The Little Big Things

by Thomas J Peters

  Having said all this does not mean that our baseball manager has to be, in any way, shape, or form, a soft touch. It does mean, if he’s worth his salt, that he has to figure in all this “extraneous” (not!) stuff. And, of course, as those who know my biases are aware:

  I see no essential difference between a 25-person baseball team and a 25-person IS or HR department, except that each work “season” (year) in HR or IS has about 220 “games”—that is, workdays. And each workday is different for each “player” (employee) as their “great battles,” per our instructor, Plato, unfold—mostly invisible to their coworkers and bosses.

  “The boss’s job is not to be a shrink”—I’ve heard that one a hundred times. And it is utter baloney.

  It is precisely the boss’s job to be a shrink!

  (At least if he or she gives a damn about getting things done.)

  Suppose you’re in charge of the President’s protective detail for a speech on farm policy in Des Moines tomorrow. Don’t you want to know pretty precisely “where their heads are at” for the six agents physically closest to the President? Of course, these agents are the quintessential professionals—but along with that undoubtedly come an unusually large number of personal problems, and I’m not sure I want one of the President’s six closest agents to have had a knockdown, drag-out fight with her husband or 14-year-old daughter last night, and especially if that fight mostly took place long distance, over the phone or, God help us, IM-style.

  So, awareness is called for—for the sake of enterprise effectiveness. And empathy is called for. No, not “softness,” as I said, but human empathy for the plight that besets all with whom we deal. It is reported (I can’t find the exact quote—though I’ve found 20 like it) that legendary football coach Vince Lombardi, a tough guy’s tough guy in a brutal profession, said, “You do not need to like your players, but you must love them.” Those precise words might not work for you, but the idea is unassailable for the effective boss, a four-star general dealing with three-star generals or the director of a community theater off-off-off-Syracuse, let alone Broadway.

  Be kind, for everyone is fighting a great battle—I have redoubled my personal efforts to take Plato’s advice, every word of it, on board in every situation I face. Have I made better business decisions? I’d guess so, though I have no certain evidence. Do I feel like I’m a better human being—well, maybe, just a little. But, in keeping with the theme of this book, a “little” can be a bloody hell of a BIG lot!

  (We’ll each choose our own route, if any, with this. In my case, I repeat more or less as mantra, before going into a meeting or making an important call, or most any call: Be kind, for everyone is fighting a great battle. I think it at least ups the awareness ante a notch or two.)

  MOODY BLUE DEVILS?

  “Things don’t stay the same. You have to understand that not only your business situation changes, but the people you’re working with aren’t the same day to day. Someone is sick. Someone is having a wedding. [You must] gauge the mood, the thinking level of the team that day.”

  — Mike Krzyzewski (“Coach K”), coach of the Duke University Blue Devils basketball team

  32. Thoughtfulness Is Free (or Close Thereto).

  I like, and value, the word decency—a lot. (See Steve Harrison’s phenomenal The Manager’s Book of Decencies: How Small Gestures Build Great Companies.) I like the word respect—a lot. (See Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot’s superb Respect.)

  But I’m stuck on, hooked on, wedded to, wild about another word these (discombobulated) days: thoughtfulness. I am enamored with the idea of living and then adding to our formal or informal vision & values statement:

  “We are thoughtful in all we do.”

  I’m so taken with the idea that I suggest-urge-beg that “thoughtfulness” joins the likes of “people,” “customers,” “product,” “profit,” “action,” “excellence” on the “10 Great Business Words List”—or some such.

  Times are perilous.

  Competition is brutal.

  Hustle is essential.

  Cost-cutting is imperative.

  All true!

  But how, in the process of getting from difficult here to difficult there in concert with our many constituents-stakeholders with whom we hope to do business over the long haul, do we “live in the world”?

  Who are we?

  How are we?

  What are we as a human institution?

  Who am I (boss, follower)?

  What do I leave in my wake?

  It’s character, in a way, to be sure. (Another stunningly important and, alas, underused word.) But, in a sense, thoughtfulness is even more encompassing than character. It is transactional—thoughtfulness applies literally to every internal and external activity, as well as being something that resides deep within.

  I like the idea of showing up for work in a place that cherishes … thoughtfulness.

  I like the idea of doing business with a service provider known for its … thoughtfulness.

  I like being a vendor to an outfit that’s … thoughtful. All this is X10 in troubled times.

  Thoughtful is not “soft.”

  No.

  No.

  No.

  And:

  No.

  No.

  No.

  In fact, I’d contend that “dogmatic thoughtfulness” (now there’s a term) improves growth and profitability and long-term enterprise solidity in a pretty damn direct, high-impact, ultimately measurable cause-and-effect way.

  Thoughtfulness is key to customer retention.

  Thoughtfulness is key to employee recruitment and satisfaction.

  Thoughtfulness is key to brand perception.

  Thoughtfulness is key to your ability to look in the mirror—and tell your kids about your job.

  “Thoughtfulness is free.”

  Thoughtfulness is key to speeding things up—it reduces friction.

  Thoughtfulness is key to Business Issue #1, cross-functional communication—XF communication is 98 percent a matter of social factors.

  Thoughtfulness is key to transparency and even cost containment—it abets rather than stifles truth-telling.

  So think about thoughtfulness, think about the truth, or not, to your mind, of the list above, think about adding “Thoughtfulness in all we do” to your unit’s (or company’s) (or agency’s) values statement.

  But … do so only after you and your team have figured out exactly what thoughtfulness means in a variety of contexts. And do so only after you have made a demonstrated personal and organizational commitment to thoughtfulness. Thence, you must be unabashedly devoted to keeping one another honest in the practice of Dogmatic Thoughtfulness—with, alas, adverse consequences, eventually severe, for those who fail to take this essential attribute aboard.

  Starting time?

  Not “today”—but “now.”

  That is, thoughtfulness is an especially potent “tool” in crazy-disruptive-scary times.

  Hence:

  Consider the idea of: “We are thoughtful in all we do.”

  What does it mean?

  How does one practice it?

  Talk about it with peers, pals, vendors, customers, etc., etc.

  Talk about thoughtfulness—”The Practice of Dogmatic Thoughtfulness”—as a powerful and pragmatic business value. (Again, especially in traumatic times.)

  Keep debating.

  Consider adding “Thoughtfulness in all we do,” maybe “dogmatic thoughtfulness in all we do,” to your formal values proclamation—or otherwise vigorously promoting the idea.

  (NB: You must also come to agreement on the immense “bottom line/$$$$ value”–pragmatism of this idea before formally proceeding; it may well make you a better person, but it is not in any way a “mushy” idea.)

  Connection

  33. Only Connect …

  Only connect!

  That was the whole of her sermon.

  Only connect the prose and the passion
, and both will be exalted,

  And human love will be seen at its highest.

  Live in fragments no longer.

  Only connect …

  —E. M. Forster, Howards End

  Only connect!

  Is there a better way to sum up a life lived well? (And lived effectively?)

  Message (my translation):

  It’s always about relationships.

  Always was.

  Always will be.

  Only connect.

  Hence, and long before the Internet and social networking:

  The business of business is relationships.

  The essence of effective business is effective relationships.

  The “R.O.I.” (Return on Investment) that truly matters is … R.O.I.R.

  Return on Investment in Relationships.

  Moreover, we can manage and actually measure R.O.I.R.-related activity more accurately than we can manage and measure standard “financial” R.O.I. Lying with statistics is relatively easy. Lying about the state of relationships is nigh on impossible.* (*When I was at McKinsey, senior partners would closely examine, brick by brick, the state of Client relationships per se as they evaluated junior partners—like me.)

  RESPECT: READ ALL ABOUT IT

  I urge-beg you to ingest-form a yearlong study group around the following:

  The Manager’s Book of Decencies: How Small Gestures Build Great Companies—Steve Harrison

  Respect—Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

  Hostmanship: The Art of Making People Feel Welcome—Jan Gunnarsson and Olle Blohm (leader as host to his-her employees)

  The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything—Stephen M. R. Covey

  The Dream Manager—Matthew Kelly

  The Customer Comes Second: Put Your People First and Watch ‘Em Kick Butt—Hal Rosenbluth and Diane McFerrin Peters (no relation)

  Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations—Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler

  Influence: Science and Practice—Robert Cialdini

  Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ—Daniel Goleman

  Built to Win: Creating a World-Class Negotiating Organization—Hal Movius and Lawrence Susskind

  34. They Liked Ike (Because Ike Liked Them).

  General Dwight David Eisenhower did the impossible. No, not the successful and history-changing D-Day landing per se. Nor the subsequent march to Germany. His “impossible dream”—come true—was to keep the Yanks and the Brits from annihilating each other long enough to hit the beach and get on with the real job at hand!

  Turns out General Eisenhower, most keen professional observers agree, had a “secret,” which he in fact understood:

  “Allied commands depend on mutual confidence; this confidence is gained, above all, through the development of friendships.”

  Yup, that’s his Success Tip #1!

  Aggressively make friends!

  Armchair General magazine (May 2008) traces the origins of this most pronounced of Eisenhower’s leadership traits: “Perhaps his most outstanding ability [at West Point, decades before D-Day] 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.”

  So you’re manager of an 11-person project team. Members likely come from four functions—and two or three companies.

  Fact:

  You are a full-bore, no-bull “coalition commander”!

  Success Key #1: Make friends. Pointedly—that is, consciously and measurably and carefully—track your “investments” in friend-making; think about friend-making in the same way you would think about any investment process.

  Micro-success key: You may be “one of those,” large in number, who simply do not take to this “friend-making thing” instinctively. While there may be some truth to your self-assessment—it’s mainly a cop-out. Eisenhower was, indeed, “naturally” gregarious. And you probably will never match him. But—and it is a big “but”—this is beyond any shadow of doubt a “learnable Skill” that you can acquire or improve upon by Hard Work and Practice, alone or with peers.

  Macro-success Key: In hiring, promoting, incenting, pay (close) attention to “friend-making proclivity-skills.” It is a trait you can observe and, in effect, “measure”—and DDE sure as hell teaches us it ain’t no “soft” trait.

  LONG BEFORE ANYONE “FRIENDED” ANYONE ELSE …

  Despite our “everything is new” world of social networking, you might do worse, and could hardly do better in my opinion, than to go back to Dale Carnegie’s classic How to Win Friends & Influence People—named by NPR as one of the top three business books of the 20th century.

  35. Always Make It Personal.

  A week of my life: five speeches, five different countries, five different cultures. By watching audiences respond to each speech (one can—must—learn to watch and sniff intently as one speaks), I re-learned a few lessons. Above all:

  Make it personal.

  For one thing, I’m a nut about reading local papers, chatting up anyone I can grab to get a flavor of what’s afoot.

  Or just hitting the pavement.

  So in my seminar in Stockholm, for example, I began by talking about my jaunt the day before to the giant local department store, NK, and shopping from a long list foisted on me by my wife, who did four years of her professional training as a tapestry weaver in Sweden. It didn’t hurt that I called NK “the world’s best department store”— which I think it may well be. Appreciating someone else’s turf nabs megapoints! (Sorry, again, to trouble you with the “obvious”—but, then, that’s the point of the book!) On the other hand, I’ve screwed this up upon occasion. I once offhandedly criticized something that went awry at the local hotel I was staying in. Though it was part of a big chain, my remarks were not perceived as generic “customer service lessons”—as I had intended—but as a frontal assault-insult aimed at my hosts in Tampa, Florida, and, effectively, each and every audience member! (Ye gads! Lesson noted!)

  In Germany, I played shamelessly to my German heritage and “Germanic” engineering background—and teased incessantly about the need for my listeners, and me, to overcome rigidity of thought and behavior in a world gone wobbly with new technology and new global players.

  In Italy, I showed up in a gorgeous Italian shirt and tie, purchased the afternoon before on the high street in Milano, joked about the stratospheric+ price—and then tied the whole thing to my spiel on design and new approaches to value-added.

  Bottom line: A speaker (any speaker, any topic, anywhere) is always, even in a 10-minute exchange, attempting first and foremost to form a common heritage with the audience. Any speaker worth her or his salt wants to move an audience to act. That is only accomplished, in my experience, when “they” are converted into “we.” “WE … are confronted with this challenge or that.” “WE … must get beyond the places where WE are … JOINTLY … stuck today.” “WE … are frail and battered … but WE … must act with dispatch.” And so on.

  “We” power?

  Amen!

  Your argument may be airtight, the data unassailable, but if your message is not … up close and personal and “sold” as a joint challenge … if it’s not … coming from the heart … then it can be perceived, especially in another culture, as an … Assault By a Thoughtless Stranger!

  BTW: To state the obvious, the tougher the sell (and my ideas—such as “forget everything you thought you knew and that made you successful”—can be pretty tough to swallow) the Tighter the Intimate Human Bond Must Be!

  BTW: This is hard, conscious work! (Yes, work! None, zip, zero, nada of these “little” ideas can be implemented “off the top of your head.” They must be studied and worked at and practiced assiduously. I know this reminder is not the first or second or third of its sort—nor shall it be the last.)

  THE W-WORD (LET’S USE IT)

&
nbsp; The “We-power approach” was taught to me by Jim Crownover, my first McKinsey partner-mentor back in 1974. “Tom,” he said, none too gently, “when you address the Client, always use the word ‘We.’ As in ‘The way we might get at this blah blah blah.’ The idea is it’s us and the Client … Foraging as a Mighty Team in Hot Pursuit of the Truth.”

  I’ll be the first to admit that this is a “trick.” But beginning in those McKinsey days, I contend that I was the one being tricked: Use “we” and “us” enough … and you begin to feel that you are on the Client’s team, not vice versa.

  To this day, 30+ years later, by instinct, I religiously use “We” and “Us” when working with Clients—and a team of wild horses could not elicit “I” or “You.”

  Though it may be a trick of sorts … it is also a Fundamental Value concerning Groups on Joint Ventures in Quest of Better Understanding.

  So:

  We hereby swear to use the word “us” until we are blue in the face. (Words matter! A lot!)

  We hereby swear to use the word “partner” until we are blue in the face. (Words matter! A lot!)

  We hereby swear to use the word “team” until we are blue in the face. (Words matter! A lot!)

  We agree, right?

  (NB: Also observe, “Trick” #2, my “religious” capitalization of Client. Another McKinsey gem that makes a big difference. Yes, it’s all about Respect and Teamwork and ommon Cause —no matter, in the case of McKinsey, how “technical” the task.)

  36. Commit “Acts of Deliberate Relationship Enhancement.”

  During his days as Goldman Sachs boss, former Treasury secretary Hank Paulson formed a habit well worth noting. In an interview with Patricia Sellers for Fortune’s “How I Work” column, Paulson reported that he would call “60 CEOs in the first week [of the year] to wish them Happy New Year.”

  During my brief White House stint in the mid-1970s, I did something similar, spending eight or nine straight hours one New Year’s Eve on my office phone. I called close to 100 people I worked with—in agencies all over Washington and in embassies around the world—to thank them for their help the prior year. In addition to enjoying the chats, which I did (I suspect Paulson did, too), I admit that I was purposefully engaging in an ADRE … an Act of Deliberate Relationship Enhancement.