The Little Big Things

by Thomas J Peters

  151. Extremism in the Defense of WOW Is No Vice.

  Corporations are falling like dominoes. Chief executives are getting the axe at a record pace. Why? Incremental solutions in discontinuous times seldom, if ever, work.

  The axiom applies to a great enterprise and to a tiny two-person accountancy alike. And to me. And to you. Take a look at Tomorrow’s Calendar. Today’s, for that matter. Find and underscore something—anything—on that calendar that represents a small step toward something extreme. Something big. Something monumental. (And worry like hell if there’s nothing!)

  Ask yourself how you’re going to take your “portfolio” to the next level … and the level after that. For starters, perhaps:

  “Do” lunch sometime this week with a potentially important/interesting new friend/colleague.

  Revise a project—today!—to increase its novelty. Then take the first new step—today! Ask yourself, “Can I imagine talking about this project—to a prospective employer or Client—two years from now?” If the odds seem low, keep revising that project prospectus.

  Launch a Society of Radicals—an informal group that assesses one another’s projects in terms of their audacity.

  Bottom line: Never let your portfolio of prospective tasks become the home to bland, blander, blandest!

  FILE AWAY THIS IDEA …

  The “portfolio” idea is quite powerful. Your set of 10 most recent assignments (discrete, identifiable projects with readily describable outcomes) is a “portfolio.” Your current list of five active projects is a portfolio—just like the slide set of her work that a painter sends off to a gallery owner or director. “Manage” that portfolio. For example, make sure that every project sparkles—when it comes to execution. But also make sure that one drags your learning in a very new direction. Make sure one or two really push the limit—as described immediately above. Make sure that every project in the portfolio includes at least something “remarkable.”

  So …

  Take the “portfolio idea” literally and seriously.

  Review your portfolio with a friend—or your boss. Craft it to maximize your selfish (growth) ends and your selfless (maximum contribution to the group) ends.

  If you’re a boss, use employee Project Portfolios as a primary resource allocation and execution tool.

  Now

  152. Welcome to the Age of Metabolic Management.

  We all know the fabled race eventually goes to the Tortoise. Well, times change, Google-speed or Alibaba-speed is the new limit (until the record is broken, which it will be soon enough), and we are now officially living in the Age of the Hare.

  Period.

  As Larry Light, McDonald’s Global Chief Marketing Officer, put it in Advertising Age: “Today, you own ideas for about an hour and a half.”

  My “moniker” for dealing with and thriving in the Age of the Hare is …

  Metabolic Management.

  I believe it’s one of the boss’s … prime tasks … to Purposefully and Consciously and Perpetually work on Accelerating the Corporate (project team, etc.) Metabolism.

  How can you pump up your Corporate Metabolism? Some thoughts:

  Exhibit personal urgency … hourly-daily-consciously.

  Hire for it. (My car dealer pal Carl Sewell says he looks for antsy people “who literally can’t sit still” during an interview. One well-known headhunter takes candidates to lunch in Manhattan—and frowns if they don’t jaywalk.)

  Promote it.

  Reward it. (“Speed Demon of the Week” recognition at the Monday Morning Huddle.)

  Lavish visible rewards on people … who voluntarily drop what they’re doing to help others make deadline … even if the others are largely responsible for their plight.

  Display perpetual … fanaticism … about simplifying processes—and keeping them simple and not allowing them to grow barnacles. (Simplification = Speed.)

  (You need, literally, a CSO—Chief Simplification Officer.)

  Display perpetual … fanaticism … about friction-free cross-functional coordination. (Reward and promote those who “get it.” Demote or detach those who don’t.) (Cross-functional friction is … always … “Speed Issue” #1.)

  Measure & Measure & Measure. (Highly visible measures, broadly published.)

  Put speed per se on meeting agendas.

  Set aggressive targets—forget “incrementalism,” go after a 75 percent or 95 percent or 98 percent reduction in the time it takes to do X or Y or Z. (Bold targets inspire—and are indeed possible in Speed World. In fact, I suggest something like never accepting a “speed up” suggestion of less than 50 percent.)

  CALL YOUR “SPEED” BROKER

  Consider Progressive Insurance, one of my favorite High Metabolic Rate companies:

  “[CEO Peter] Lewis has created an organization filled with sharp, type-A personalities who are encouraged to take risks–even if that sometimes leads to mistakes.”

  “One thing that we’ve noticed is that they’ve always been very good at avoiding denial. They react quickly to changes in the marketplace.” — Keith Trauner, portfolio manager who follows Progressive

  “When four successive hurricanes hit Florida and neighboring states in August and September [2004], Progressive sent more than 1,000 claims adjusters to the Southeast. Result: 80 percent of 21,000 filed claims had been paid by mid-October, an impressive figure. This pleased policy holders and probably helped Progressive because delays in claims payments typically mean higher costs.”

  And … my favorite Lewis-ism: “We don’t sell insurance anymore. We sell speed.”

  153. Walls of “Yesterdays.” Walls of “Tomorrows.”

  What do your walls look like?

  Do they look like “yesterday”?

  Or do they look like “tomorrow”?

  Yesterday = Plaques from past awards and group pictures from past parties. Etc. Etc.

  Tomorrow = Work-in-Progress pictures for ongoing projects. Interesting press clips on new products just launched. Customers landed or vendors signed up in the last 30 days. Six new hires who reported in the last 30 days. Etc. Etc.

  Obviously, one is delighted with those great awards, and I’m hardly suggesting that they be tossed in the ash can. It’s the “spin” I’m interested in—what does the outsider or, say, a new employee see? A museum? Reverence for the past? Or inklings of an exciting future? In my case, do I have covers of old books on the walls? Or the mocked-up cover of this book? The premier slot should go to this book—right?

  (NB: This idea is de facto stolen from Steve Jobs. When he returned to Apple from the wilderness in 1997, one of his first acts was to remove all traces of old glory from his office and Apple facilities in general. He felt the product line he inherited was unscintillating, and he wanted the affect of the place to reflect work in progress, not icons of yesteryear.)

  154. Pissing Away Your Life: Like It or Not, Work Is Life!

  Some say I use words like “Wow” tooooooooooooooooo much. “You damn well can’t,” they say, “turn every ‘day at the office’ into some ‘Adventure in EXCELLENCE.’”

  Well, “they” have a point—to a point.

  But it ain’t much of a point.

  Let me be crude, rude, and short but not sweet.

  Let’s do no more than a simple calculation:

  By the time you’re nearing 30, let’s say, the stay-up-every-night-‘til-2:00-A.M. era is pretty much behind you. So, let’s say you awaken on average at 6:30 A.M. and turn in around 11:00 P.M. (More or less.) That’s 16.5 waking hours—call it 17. You just plain lose, say, two hours a day—a little over one hour on your two-way commute, and 45 minutes on whatever. So now we’re at 15 “usable” hours.

  Suppose your ordinary workday is 8:15 A.M. to 5:30 P.M.—that seems about right to me. (I’m not citing research here, other than years and years of casual observation.) So the workday amounts to 9.25 hours—or 8.75 when lunch is subtracted.

  Which is to say, you are spending, Mo
nday through Friday, about 8.75/15ths … or 60 percent … of your usable hours at work.

  Which means … if you piss away your work time, you’re pissing away well over half your “conscious” “life.”

  That’s one helluva penalty to pay if you are dogging it at work, doing the minimum, and not turning the workday into any kind of a growth (or high-achievement) experience.

  Well, no, I don’t think you’re going to score a “Wow” on every project.

  Or hit the “perfect 10” on the Excellence scale.

  But I do suggest that if you aren’t pretty regularly pursuing something like “Wow,” or Excellence, with your work, you are well and truly …

  Pissing over half your life away.

  (No matter how I do the calculations, I can’t come up with any other answer.)

  Impact

  155. Forget Longevity—Think “Dramatic Frenzy.”

  I occasionally speed-walk while listening to one or another of the Reverend Martin Luther King’s most prominent speeches. I do so for reasons spiritual as well as, frankly, professional. No declamations, including Churchill’s, are so moving. (And I listen to a lot of speeches …)

  I could easily expend 5,000 words on the details of Dr. King’s speaking Excellence—from the emotion to the brevity to the excruciating slow build to the storytelling to the matchless use of alliteration to the urgent call to action to the shaming of those supporters who would sit on the sidelines and not act. One of King’s most extraordinary speeches took place in Memphis, immediately before he was assassinated. In it, he anticipates the tragic event. I stopped and listened to a brief section three or four times, scribbling as I did:

  “Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place, but I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

  I get chills … again … as I write this—and I am loath to trivialize it, but I want to make another point.

  “Longevity has its place, but I’m not concerned about that now …”

  I simply don’t buy “built to last” in any way, shape, or form—and this passage reinforced that abiding belief. “Built to Impact” is/has been/will be my Rallying Cry. Dr. King changed the world—and died at 39.

  To continue the trivializing of Dr. King’s words, here’s my business translation: Netscape is my favorite company. Netscape was born, changed the world … and died, at about age six. I am desperately trying to change the world in some ever so wee way; I have but a few years left to do so, and I have purposefully chosen not to create any “institution” to attempt to move my case forward when I’m gone; the world will take care of spreading the ideas I care about (or not!) without me. I frankly don’t give two hoots about longevity. I’ve done what I can and what I care about as well and as hard and as loudly as I can. And that’s what I’ll keep doing as long as the breaths keep coming.

  And that’s that.

  I have utterly no interest in longevity.

  Kjell Nordström and Jonas Ridderstråle make this point particularly well in Funky Business: “But what if [former head of strategic planning at Royal Dutch Shell] Arie De Geus is wrong in suggesting, in The Living Company, that firms should aspire to live forever? Greatness is fleeting and, for corporations, it will become ever more fleeting. The ultimate aim of a business organization, an artist, an athlete, or a stockbroker may be to … explode in a dramatic frenzy of value creation during a short space of time, rather than live forever.” Progress, to my mind, and doubtless significantly influenced by a quarter century’s residence in Silicon Valley, is a series of such explosions—many, many duds and a few, like Apple or Netscape or Google, that change the world. Bravo.

  One last expression of this idea, from Simone de Beauvoir: “Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.”

  Again:

  “I may not get there with you [but] mine eyes have seen the glory …”

  —King

  “Explode in a Dramatic Frenzy of Value Creation.”

  —Nordström and Ridderstråle

  “If all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.”

  —de Beauvoir

  Does “dramatic frenzy of value creation” sound too exotic?

  Impractical?

  I think not.

  (And for your sake, I hope not.)

  Right now: Ask yourself and your mates …

  How can we alter our current project to approach/encompass the idea of “dramatic frenzy of value creation”? How do we make sure that on some dimension or dimensions the project aims to make a break from conventional practice—even from identified “best practices”? Would an outsider, who knows our turf in general, read our project description as it is at the moment, then reread part of it, and say, “Now that thing you’re talking about trying in the hiring interviews, now that’s new to me. Hmmm, very interesting. Yeah, interesting, interesting …”

  I contend that this is a v-e-r-y practical idea. I contend that it is practical in that if you don’t attempt to do such a thing, I’ll guarantee that your eyes will not see the glory—but might well see the unemployment or “outsourced” line.

  “Long-term” success? I’d take the years of 1994–1998 at Netscape over any damned alternate you can name!

  IN “MESS,” THERE IS A MESSAGE

  The famed Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter claimed that economies advance via … “the gales of creative destruction.”

  Free-market Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek described capitalistic creativity, the essence of progress, as a … “spontaneous discovery process.”

  Urban economist Jane Jacobs (The Death and Life of Great American Cities) said vital cities have a rich mix of commercial and residential spaces cheek by jowl; she called the mix at its best … “exuberant variety.”

  Progress, per the likes of Schumpeter-Hayek-Jacobs, comes directly from the boiling, seething mess. The instability per se is the key. I not only wholeheartedly agree, but I also think “exuberant variety” as “corporate culture,” or even “departmental culture,” is the key to organic growth, success—and attracting and retaining vigorous, restless talent bent upon frenzies of value creation.

  156. How About Replacing Your “Wish It Were” List with a “Do It Now” List?

  “I can’t wait until spring.”

  “I can’t wait until football season!”

  “I can’t wait until I’ve finished preparing this damn presentation.”

  “I can’t wait until So-and-So makes up his mind, so that we can get moving.”

  Fact is, we say this kind of thing a lot.

  Yuck!

  Bad!

  Awful!

  Horrifying!

  Your correspondent (me) has reached the Sweet 16 mark … whoops, make that the BIG 67. And since I don’t expect to live to 134, I can say with assurance that I’m playing in the second half. And therefore I refuse to allow myself to fall into the “I wish it were next Wednesday” trap—even though I often more or less do.

  I have at least disciplined myself to the point of giving myself a verbal slap in the face when the “can’t wait until …” thought crosses my mind.

  One does, reasonably, wish the surgery were over, that final exams were past, that his/her daughter would get back from Iraq. Nonetheless, and I’m no Zen practitioner, the goal, as in the goal, is always, as in always, to make the absolute most of the moment—because, to sta
te the obvious but often ignored-in-practice truism, the moment, this moment, is the only damn thing we ever have.

  And it is absolutely positively as true at 27 or 37 or 47 or 57 as it is at 67.

  I am still not very good at maintaining this perspective—and often “wish this trip were over” so I can get back home. Well, I do want to be at home, but my life for the next few days is here, not there—and I damn well don’t want to piss away a moment of it.

  Neither should you.

  So: How are you going to get past the “wish-it-weres,” and make the next, yes, meeting, the next 15 minutes special? (Please, please, ask yourself that question. Right now.)

  (I’m trained in part as a behavioral scientist—I believe that B. F. Skinner’s rats in mazes have a lot to teach us. Hence I firmly believe in behavioral rituals. I believe in routinely asking myself, “Hey, Bubba, how are you going to make … the next 15 minutes … matter?”)

  SPECIAL SECTION

  The Heart of Business Strategy

  We usually think of business strategy as some sort of aspirational market-positioning statement: “We aim to be the foremost management consultancy serving middle-size technology firms in the Southwest.” Or some such. Doubtless that’s part of it. But I believe that the No. 1 “strategic strength” of any firm-organization is … “interior superiority.” That is, superiority in the likes of talent recruitment and development, execution, sparkling relationships (i.e., with everyone with whom we come in contact), and in the universal desire to “relentlessly pursue … Excellence … in everything we do.” Hence I humbly offer the following 51 pieces of “commonplace advice”–“reminders of the obvious” (as opposed to marketing “cleverness” or “devious ‘strategic’ maneuvers” or financial legerdemain) for creating a “winning” “strategy” that is inherently sustainable. Several have been included subjects of prior items. The goal here is to provide somewhat of an alpha-to-omega set, as succinctly as possible.