Archives: October 2014

RESPECT++ IN 140 CHARACTERS

Respect is not “earned.” Respect given is automatic—though you may upon occasion discover that it was not, alas, merited.
Respect is the default position. Disrespect must be earned.
Respect is the greatest motivator of all.

Every human being has an interesting story. You’ll find it if you give a shit. (And listen.)
Everyone has a great story to tell … if only you’d shut up.
Listening intently is the greatest act of respect.
Repeat: Respect is the greatest motivator of all.

The virtuous (business) circle:
Respect.
Intent listening.
Motivation.
Engagement.
Happy colleagues.
Happy customers.
Profitability.

Twitter respondent: “What happens after you’ve ‘listened’ is what is actually important.”
TP: Somewhat disagree. The listening [intently] PER SE is what matters most. [Which is kinda the point.]

My favorite quote (or, one of them): “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”—Philo of Alexandria (I constantly remind myself of this.)
The things mindless optimists say sometimes make me want to vomit, such as, “All you need is a positive attitude.” For some, life sucks.

Related Aside:
Me, at the airport, BWI, 6:45AM, to bus driver who pulls up to the curb: “Is this the bus to the rental car lot? “
Driver, with a broad smile: “Don’t we begin conversations like this with ‘How are you this morning?'”
(Me, to myself: “What a total jerk I am. What a wonderful reminder.”)
Me, to bus driver: “You are absolutely right, and I am so sorry for my rudeness. Oh, and I hope you have a great day.”

Some people “get straight to the point.” Some stumble and fumble. The former are persuasive—and invariably wrong.
Definition of “get straight to the point”: Arrogance and gross oversimplification.
“I’m gonna tell it like it is.” Life is complex, multi-variate, non-linear. No one has a clue as to “like it is.”
“I’m gonna tell it like it is.”: I am going to expose you to all of the data incompleteness and prejudices and biases and distortions and shortcuts in my information accumulation and analysis process.

(We have also attached these comments as a PDF.)

Guadalahara

Tom’s chosen topic for his appearance today in Guadalahara is “Innovate … or Perish.” If you were in the audience and would like to have the slides he used, you can download the PowerPoint presentation here. There’s also a long Web-only version if you want more in-depth coverage of the topic. Enjoy!

The Project Leadership EXCELLENCE 42
Revision, 27 October 2014

What follows is a slightly revised version of the Project Leadership Excellence 42 list from my presentation last week to the PMI Leadership Institute confab. We have also attached this list in both PDF and PowerPoint formats.

1. Politics as nuisance-distraction vs. “Politics Is Life. RELISH It.”
2. IQ > EQ vs. EQ > IQ.
3. Buttoned down to a fault vs. “I am a dispenser of enthusiasm.”—Ben Zander
4. “We don’t have time for niceties” vs. CIVILITY. ALWAYS.
5. “There’s always some damn thing” vs. Live for the madness per se.
6. “This is a time of enormous change, which must be reflected in our work” vs. “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”—Albert Bartlett
7. Linearity/“waterfall” vs. Non-linearity/circularity/high tempo-lightning fast “O.O.D.A. Loop”/agile.
8. Step-at-a-time vs. “Demo or die”/“Serious Play”/“Ready. Fire. Aim.”
9. Optimistic-or-bust vs. UNDER-promise or bust.
10. In the office vs. Out of the Office/NO OFFICE.
11. Nose to the grindstone vs. “This is a blast—as cool as it gets.”
12. Meetings as agony vs. MEETINGS AS LEADERSHIP OPPORTUNITY #1.
13. Small leadership circle vs. Inclusive leadership circle.
14. Formal customer-vendor relationships vs. “No barriers”-fully integrated partnership with customers-vendors.
15. No time to waste, isolation is the norm vs. welcome to the Age of SOCIAL BUSINESS.
16. Information as needed vs. WILDLY “over”-communicate with EVERYONE.
17. Confidentiality often necessary vs. Confidentiality 99% nonsense/Inform everyone of everything.
18. Email/IM vs. FACE-TO-FACE/frequent-flyer miles.
19. Over-scheduled vs. 50% unscheduled time.
20. Latest tech vs. Paper checklist.
21. Lunch with colleagues/Lunch as respite vs. LUNCH as #1 Networking Opportunity.
22. Suck UP for Success vs. Suck DOWN for Success.
23. Fend off enemies vs. Recruit and nurture ALLIES ALLIES ALLIES.
24. Silos are inevitable vs. INTENSIVELY MANAGED “XFX”/Cross-Functional eXcellence.
25. Not our fault vs. WILDLY over-respond to screw-ups/Apology as Relationship Building Mainstay.
26. Recognition-as-deserved vs. Constant recognition, especially for “little stuff”/Celebrate-every-damn-milestone-imaginable, make ’em up if need be/“BIG MO” rules.
27. Talk vs. LISTEN/Listening-as-Strategic Tool #1.
28. “Here’s the deal” vs. “WHAT DO YOU THINK?”
29. “We want people who know what they are doing” vs. “We want people with an insatiable thirst for growth.”
30. If we hire good folks, little need for training vs. Training = Investment #1 (Even on a BRIEF project).
31. Noisy vs. Quiet (Introverts are probably under-represented on your team—fix it).
32. “Millennials are different” vs. Millennials want stuff smart “people-1st companies” (e.g., Virgin, Southwest) have been giving non-millennials for decades.
33. Supervisors are 1st and foremost paid to “keep on top of things” vs. Supervisors are in the “people development business.”
34. Bosses aim to “help people be successful” vs. Bosses help people GROW. (2014: “Grow or die.”) (Holds on even BRIEF projects.)

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LEADER/CORPORATE MANDATE #1 2014: 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!

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35. Lieutenants & captains & majors vs. Sergeants, sergeants, sergeants.
36. “Gender balance” an important goal vs. Women are the best leaders. (And usually primary end-users.)
37. Concentration/“no nonsense” vs. Daydreaming/READING/ “Freak Fridays.”
38. Kaizen vs. WOW-ification/“Insanely great.”
39. Design is important vs. “You know a design is good when you want to lick it.”—Steve Jobs (Design supremacy/Market Cap: Apple > Exxon.)
40. Minimize “TGWs”/Things Gone Wrong vs. Maximize TGRs/Things Gone Right.
41. Make a damn good product vs. Good product PLUS greatly enhance the (transformative) “INTEGRATED SERVICES ENVELOPE.”
42. “Good work” vs. … EXCELLENCE!

Project Management Institute
The Project Leadership EXCELLENCE 42

Tom is speaking in Phoenix (+63F temperature shift from Vermont) to the Project Management Institute‘s North American Leadership Institute Meeting 2014. “I am excited beyond measure–I’ve been waiting 48 years for this,” he says. “I got my construction engineering masters degree from the civil engineering department at Cornell in June 1965. My thesis was on something very new–PERT/CPM. That is, Program Evaluation and Review Technique/Critical Path Method. Oh, and there was RAMPS/Resource Allocation and Multi-Project Scheduling. The statistical methodology was intimidating, but my brain was then supple, and I nailed it with a document on, more or less, the impact of varying standard deviations of critical path events. Gauss, Bayes, and others were my lodestones. Then off I went to practice civil engineering–as a U.S. Navy Seabee (from Construction Battalion) Ensign in Vietnam in 1966. Whoops. Though building complex structures such as bridges and fortified Special Forces Camps, I didn’t need a lot of PERT/CPM/RAMPS. But I sure as hell could have used some people skills–not to mention a little time behind a bulldozer or grader’s control panel. I.e., I was loaded for bear academically re project management technicalities, but AWOL on the ‘last 95%’–‘PAP’/People and Practicalities. I was royally pissed off at Cornell, and let my faculty advisors know it when my deployment ended and I went home for a bit of shore leave prior to returning for Vietnam deployment #2. Little did I realize that the ‘missing 95%’ I was so irritated at Cornell about was what I’d research and write on 16 years later in a book titled, In Search of Excellence. (Remember the ISOE battle cry: ‘Hard is Soft. Soft is hard.’ The ‘hard’ numbers are flabby/soft as hell; and the so-called ‘soft’ ‘people stuff’ is the true enterprise bedrock/’hard stuff.’) Book or not, I’ve never given the lecture I wanted to give on project management–until now. You’ll find here the PowerPoint I used, ‘The Project Leadership EXCELLENCE 42.’ You’ll also find a PDF version of the PLE42 PowerPoint. I’ve also attached two related papers, ‘Getting Things (THAT MATTER) Done Against the Odds and in the Inky-black Shadow Cast by the Guardians of the Status Quo,’ my implementation summa; and ‘Systems Have Their Place: SECOND Place,’ which argues that systems only achieve their potential if the culture of the organization is appropriate and well imbedded; culture, that is, is the lead variable. To put you in the appropriate mind set, I’ll share here the first slide of my PMI presentation. Peter Pronovost is the Johns Hopkins doctor who brought the checklist into healthcare. It has saved a staggering number of lives. Peter quickly ran into a stumbling block in the road to implementation. Hospital culture usually had to be dramatically altered for the checklist to work. For example, nurses had to be fully empowered to stop the process in train if the doctor skipped a step; that is, ‘simple’ checklists were predicated on true teamwork. Peter wrote about it in his superb book, Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals. Herewith, the extract that served as the text of my 1st PP slide: ‘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. Yet I didn’t have a single class that taught me communication or teamwork skills–something I need every day I walk into the hospital.’ Hope you find this stuff of some value.

EXCELLENCE Potpourri:
A Collection of (Important) Papers

I. The Moral Bedrock of Management: Maximizing Human Capital Development

II. TRAINING: Investment #1

III. The 34 BFOs/Blinding Flashes of the Obvious: This Is the (OBVIOUS) Stuff I Care About. This Is the (OBVIOUS) Stuff, the Absence of Which Sends Me into a … RAGE

IV. Systems Have Their Place: SECOND Place

V. PUTTING PEOPLE (REALLY) FIRST!

VI. #1 Then/1982. #1 Now/2014: A BIAS FOR ACTION

The document herein attached is just what it says it is–a potpourri, a miscellaneous collection of my favorite recent essays on EXCELLENCE. (Tom Peters. EXCELLENCE. What else?) Several are recent additions–“The Moral Bedrock of Management” and “TRAINING: Investment #1.” The pair are responses to itches I’ve long intended to scratch in print; now I have. “The 34 BFOs/Blinding Flashes of the Obvious” is a summary document of just what the title says, obvious and vital itches that few too managers vigorously scratch. “Systems Have Their Place: SECOND Place” is, dare I say it, one of my favorite pieces that as far as I’m concerned has not gotten appropriate attention. The final duo–“PUTTING PEOPLE (Really) FIRST” and
“#1 Then/1982. #1 Now/2014: A BIAS FOR ACTION” are updated papers on my two favorites-forever topics.

Enjoy!

#McKQ50

Don’t miss the interview at McKinsey.com, “Tom Peters on leading the 21st Century.” On the 50th Anniversary of the McKinsey Quarterly, they interviewed Tom, and the conversation basically covers his outlook on the next 50 years. Use the link above to find the online version of the interview, which includes several short video clips and a Twitter feed of the talk around what Tom had to say.

Tom in the Media

Mitch Joel of Twist Image did a “Six Pixels of Separation” podcast with Tom on the state of business today. You can find it on iTunes as SPOS # 429, or here at twistimage.com.

Listing Tom as one of 22 Thinkers to Follow on Twitter, Drake Baer at Business Insider writes this: “Unlike other members of the management elite, Peters is always in conversation with his followers. So throw a quandary his way.” High praise in Tom’s way of thinking.

Tom especially loved this Twitter exchange started by Thinkers50: “Thinkers Who’ve Reinvented Themselves via Twitter.”

Bully for Me!
I’m The Cleverest Person in the Room!

Last week, I attended a memorial service for one of my great mentors, the generally acclaimed #1 leadership guru (and extraordinary humanist) (and leader in his own right) Warren Bennis. About 15 of his friends and colleagues spoke—myself included. It was eerie: We each—without exception—said the same thing, albeit in slightly different words. Warren made you feel clever—and at the center of his universe. This ability, in addition to its ultimate expression of humanist existence, may be the effective leader’s most valuable attribute when it comes to engaging the mind and heart and soul and energy of others.

Consider these related quotes:

“When I left the dining room after sitting next to Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But when I sat next to Disraeli, I left feeling I was the cleverest person.”—Jennie Jerome, Winston Churchill’s (American) mother

“When you are talking to [Bill Clinton], you feel like he doesn’t care about anything or anybody else around but you. He makes you feel like the most important person in the room.”—Mark Hughes, screenwriter, Forbes blogger

Leadership is about how you make people feel—about you, about the project or work you’re doing together, and especially about themselves.”—Betsy Myers, Take the Lead: Motivate, Inspire, and Bring Out the Best in Yourself and Everyone Around You

“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

“Rather than talking at the assembled group [about the work], he went about it from the other direction. He started out by asking people to tell us about what mattered to them. By sharing their stories with each other, people felt more connected—these gatherings became an opportunity to go from ‘me’ to ‘us,’ and from there to ‘What we can do together.'”—Betsy Myers, on Marshall Ganz’s work with community organizers, from Take the Lead: Motivate, Inspire, and Bring Out the Best in Yourself and Everyone Around You

I would—literally—beg of you to do more than skim these quotes. To be sure, I was very emotional throughout Warren’s service. But I was also stunned at the repetitiveness of the theme among people of remarkably different backgrounds.

Try and translate this into the/your daily practice of leadership. It’s not that I think you—or I, for that matter—can match the intensity or sincerity of Warren’s engagement. But we can at least be aware of our oft straying attention amidst a harried day. Warren’s days were doubtless more harried than yours or mine. But for the duration of the time you were with him—10 minutes or two hours—his ability to make you the star of the drama was matchless. At the very least you can acknowledge the importance of this state of affairs—and raise your personal awareness of your moment-to-moment state of mind. You can also practice attentiveness—one manager reports that she writes “Listen” on her hand before a meeting.

There is, by the way, a virtuous circle process that emerges here. Your attentiveness is fun—that is, you learn a helluva lot about the person, their motivations, and the task at hand via the process that one keen observer calls “fierce listening.”

Try it.
You’ll like it.
You’ll try even harder.
You’ll get better.
It works.
(And in the process probably makes you a better person—nice bonus, eh?)

NB: One useful approach to improvement is becoming a formal student of asking good questions. This is an art—but also a science. I.e., you can study and practice deliberately. One point of entry is Ed Schein’s book Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Rather Than Telling; also see Schein’s Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help. When asking becomes your primary mode of interaction, your attentiveness and other-centeredness more or less automatically go up.

Brand You: 1997 Remembered

From the well-received Dataclysm: Who We Are, by Christian Rudder, co-founder of OkCupid/p. 209:

“While aspiration and the prestige of association may be timeless [branding] concepts, truly new territory has recently opened to the brand people. In 1997, Tom Peters, a motivational speaker and management consultant, published an article called ‘The Brand Called You’ in Fast Company magazine—and the era of personal branding was born.”

(FYI: Mr. Rudder is highly critical of my writing style in the FC article—failing to acknowledge that the piece was edited not by me, but from a phone interview by Fast Company co-founder and former HBR editor Alan Webber; besides, to add a gratuitous remark, Dataclysm, though a fascinating book, scores off-the-charts on lousy writing.) (FYI 2: I want to puke when labeled a “motivational speaker.” My definition of a “motivational speaker”: fly-weight, self-aggrandizing, delusional dickhead.)