" than many expected, me included, again as a "cheerleader-in-chief":

Boeing, according to the Wall Street Journal [1205.08], is getting ready to announce another 6-month delay to delivery of its Dreamliner, bringing launch delays to date to two years. Part of the latest cock-up is attributed to "the volume of work that Boeing outsourced." I.e. coordination is turning out to be nightmarish.

Outsourcing is hardly a discredited idea—but the implementation [ah, execution, the "last 98%"] of extensive outsourcing has been far more difficult than most anyone imagined.

***Good ideas, private equity buyouts aimed at rapidly shaping up ailing firms, are often resulting in unspeakably predatory behavior:

"When [private equity firms, including Chrysler owner Cerberus] bought Mervyns from Target, they promised to revive the limping West Coast retailer. They stripped it of real estate assets, nearly doubled store rent, and saddled it with $800 million in debt while sucking out more than $400 million in cash for themselves. ... The moves left Mervyns so weak it couldn't survive."

From: "What Have You Done to My Company?" BusinessWeek, 1206.08. In July 2008 Mervyns entered bankruptcy and a few months later 18,000 employees were let go without severance. The title, "What Have ..." was uttered in October by 88-year-old Mervyns founder Merv Morris as he visited employees recently at a shuttering store, and was cheered by employees.

This literally sickens me.

While acknowledging the downfalls of private equity deals, I more or less drank the Kool Aid. The saving grace, of some sort, on this one is that many, but not all of us, have been taken waaaaay aback by the magnitude of the expression of greed revealed with each passing day—but that's hardly an adequate excuse. The bloated "guru class" is supposed to issue red alerts long before the bombs drop.

Shit, what a year.

[Belatedly, albeit with a vengeance, I have turned 163.82 degrees toward a radical "back to basics" approach—which was more or less the In Search of Excellence melody. Recall one of the chapter titles from the Bogle book (see immediately above) was: "Too Many Twenty-first Century Values, Not Enough Eighteenth-Century Values."]

Tom Peters posted this on 12/08.
Permalink | Comments (28) |

Rightside Up?

I have nothing against men—and feel profoundly for the million refugees cited below. On the other hand, I have been trying to make the case for an enhanced women's role in business for a dozen years now—and I've also been a particularly noisy foreteller of the exponential shift of the U.S. to a service economy.

These amazing stats appeared in the 5 December Boston Globe. In the last year:

Men are down 1,069,000 jobs.

Women are up 12,000 jobs.

Holy moly.

The principal reason is the continuing demise of male-dominated manufacturing jobs, and the continuing rise of service jobs. In particular, healthcare, where women constitute 80% of employees, has added 400,000 jobs during the period in question.

Interesting, eh?

(Net: It is increasingly a women's world, called the global rise of "Womenomics" by one European observer. Another accelerator is the stunning rate at which women are eclipsing men on the education front, again pretty much worldwide—from primary school to Ph.D. programs.)

Tom Peters posted this on 12/08.
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Bullet Points

A new client (praise be) asked for 5 bullets about my forthcoming presentation to use for marketing purposes. As an overachiever since about age 5, thanks (?) Mom, I offered up 27. See below:

The “Top 27: Twenty-seven Practical Ideas That Will Transform Every Organization

1. Learn to thrive in unstable times—our lot (and our opportunity) for the foreseeable future.

2. Only putting people first wins in the long haul, good times and especially tough times. (No "cultural differences" on that one! Colombia = Germany = the USA.)

3. MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around. Stay in touch!

4. Call a customer today!

5. Train! Train! Train! (Growing people outperform stagnant people in terms of attitude and output—by a wide margin.)

6. "Putting people first" means making everyone successful at work (and at home).

7. Make "we care" a/the company motto—a moneymaker as well as a source of pride.

8. All around the world, women are an undervalued asset.

9. Diversity is a winning strategy, and not for reasons of social justice: The more different perspectives around the table, the better the thinking.

10. Take a person in another function to lunch; friendships, lots of, are the best antidote to bad cross-functional task accomplishments. (Lousy cross-functional communication stops companies and armies alike.)

11. Transparency in all we do.

12. Create an "Innovation Machine" (even in tough times). (Hint: Trying more stuff than the other guy is Tactic #1.)

13. We always underestimate the Innovation Advantage when 100% of people see themselves as "innovators." (Hint: They are if only you'd bother to ask "What can we do better?")

14. Get the darned Basics right—always Competitive Advantage #1. (Be relentless!)

15. Great Execution beats great strategy—99% of the time. (Make that 100% of the time.)

16. A "bias for action" is a "bias for success." (Great hockey player Wayne Gretzky: "You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.")

17. No mistakes, no progress! (A lot of fast mistakes, a lot of fast progress.) (Australian businessman Phil Daniels: "Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.")

18. Sometimes "little stuff" is more powerful than "big stuff" when it comes to change.

19. Keep it simple! (Making "it" "simple" is hard work! And pays off!)

20. Remember the "eternal truths" of leadership—constants over the centuries. (They say Nelson Mandela's greatest asset was a great smile—you couldn't say no to him, even his jailors couldn't.)

21. Walk the talk. ("You must be the change you wish to see in the world."—Gandhi)

22. When it comes to leadership, character and people skills beat technical skills. (Emotional Intelligence beats, or at least ties, school intelligence.)

23. It's always "the little things" when it comes to "people stuff." (Learn to say "thank you" with great regularity. Learn to apologize when you're wrong. Learn the Big Four words: "What do you think?" Learn to listen—it can be learned with lots and lots of practice.)

24. The "obvious" may be obvious, but "getting the obvious done" is harder said than done.

25. Time micro-management is the only real "control" variable we have. (You = Your calendar. Calendars never lie.)

26. All managers have a professional obligation to their communities and their country as well as to the company and profit and themselves. (Forgetting this got the Americans into deep trouble.)

27. EXCELLENCE. ALWAYS. (What else?)

[Of course, you can get a PPT version of the "Top 27" also.—CM]

Tom Peters posted this on 12/04.
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Design Redux: Beyond Women's Restrooms

Two book recommendations:

From my friend and colleague Richard Farson: The Power of Design: A Force for Transforming Everything. That's a bold hypothesis—and to a great extent what I've staked my own professional career on in the last two decades. The book is well written, and it's well worth your time.

The other, also brilliant by my lights: Do You Matter? How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company, by Robert Brunner and Stewart Emery. Consider a sample of subtitles from the last chapter, "Building a Design-driven Culture": "Why good design is everybody's job" ... "Why we need risk support instead of risk management" ... "Why risk should be understood—not avoided" ... "How design requires faith and commitment ..." First paragraph: "In 1997, shortly after Steve Jobs returned to Apple, Dell's founder and chairman, Michael Dell, was asked at the Gartner Symposium and ITxpo97 how he would fix financially troubled Apple. 'What would I do?' Dell said. 'I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.'" (As you doubtless know, a scant ten years later Apple's market cap surged past Dell's.)

Tom Peters posted this on 12/03.
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Civil Defense, Circa 2008: An Urgent and Monumental Management Task

Janet Napolitano, assuming confirmation, will have her hands full as our third chief of homeland security. That was made even more clear with the publication yesterday of the report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism. In short, the report virtually promised a major WMD attack on the U.S. homeland within the next five years, by 2013—and said that deaths in the hundreds of thousands could well be the tally.

If history is a teacher, DHS will work like hell to prevent the catastrophe—and beef up the capabilities of first responders. I'd hardly shortchange those two tasks, particularly the first, but I think that no-bullshit training and organizing of you and me and our neighbors in Civil Defense, not unlike World War II practices, should share top billing. If a WMD, nuclear or biological, kills hundreds of thousands, the entire nation will go nuts. (Rightly so.) So how do the man or woman on the street and our community prepare for it and deal with it? My father, too old for the draft in WWII, was a Civil Defense air warden leader within a well-organized schema—one of my favorite souvenirs from him was an elaborate guide showing the shapes of German bombers that might make it to our shores. (A few German subs did make shore not so far away.) He was a local big cheese in a highly developed and well-trained civilian network—needless to say, the British version of this was more elaborate by orders of magnitude, as the odds were high (very high!) of an invasion of their homeland.

Well, if the shit is going to hit the fan, and a sane person would conclude that the odds of a shit-covered fan are not all that low, you and I should be exceptionally well trained and exceptionally well organized to be part of the solution, a big part, rather than part of the problem. (Did you watch any of the short-lived TV series Jericho—not a pretty sight, and not necessarily all that far out.) My entire "training" since 9/11 has amounted to half listening to airport announcements telling me to look out for suspicious things. That is a pathetic request for my involvement. And I'll bet things don't change much—or at all.

My bottom line, and others have said this, is that I, and I suspect you, stand ready for my country to ask much of me in defending our homeland—if only President-elect Obama or DHS Secretary-designate Napolitano bother to ask.

So what are you and I going to do about it? (Anybody have Governor Napolitano's private cellphone #?)

Tom Peters posted this on 12/03.
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Commonplace?

Susan just severed a relationship with a professional working on a project with her. The person was creative and personable. But time and again failed to deliver the goods—actually hard goods in this case. Whether accounting or plumbing or design work, I'd wager that 75% of firings of professionals comes from follow-through, not the cleverness of the work. (Give me your guess on the percentage. Please.)

(In this case the professional was indeed personable, a key trait. But on the EQ side, the person in question lost by arguing every point with Susan rather than acknowledging responsibility.)

Tom Peters posted this on 12/02.
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Penance?

What shall we do with the architects (and operators) and facility managers?

As most know, two of my great passions are gorgeous and startling and utilitarian DESIGN. And MARKETING to WOMEN. (Add great experiences—but I was a follower on that one.)

Susan and I went to the fabulous-restored Colonial Theater in Boston to see Spamalot. At the break, I at one point counted (I counted twice—zero hyperbole here) a line of 27 (TWENTY-SEVEN) (TWENTY-SEVEN) at the entrance to the LADIES ROOM.

Of course I know that such a problem is tough to deal with after the fact in an old facility—but there was the renovation point, and I'd guess "the boys" (I'd wager a pretty penny that it was boys), the architects, TOTALLY BLEW IT.

SO OUR QUESTIONS OF THE DAY ARE (1) HOW DO WE FIX IT NOW? (2) WHAT SHOULD THE ARCHITECTS' PENANCE BE?

(My starter suggestion, since re-renovation is tough, especially in a tough philanthropic environment, is to punish all us boys by severely and sternly (rent-a-cops with batons) limiting access to the Men's Room and carefully managing the line so ours is always one-third longer than theirs. (The penalty extra third acknowledges that it takes us less time to get the job done.) Hmm, maybe ours should be twice as long, adding in some small measure of punitive damages.

I anxiously await your replies which I shall forward with dispatch to the AIA/American Institute of Architects.

Tom Peters posted this on 12/02.
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Sorry About the Understatement!

In a recent Post, I recalled a story from Maryann Keller's Rude Awakening: The Rise, Fall, and Struggle for Recovery of General Motors about the extreme deference paid to GM middle managers. I did it from memory, but ordered the book anyway. I got the stocked refrigerator and the torn-out hotel room wall part right (mostly—it was soft drinks, not beer), but had forgotten the story that preceded it—which made my little vignette small change by comparison. An exec reported this to Ms Keller about a not-atypical incident that marked his more junior days as a GM staffer:

"When [the assistant general sales manager] would fly in from the Chevrolet Central Office in Kansas City, I was assigned to stand outside the door of the Muehlenbach Hotel in a snowstorm and I was not to move, because whenever he showed up, I had to be there to open the door. We bought the elevator and blocked it off so he'd have an elevator to go to. We had somebody assigned to stand outside his room all day to take his shirts to the laundry and perform other tasks. And—this is true—we had learned that he had to have his morning orange juice a certain temperature, so we had somebody in the kitchen every day who tested the orange juice with a thermometer." [My italics.]

NB: Pondering Senator Obama's recently announced national security team and the Big Three execs returning with their begging bowls to D.C. this week, this thought occurred: While autoworld's Big Three CEOs took home about $40 million in compensation for their individually and collectively disastrous performance in 2007, the combined pay for the Big Four Generals responsible for our global security (military heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps) was about $1 million!

Tom Peters posted this on 12/01.
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Condolences

My heart goes out to our brothers and sisters in Mumbai. Personally, I feel like the guy who had a flat tire on the way to the airport and missed flight XXX, which was subsequently hijacked; I was due to have landed in Mumbai next Wednesday and proceeded to the Oberoi hotel, radioactive American passport in hand, prior to a Thursday seminar. It's a messy world; this was my third near-miss this year. Earlier in Johannesburg a trio of gunman hit my hotel at 6:30 a.m., 20 minutes after I'd left for my seminar that day. And in Mexico City last month, a small jet crashed and burned 5 or 10 blocks from my hotel; the crash was suspicious (still unresolved), as it carried the young Federal Interior Minister who was having some success against the powerful drug cartels.

I am shaken by the three near-misses, as any sane person would be, but will not curtail my International travels in any way. (Give me a couple of weeks re Mumbai, please.) I am a keen believer in the immense benefits of globalization and a charter member of the flat-earth society, circa 2008. It is my pleasure to be of some tiny service to my friends from Kuwait, Saudi, Dubai (week before last), to Kiev, to my beloved South Africa (may Mr Mandela live to 100+), Ukraine, Romania, etc. And India! Re the latter, I am "one of those"—a true blue India lover!

(As a matter of professional interest, I'd suggest Philip Bobbitt's Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-first Century. I had just started it; it's a tough slog, but truly an original work.)

Tom Peters posted this on 11/27.
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And Now for Something Completely the Same

"And now for something completely different," the Monty Python gang used to promise. (I went to Spamalot this past weekend.) Forget that, I want to honor this Thanksgiving with something "completely the same."

Dwight David Eisenhower, or Ike, is certainly one of the ten greatest Americans of the 20th century—and surely ranks in the top 50 for the world as a whole. As president from 1953–1960, he got us out of Korea more or less with honor, kept the Cold War from getting entirely out of hand, had the perfect demeanor for overseeing our post-war wound-licking and rejuvenation, was an unsung civil rights hero, and this great general ended his second term by warning us of the financial and political costs of a "military-industrial complex" with too much power—talk about prescience. And all this, of course, was preceded by D-Day and the campaign that ended World War II in Europe, in which Ike, make no mistake, was the prime mover.

I'm fascinated anew by DDE, and it all stemmed from a single and simple quote from General Eisenhower, which appeared in the May 2008 issue of Armchair General, a magazine I almost inadvertently grabbed at Logan Airport: "Allied commands depend on mutual confidence [and this confidence] is gained, above all through the development of friendships." The magazine's writer reinforced Ike's self-assertion by adding, "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."

The quotes above are borne out in Michael Korda's extraordinary, new-ish 800-page prize-winning biography in which I am currently immersed, Ike: An American Hero. I selected a more or less random couple of chapters, covering DDE's arrival in England in 1942 and his subsequent and surprising assignment to command of Torch, the Allies first offensive action of the war and the biggest and most ungainly offensive of its kind in history to that point. (The North African landing took place on my day of birth—07 November 1942.) In the space of just 43 pages (pp. 268–311) we find these phrases describing Eisenhower:

"infectious grin and great charm" ... "nice face" ... "grin that was to become so famous" ... "got along famously" ... "goodwill was spontaneous and easily recognizable" ... "good impression that Ike had made in six weeks" [newcomer junior general to Supreme Commander, Torch, agreed upon by Roosevelt and Churchill—in, yes, just six weeks] ... "least rank-conscious of generals" ... "Men were happy to serve under Ike, even British admirals and generals who might easily have raised objections; his sincerity and lack of ceremony made it difficult, even impossible, to refuse him, and enabled him very rapidly to pull a team together." ... "Ike was gregarious, rarely had anything bad to say about anyone, and, on the surface at least, was relaxed and good natured." ... "Whereas Ike's good humor was genuine, unaffected, and affectionate, Monty's [Field Marshall Sir Bernard Montgomery] was cruel and mocking and always carried a sting."

Following successes in North Africa and Italy, Eisenhower, still a rather "fresh face" and less than two years past arriving in London as a Lieutenant Colonel, was selected as Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force Europe, tasked to invade the European continent and procure Germany's unconditional surrender. Korda explains the somewhat surprising decision:

"The Allies had generals with, perhaps, a sharper strategic vision than Ike. ... There were also generals who were more experienced at 'fighting a battle' ... But there was nobody who had anything like Ike's record of leading an alliance—always the most difficult feat in warfare. ... What is more, Ike somehow inspired people: civilians and ordinary soldiers of both nations, even cynical political figures and the always troublesome French. Something about his big grin; his long-limbed, loose American way of walking (the Kansas farm boy grown to a man); his easy, familiar way of speaking to everybody from King George VI down to privates in both armies; his lack of pretension; his evident sincerity ... They were willing to be led by him. They were willing to have him command their sons and husbands in battle. They trusted him. They were willing to die for him. ..."

(NB: Precisely these same things could be said about the two military figures I have studied most assiduously, Lord Horatio Nelson and General Ulysses S. Grant.)

(NB: When DDE subsequently ran for President of the United States in 1952, his campaign slogan was the simple "I like Ike.")

So?

So: Why must we constantly pursue "breakthrough thinking," why must we leap "out of the box," when the secrets to success and, conversely, the causes of failure—in the sense of persuading or failing to persuade groups of all sizes to pursue and achieve excellence in any and all endeavors—are almost wholly dependent upon character traits and personal characteristics that are, in fact, more or less eternal and which unequivocally transcend cultures of every flavor?

Benjamin Franklin's Parisian charm offensive of 1776–77 gained France as an American ally and changed the course of history in our Revolutionary War against England.

Nelson Mandela's extraordinary smile disarmed one and all. ("One of the greatest charm offensives in history" was one biographer's description of Mandela's amazing feat of disarming enemies and allies alike and transforming South Africa without civil war.)

Eisenhower's grin ("something about his big grin," "grin that was to become so famous") united fractious Allies and insured the effective conclusion of World War II in the European theater.

We are confronted at the moment with an economic crisis of epic proportion. There is no better time to heed the eternal lessons of Eisenhower (Franklin, Mandela, etc). Make no mistake, the keys to surviving and thriving, as individuals and organizations, will not primarily be the "out of the box" cleverness of our "strategic response," but instead individual and organizational character as expressed by the depth and breadth of relationships throughout our individual or organizational networks. Current case in point, Mr Pandit of Citigroup is as smart as they come and then some, but, unlike Ike, when he said, "Follow me"—nobody moved, except to cut and run.

American Thanksgiving is our quintessential "family holiday." Giftgiving—for once!—is not the norm, except as it is reflected in exchanges of pumpkin pies and 7-generation-old recipes for turkey stuffing. It is a day in which we even put the likes of sibling sniping on hold and simply rejoice in each other's presence. It is a day, one hopes, when we also reflect on those, numbering in the hundreds of millions, or even billions, who go to bed on less than a full stomach.

The economic crisis? Not much fun. And less fun to come. But this, too, will pass, especially if we can assiduously translate the good will around the Thanksgiving Table and the character lessons of Eisenhower and Franklin and Mandela into our minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day affairs.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Tom Peters posted this on 11/26.
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"Socialism" Versus "Capitalism" In Modern America

The Socialists are going berserk!
(The Republicans, of course.)
The Capitalists are in retreat!
(The Democrats, of course.)

Bill Clinton deregulated financial services!
Bill Clinton didn't bat an eye when the dotcom bubble was pricked!
Bill Clinton gave us "welfare to workfare"!
Bill Clinton got NAFTA passed over fierce resistance from both parties!
[To be sure, Mr Clinton had a little help on the ground from Newt Gingrich & Co, and the intellectual support of Alan "Ayn" Greenspan.]

George W. Bush, to the conservative rag, the New York Times, this morning's edition, has through yesterday unwound the Clinton radical pro-capitalist legacy via $7,800,000,000,000 [$7.8 trillion] in government assistance and guarantees.

(1) To quote Margaret Thatcher, it's a funny old world.
(2) In all seriousness, to those blinded by partisanship who say Mr Bush is sitting out the financial crisis, I say, Baloney! [And thank God.]
(3) Now what?

Tom Peters posted this on 11/26.
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Note to the Appalled on Bear Scat

My neighbor brought me the bear scat. (See immediately below.) He had it in his hand—and handed it to me. Basically, it's modestly digested bark and nuts. (Period.) I surely wouldn't take a knife and fork to it, but it's a long, long way from what city folk might imagine. Particularly when the world goes wobbly, it is pure joy to be imbedded in the land, listening to bear calls at night (they sound like owls), waking up to farm sounds and having an oasis a long way from Citicorp HQ. I'm one of the old fashioned types—I guess it's the new fashion, in point of fact—who think we were designed to be in touch with the land in one way or another. (I say all this, while I claim with equal sincerity that I left my heart in San Francisco. Lucky me.)

Tom Peters posted this on 11/25.
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Hold Your Nose!
Bail We Must!
Scrooge Not!
Spend As If Your Life Depends On It! (It does!)

What follows is an economic primer from a non-economist:

Warts and all, America is the lynchpin of the global economy.
(And probably will be for next 25 years.)
Citi is a, maybe the, lynchpin of the lynchpin.
In fact, probably.
Psychologically, beyond doubt.
More than ever in a connected, hyper-tangled, wholly mangled world.
Financial system outcomes and movements are a "pure expectations play."
1% math.
99% individual and group and herd psychology.
(Basis of entire system is pure "psych": You deposit a little, they lend a lot, we both pray to any and all gods that the depositors don't all knock on the door at the same time. Hint: they did-are-will pound & wail for the foreseeable future.)
Hence, system precarious 100.00% of the time.
Vicious and virtuous circles are always in play.
Always.
There is no normal.
Never.
Ever.
(Wish there were a psychologist on Mr Obama's top econ team.)
(Or at least someone with a normal IQ.)
("One who knows" reports that Citi CEO Pandit has an EQ of approximately zero.)
(Sorta like L. Summers.)
Soooooo ...
Citi fails.
Depression follows.
(Or at least the odds go up not imperceptibly—and, hence, unacceptably.)
Therefore bailout justified, at almost any cost.
Pump Citi up with a few tens of billions.
Save not improbable downside of as much as tens of trillions.
Globalization threatened if Citi tanks.
25-year setback.
Bailout awful, unconscionable.
Bailout bodyblow to pure capitalism.
No bailout, possible capitalism knockout—or at least a wretched decade or two.
Fact—nobody has a clue.
Systemic interdependencies of this order are truly novel.
And psychological irrationality and the utter madness of crowds—of smart people as well as not-so-smart people—is a perpetual "given."
In a clueless world, one must assiduously attend to lowish probability outcomes with catastrophic consequences.
"Catastrophic" is not a hyperbolic word these days.
"Catastrophe" is an ever-present "plausible" outcome.
"Net net": Bailout "least worst" solution.
Welcome to the real world!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Friday-After-Thanksgiving!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Consumption rules!
Buy presents!
Give to the homeless!
Make those Salvation Army buckets sag with Susan B. Anthony coins!
Pray that every sumbitch makes this Friday "Open Wallet Day"!
Got a Great Aunt Maude?
Haven’t seen her for 20 years?
Buy her a 60-inch flat-screen TV!
Better yet, a Ford hybrid!
Better yet, a house at list price!

(Photo below, bear shit from a beast estimated to be 250 pounds—from my farm, up the hill a couple of hundred yards from the main house, exhibited on a wall outside my working studio. Great symbol for a Bear Market, eh? Deposited on Citi Bailout Day. Ah, all is not lost—there are deposits out there!)

Tom Peters posted this on 11/25.
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True Loyalty in Tough Times

The first notice most of us got of the current economic crisis came from TV and newspapers. Now, as the ripple effects of softening business move through the marketplace, just about everyone I talk to is seeing some sort of softening effect on their business. We are all vulnerable.

We can't afford to be sloppy right now, in anything we do. We can't waste resources. We can't let customers, in whose acquisition we have invested considerable sales and marketing resources, slip away, believing that new customers will show up to take their places.

In this economy, customer loyalty is one of the most important variables that will affect our success. It will be increasingly difficult to find new customers who can become big customers, so we have to get the most benefit out of what we already have. But ... we also can't afford to be sloppy with our concept of customer loyalty.

In so many cases, companies mistake promotional bribes for loyalty. But the kind of loyalty created by this type of approach is fleeting, and defenseless against a better offer from your competitor. (And you can bet that your competitors will be offering richer deals in the near future.) This type of loyalty, which I call transactional loyalty, can temporarily steer transactions in your direction, but keeps you very vulnerable in tough times.

The kind of loyalty you want to create in these times is what I call True Loyalty. When a customer is truly loyal, she is not loyal to your latest promotional offer, or to filling out her punch card to get her 10th smoothie for free. When True Loyalty happens, the customer is loyal to you. More specifically, she is loyal to her relationship with you.

This is a big difference. If a customer believes she is in a "We" relationship with you, her frame of reference is not the latest transaction, but the entire history of her relationship with you.

Soon, here at tompeters.com and at yastrow.com, I will share my thoughts on how to create True Loyalty. For now, what do you think? How do you avoid transactional loyalty, and create True Loyalty? Is True Loyalty a key to thriving in a tough economic climate?

Steve Yastrow posted this on 11/25.
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Service?
Sacrifice?
Equity?
Honor?

The Washington Post reports that Representative Peter Roskam (R-IL), during last week's hearings, asked automaker CEOs if they'd work for a dollar a year. Chrysler's Nardelli said yes, GM's Wagoner said "I don't have a position on that today," and Ford's Alan Mulally, who made $21,700,000 last year, said, "I think I'm okay where I am."

In the immortal words of Dave Barry, "I'm not making this up."

Meanwhile CNN's Kyung Lah reported that the CEO of JAL rides public transit to work, eats in the company cafeteria, and cut his salary below that of his pilots as a personal response to layoffs and forced early retirements that JAL felt necessary to make.

A Financial Times headline on Citicorp reads: "Bank loses over half its value in past three days" "[CEO] Pandit moves to shore up his position as chief."

As disgusting [DIS-GUST-ING] as Mulally's "I'm okay" comment was-is, the Pandit headline in its own fashion affected me even more. Citi's performance is awful—and there's little or no doubt that Pandit is a major part of the problem. And hence his primary response, following an announced 50,000 plus layoff, is to try and save his own skin? (TP's considered response: "You miserable, ego-maniacal S.O.B.")

Have these guys (and they're almost all guys) no sense of shame? No sense of service? No sense of honor? No sense of sacrifice? No sense of equity?

A little online research Cathy and I did shows that none of the Big Three CEOs had any military service. I do not believe that such service is a generic answer to any particular problem. But I do believe that the uniform absence thereof is perhaps indicative of a lack of a life-as-service, servant leader ethos in general among these three? (The "no military service" piece is almost amusing, in a perverse way, in the case of Nardelli, who is a fanatic believer in some twisted notion of the "military model" of doing business—his willy nilly application of his abominable interpretation of military leadership was one of his many screwups at Home Depot. Part of Nardelli's, yes, admirable willingness to work for a buck at Chrysler may be the $200 million he took home as a prize for being fired from Home Depot.)

In summary:

Have they no shame?
Have they no sense of service?
Have they no conception of servant leadership?
Have they no soul?
Have they no honor?
Have they no ethos of sacrifice?
Have they no conception of-perception of equity?
(Did any of them go to Sunday School?)

Does it sound like I'm in a pissy mood, maybe still suffering from jetlag following my Middle East trip? Well, I am in a pissy mood, and part of it may indeed be 66-year-old-body-meets-jetlag. But part of it derives directly from Pandit and Mulally and the association of their flavor attitudes to our unfolding economic catastrophe. I've spent 40 plus years directly or indirectly on, effectively, one topic: profit through people-centered, people-obsessed leadership. Mulally and Pandit and their not insignificant ilk make me wonder if I pissed away my life in pursuit of an improbable, or even impossible, ideal?

Tom Peters posted this on 11/24.
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