The Little Big Things
Page 40
telephone calls, 133–35, 183, 201–2, 470
TGRs (Things Gone Right), 388
TGWs (Things Gone Wrong), 388
Thaler, Richard H., 4–5
“thank you,” xxv–xxvi, 153, 156–57, 183, 466–67
theater, life as, 470
“they” into “we,” 98–99
thoughtfulness, 60, 81, 88–91
“being there,” 83–85
“3H model” of success, 489–91
three-minute phone calls, 133–35, 183
threes, good things coming in, 28–30
time (time management), 363–71, 481–82
“calendar buddy,” 481–82
daydreaming, 366–68
milestoning, 369–71, 424
punctuality, 363
time off, 364–65
“to-do” lists, 195–96
“to-don’t” lists, 195–97
Top 50 “Have-Yous,” 422–29
top line (top-line growth), 42–43
Toro, 159
Tortoise and the Hare, 453–54
training. See learning
transparency, 48
Trauner, Keith, 455
trial and error, 30
Trippe, Juan, 320
trivial stuff, 2, 3, 47, 370
troublemakers, 221, 469
truth, 161, 251–52
“truth tellers,” 482
“trying my damnedest!”, 207–9
“try it” culture, 322, 480
Tuf-E-Nuf hammer, 377–78
Tversky, Amos, 4–5
Twain, Mark, 25, 149
Twitter, 357, 481
two-cent candies, 385–87, 448
two-percenters, 289–90
U
uncertainty, 47, 205
universities and R&D, 308
unpredictable extreme events, 45–49
unscheduled time, 366–68
UPS, 415
user buy-in, 163–66
user-friendly design, 378–82
“us” vs. “we,” 98–99
V
vacations, 364
value creation, dramatic frenzy of,459–62
Vanguard Mutual Fund Group, 27
Van Wagenen, Lola, 301
venture capital, 308
“Virtuous Circle of Apology,” 160
visible management, 58
Visionary, the, 237
vivacity, 103–4
voice messages, 3
volunteer work, 58
Vonnegut, Kurt, 28
W
Wagon Wheel Country Drive-in, xxi,1–2
walls of “Tomorrows” and “Yesterdays,” 455–56
Walmart, 5, 54
Walt, Lew, 207
Walton, Sam, 54
wandering around, 20, 48, 140–41, 255–59, 499
war gaming, 47
Washington, George, 80–81, 115, 363
Washington Post, 28–29, 30
Waterman, Robert H., Jr., xxi–xxii, 9, 214, 215, 255, 358, 418, 448, 480, 506
Watson, Thomas, 10–11, 419, 482
Weapon of Mass Creation (WMC), 472
Weather Channel, The (Batten), 312
Wegmans, 284
Weight of Water, The (Shreve), 298
Weill, Sandy, 26
weirdos, 19, 243, 470–71
Welch, Jack, 342
“we-power approach,” 98–99
Westmoreland, William, 236
Wexner, Les, 53
Whalin, George, 443–44, 445
“what do you think?”, 155–56
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There (Goldsmith), 157
“what the hell,” 317
Wheeler, Dave, 155
White Man’s Burden, The (Easterly), 264–65, 268–69
Who: The A Method for Hiring (Smart and Street), 271
Whole Foods, 389
Whole New Mind, A (Pink), 74
Wikipedia, 472
Wilde, Oscar, 340
Wilson, Charlie, 236, 238–44
Wines, James, 41
“wish it were” lists, 463–64
WMC (Weapon of Mass Creation), 472
women, 269, 293–305
as board directors, 297
as leaders, 295–96
market potential of, 39, 293–94, 299, 478–79
relationships and, 298–99
suffrage movement, 300–304
Wooden, John, 505
Woods, Caspian, 404
words, 155–61. See also “I’m sorry”; “thank you”
lying, 161
“what do you think?”, 155–56
work, 125–31
agenda-setting, 128–29
on being “professional,” 125–26
everything passing through finance, 126–27
importance of sales, 130–31
work attire, 243
workday, pissing away the, 456–57
workforce, quality and character of, 281–86
WOW, 441–51
extremism in the defense of, 450–51
gaspworthy, 447–48
“only” beats “best,” 443–46
writing, 356–57
X
Xerox, 56, 73, 314
XFX (Cross-functional Excellence), 177–78, 324
Y
“Yes,” 189–93
Yorke, James, 342
Young, Bill, 10
Your Business Brickyard (Mann), 416–17
Yudelson, Jerry, 41
Yunus, Muhammad, 50–51, 339
Z
Zabar’s, 444
Zen, 219–21, 499
Zen of Listening (Shafir), 331
Zieseniss de Thuin, Aude, 293, 478–79
Ziplocs, 382
Acknowledgments
First, Justin Hall. This book is derived from my blog, tompeters.com; and Justin Hall is, per Wikipedia, knowledge arbiter on such topics, perhaps the first “modern” blogger. His Weblog was birthed in his Swarthmore College dorm room in 1994. (Usenet and BBS and the like were progenitors, and the overall lineage is, needless to say, murky.)
Next, Bob Miller. Bob is my publisher (HarperStudio), to whom I am eternally grateful; but in this instance Bob also has the unusual distinction of having informed me that I had written a book, unbeknownst to myself. That is, in the nature of current communications anthropology, Bob was an occasional visitor to tompeters.com, and read a few of the “success tips” that I posted from time to time. He emailed to say he thought there was a book at tp.com that had mostly been written—and that he would like to publish it.
(The “book-like” material, as I could have-should have guessed, was in fact only about 10 percent along the path to publishable manuscript—but that’s another story. Fact is, Bob offered, I signed up—and here we are.)
Carolann Zaccara and Jon Miller. We start with a story of clean restrooms in Gill, Massachusetts, at Wagon Wheel Country Drive-in. The heroes of this book are the people whose tales I report. My heartfelt thanks to Wagon Wheel owners Zacarra and Miller and the rest of their ilk who appear in these pages.
Dave Wheeler. Several of the success tactics herein started with comments at tompeters.com. E.g., Dave Wheeler’s, “The four most important words in any organization are ‘What do you think?’” I will let Dave act as surrogate in this acknowledgments section for those commenters whose work I’ve referred to—I hope in each case with attribution.
David O. Stewart. David is a D.C.-based constitutional lawyer. His 2007 book, The Summer of 1787, was in many ways the chief inspiration for the “little BIG Things” idea. Astonishingly at first blush, it turns out that many, probably most, of the critical decisions at the U.S. Constitutional Convention were determined by such profoundly un-profound things such as “showing up.” (Wee Delaware’s delegation was invariably present—and its efforts were decisive time and again, despite representation by rather ordinary souls.) In the same vein, one could hardly do better than John Carlin’s Playing the
Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation; then-President Mandela used the 1995 Rugby World Cup match as political theater of the most extraordinary sort. This pair and a host of others, like a reread of Barbara Tuchman’s magnificent The Guns of August, provided fodder for this modest effort.
Erik Hansen. I have no idea what Erik’s “job description” is, because he doesn’t have one. I do a lot of speaking—and I do a lot of writing and videos and the like. Erik manages-creates-makes happen all that “stuff” that’s not speaking in my life. We have been working on books together since 1994—this is book #11 for the two of us. (Yup, we regularly finish each other’s sentences.) Erik works with publishers and finds designers and edits and has done about 150 superb “Cool Friend” interviews for tompeters.com and runs around from hither to thither and does a wonderful job somehow or other doing every-damn-thing you can imagine and then some and then some more; and all with great skill and a priceless sense of humor. (Except when he’s pissed off—it’s been known to happen.)
Cathy Mosca and Shelley Dolley. Cathy and Shelley aren’t quite on their 11th book with me—but they’re closing in! The meticulous and creative and caring duo are our day-to-day Web managers-editors-etc. And so much much much much more. Cathy, for instance, has the thankless but all-important (!!) fact-checking job; no amount of begging by me in the corner-cutting department does the least bit of good. Thank God! Also an integral part of our Web—and now book—“home team” is Joy Panos Stauber. I have spent 20-plus years screaming, initially against the wind, about the power of design. We try our best to live that message in our work—and Joy’s magic touch is a huge part of that.
(FYI: Erik and Cathy have been through this manuscript as many times as I have, and as thoroughly as I have. Hence any errors are theirs. Sorry, just kidding. All screw-ups, of which we hope there are few if any, are, of course, ultimately my fault and mine alone! But it is true that C & E could probably recite the whole manuscript from memory!)
Sarah Rainone and Michael Slind. If editors are all-important, then we are lucky beyond measure. Sarah took the first crack at my inchoate mess. In addition to doing a fine job in general, she in fact is the one who gave us our title: The Little BIG Things. I don’t know whether the book will measure up or not—but it starts out ahead of the game with one helluva title. Thanks, Sarah! Mike was the editor of my book Re-imagine! in 2003. It was a monster task, and to my mind he did a magnificent job. In particular, we were messing around with a whole new business-book format, which dramatically affected the text. Mike was the hero who made it up as he went along—and made it all work. On a slightly smaller canvas, he did it again here. We were unhappy with the logic of the book. Mike did great overall editing, but it was his reorganization of the material into smaller, coherent chunks that made the difference. Mike compared it to a musical score—and I think that’s exactly right.
Harry. My continuing source of ideas—and idea test bed—is my several dozen seminars each year. These days, 80 percent beyond the U.S. border. (Angola and Saudi Arabia and Ecuador and India on a recent fall 2009 jaunt.) The speaking opportunities come courtesy of my friends of three decades at the peerless (word merited, no hype) Washington Speakers Bureau in Alexandria, Virginia. In particular, among so many who have been of so much help, cofounder Harry Rhoads, perhaps my best pal, and Georgene Savikas and Christine Farrell and Bernie Swain. One step further along the chain are my most regular of seminar creators—HSM from São Paulo, Brazil, and the Institute for International Research, part of London-based Informa. José Salibi Neto at HSM and I go back 25 years now. And Eduardo Braun at HSM and Peter Rigby and Jessica Sutherland at Informa/IIR and I have a lot of good history as well.
Team Harper and friends. It’s good to be “home”! As some of you doubtless know, Harper & Row published Bob Waterman’s and my In Search of Excellence in 1982. I moved on to Random House-Knopf-Vintage and then Dorling Kindersley. And now, over a quarter of a century later, Harper, in the form of the new HarperStudio, is my publishing home base—courtesy of Bob Miller, mentioned (and thanked) above. Bob of course has a lot of help from his friends! Among them: Kim Lewis, Nikki Cutler, Helen Song, Leah Carlson-Stanisic, Eric Butler, Mary Schuck, and Katie Salisbury.
Then there is the “life” part. Day to day in my professional affairs I am blessed (good word choice!) by the dedication and excellence of Abbey Bishop and Charlie Macomber. Abbey does have a job title, Executive Director of Events, but it is as misleading as Erik’s non-title. That is, she is events queen—and does an amazing job of dealing with everyone from audio visual experts in the Ukraine to CEOs in Silicon Valley. And then there is “the rest”—a hodgepodge of anything you can think of and then some. (In the last year her effectiveness is even more magnified, as she’s done her job while her husband, U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Keith Bishop, has been on deployment to Afghanistan.) Charlie is our Chief Operating Officer—though I am the “management guru” (God help us all), Charlie manages every damn thing that comes under the heading of “running the business.” New Hampshire-ite Charlie has a streak of no-nonsense pragmatism-conservatism that rounds off my irregularly regular flights of borderline insane fancy. Not so incidentally, speaking of sanity and insanity, I am also aided immeasurably in somehow surviving my life-on-the-road-approximately-everywhere by friend and travel goddess-miracle worker Nancy Paul.
And then the bedrock beneath the bedrock. My partner and best friend and wife, Susan Sargent. Susan is a brilliantly successful textile artist. And a home-furnishings entrepreneur whose unique approach to color in the home has literally changed America’s living style. I am somewhat known for my hustle and intensity. She puts me to shame on both scores. “I don’t wait” is her ever-so-apt motto. On top of that she has turned our somewhat sizeable Grey Meadow Farm in Tinmouth, Vermont, into a simply amazing place; a few pictures have appeared from time to time at tompeters.com. I have no idea what else to say—either 10,000 words or a simple “Thanks for everything and then some!”
And then there are my two amazing stepsons, Max and Ben Cooper. While the situation is hopeless, I do more or less sorta kinda try to keep up with the whacky new world of technology emerging around me. Among other things, “Multimedia Ben” is doubtless indirectly responsible for my blogging-tweeting efforts; and Max-the-artist pushes me, as does Susan, on all things aesthetic.
(Also in the “bedrock” category is our neighbor and chief of all things farm-related, Gary Gras. If the world comes to an end, Gary will survive; I have yet to discover anything he is not capable of doing. His wonderful family—wife Jane and daughter Emma and future motocross champion Austin—are also part of our hearty-gang-on-the-mountaintop-in-Tinmouth-Vermont.)
Finally, Frank Galioto and Lisa Galioto and Steve Hersh. They know why they are on this list. And I know why they are on this list. And I know they know there would probably be no book without them.
About the Author
Tom Peters is the coauthor of In Search of Excellence, the business book that changed the world. He continues to write and speak about Excellence—join the conversation at tompeters.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
ALSO BY TOM PETERS
In Search of Excellence:
Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies (with Robert H. Waterman, Jr.)
A Passion for Excellence:
The Leadership Difference (with Nancy K. Austin)
Thriving on Chaos:
Handbook for a Management Revolution
Liberation Management:
Necessary Disorganization for the Nanosecond Nineties
The Tom Peters Seminar:
Crazy Times Call for Crazy Organizations
The Pursuit of WOW!
Every Person’s Guide to Topsy-Turvy Times
The Circle of Innovation:
You Can’t Shrink Your Way to Greatness
The Brand YOU50:
Fifty
Ways to Transform Yourself from an “Employee” into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion!
The Project50:
Fifty Ways to Transform Every “Task” into a Project That Matters!
The Professional service Firm50:
Fifty Ways to Transform Your “Department” into a Professional Service Firm Whose Trademarks Are Passion and Innovation!
Re-imagine!
Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age
Essentials:
Leadership: Inspire, Liberate, Achieve
Essentials:
Design: Innovate, Differentiate, Communicate
Essentials:
Trends: Recognize, Analyze, Capitalize (with Martha Barletta)
Essentials:
Talent: Develop It, Sell It, Be It
Sixty:
This I Believe
Copyright
THE LITTLE BIG THINGS. Copyright (c) 2010 by Thomas J. Peters.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
For more information about this book or other books from HarperStudio, visit www.theharperstudio.com.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Peters, Thomas J.
The little big things: 163 ways to pursue excellence / by Tom Peters.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-06-189408-4
1. Industrial management—United States. 2. Excellence—United States.
I. Title.
HD70.U5P4245 2010
658.4’09—dc22
2009051160