I was still high from an amazing day. It was the first all-day event I'd had in a while. The event creator-producer in Johannesburg, Ingrid Masters of the Business Results Group, whom I've worked with in various guises for 15 years, says she doesn't see much value in the 90-minute "keynote." "You really can't get serious about the 'take aways,'" I think was the way she put it.

I think she has more of a point than I'd normally admit. I feel that I can "bond" with even a big audience in 90 minutes. But this, the full-day affair, is truly different—it is the love of my professional life. A full day is a micro-lifetime; relationships are painstakingly developed, one literally connects like an old friend by the end of 9 hyper-intense hours, etc. And, of course, with a few key ideas you can dig down 2 or 3 or 4 levels into cases and details and overcoming objections and implementation tactics and priorities. In any event, I had an unmitigated, unadulterated great time; and I hope that a few folks went "back home" with a renewed determination to try a couple of new things—which of course are not truly new, but, rather, old things we all know that are typically overlooked in the heat of pressing events.

As I said to the group, I deeply respect cultural differences (I think I do); but when it comes to the basics of human behavior—e.g., respect, appreciation, decency, or the lack thereof—there are literally ZERO differences among us regardless of our location on the globe. That's my unshakeable belief.

South Africa is not without problems. I hear the same can be said of my beloved USA. I do not shy away from controversy, but I also am not in town—Johannesburg or Chicago or Riyadh—to talk about national politics or policies. My message: You and I in our small way—in our immediate group of 7 or 17 or 77 or 777—can create (or die trying) what, in 1985 in A Passion for Excellence, Nancy Austin and I called a "Pocket of Excellence." There is absolutely ZERO excuse for our wee bit of turf being anything less than a shining star and stellar example of what can be—especially on the people issues, that all
important "first 99%."

(To the last point, here are three of the most profound quotes in my massive collection:
"We do no great things, only small things with great love."—Mother Teresa. "I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble."—Helen Keller. "Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones."—Churchill.)

I went back to the J'burg PowerPoint and added a touch or two to make it slightly more consistent with what actually went down. You'll find attached a new "Final" version.

To my colleagues in Johannesburg ... thanks for a memorable day. It wasn't fair: I had far too much fun for an old guy 7- or 8-thousand miles from home!

Have I succeeded? Of course not, but it ain't bad. You will find it here as a blog post; far more important (to me) is the 2-page "EXCELLENCE. Now. EXCELLENCE. Always." pdf that you'll also find.

45 years to prepare.
5 days and nights to write.
2-page product.

All yours ...

EXCELLENCE. Now.
EXCELLENCE. Always.

1. People first, second, third, fourth ... /The "business" of leaders is people: to inspire/engage/provide a trajectory of opportunity—enterprise of every size and type as "cathedral" for human development. "When I hire someone, that's when I go to work for them."—John DiJulius
1A. Customer comes 2nd/If you want to best "Wow!" customers then you must first Wow! those who serve the customers/"If you want staff to give great service, give great service to staff."—Ari Weinzweig, Zingerman's/"You have to treat your employees like customers."—Herb Kelleher, on his #1 "secret to success"
1B. Manager's sole raison d'etre: Make each of my team members successful!
1C. Effective organizations: No bit players!
1D. Appreciation. Acknowledgement. "The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated."—Believe it! A few kind words are often remembered for years!
1E. 1st line supervisors. Every organization's ... most important ... leadership cadre. Productivity is largely determined by the caliber of the 1st line boss. Selection and development of your "sergeants" must become an "obsession"—almost all do a half-assed job.
1F. Weird/There are no "normals" in the history books!/Ensure a healthy supply of oddballs/
Diversity of every flavor = Fresh perspectives! Better decisions!
1G. Memories That Matter. And Don't./"People stuff" sticks with you: You'll look back on the handful of people you developed who proceeded to change the world—and the multitude (if you've earned it) who say, "I grew most when I worked with you." Ever seen a tombstone engraved with the deceased's net worth?

2. You/me: Businesses no longer coddle. You're in charge!/"Brand you"—stand out for something valuable, or else; learn something new every day, or else!/"Distinct or Extinct!"

3. Organizations Exist to Serve. PERIOD.

4. EXECUTION/"Don't forget to tuck the shower curtain into the bath tub."—Conrad Hilton on his "sweat the details" obsession and #1 "success secret"/"Execution is strategy."—Fred Malek/
"Execution is the leader's job #1."—Larry Bossidy
4A. "They do ... ONE big thing at a time."—Drucker on successful managers' #1 trait
4B. Resilience circa 2011: Understand it. Hire for it. Promote for it. Obsess on it.

5. MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around/
Starbucks' Schultz visits 25 stores a week/"In touch" is "not optional"/You = Your calendar/Calendars never lie!
5A. Listening per se = Candidate for Core Value #1/
Listening per se is a profession./"If you don't listen, you don't sell anything."/Docs interrupt patients after ... 18 seconds. And you?
5B. "What do you think?" "How can I help?"—MBWA 8/Eight words, repeated like a mantra while "wandering around," that unlock engagement/success for multitudes.
5C. Innovate by "Hanging out"/"You are what you eat."/"You will become like the five people you associate with the most—a blessing or a curse."/Want "cool"? Expose yourself to cool!/Manage "hanging out" zealously-formally—with customers, interesting outsiders, etc.
5D. K = R = P (Kindness = Repeat business = Profit.) "Hard is soft. Soft is hard."—#1 finding In Search of Excellence. Kindness is "hard"—and pays off in $$$$.
5E. Apology Power—Awesome power: 3-minute "I'm sorry" call heals anything—do it religiously!/"Over-the-top" response to even small booboo strengthens customer relationships!

6. "Little BIG Things"/Focus on "multipliers": Walmart goes to big shopping cart = +50% "big stuff" sales boost!/"Wash your Hands"—save thousands of lives P.A. in hospitals!
6A. "Little BIG Things": SMEs bedrock of all economies. Nurture them. SME's battle cry per George Whalin: "Be the best. It's the only market that's not crowded."

7. Apple > Exxon in market cap courtesy ... DESIGN!/The big "Duh": "Cool beats un- cool!"/Design candidate for "best way to differentiate goods-services in competitive markets."
7A. TGRs/Things Gone Right. Wagon Wheel restaurant, Gill MA—clean restroom with fresh flowers—we remember such touches more or less forever/Manage-measure TGRs.
7B. Scintillating Experiences. Howard Schultz on Starbucks: "At our core, we're a coffee company, but the opportunity we have to extend the brand is beyond coffee; it's entertainment."

8. WOMEN Buy! WOMEN Rule! WOMEN's World! Women buy 80% of everything—$28T world market/"Why Warren Buffett Invests Like a Girl"—e.g., studies harder-holds longer-less frenzied buying and selling/Women's leadership style fits 21st century less-hierarchical enterprise./Evidence clear—Women well on the way to 21st century economic domination! Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff at UN: "the century of women."

9. Web-Social Media/"Everyone becomes our valued partner, a member of our community—and watchdog"/The Power of Co-creation—my "Top Biz Book 2010"/SM lynchpin of transformative strategy—for organizations of every shape and size!

10. Value added via transformation from "Customer satisfaction" to "Customer success"—huge difference-opportunity!/E.g., IBM Global Services, from afterthought to $60B/UPS Logistics/MasterCard Advisors/IDEO, help clients create "culture of innovation"/"The Geek Squad"—BestBuy's #1 strategic point of differentiation.

11. Innovation "secret" #1: "Most tries wins."/"A Bias for Action"—excellence trait #1, In Search of Excellence/"Ready. Fire! Aim."—Ross Perot/"Instead of trying to figure out the best way to do something and sticking to it, just try out an approach and keep fixing it."—Bert Rutan/"You miss 100% of the shots you never take."—Wayne Gretzky
11A. Try a lot = Fail a lot/"Fail. Forward. Fast."/"Fail faster, succeed sooner"—David Kelley/"Reward excellent failures, punish mediocre successes."/
Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins—Richard Farson

12. Live WOW!/Zappos creed ... "WOW Customers"/eBay 14,000 employees, Amazon 20,000 employees, Craig's List 30 employees: regardless of issue, Where's your "Wild and Wooly Craig's List Option"?/Final point in superstar adman Kevin Roberts' Credo: "Avoid moderation!"

13. EXCELLENCE is a personal choice ... not an institutional choice!
EXCELLENCE is not an "aspiration"—it's the next five minutes!
13A. EXCELLENCE. Always. If not EXCELLENCE, What?
If not EXCELLENCE Now, When?

Herewith, in full ...

On Excellence

Marathoners call it "hitting the wall." You get to a point where you can't go on. But you do. And, miraculously, you come out the other side and finish the race.

Truth is, damn little of merit, in a profession or a hobby, is accomplished without running through a wall or two.

I got to thinking about that while reading Fortune's recent cover story, "America's Toughest Bosses." Some turn "beet red." Others "scream." Some engage in "sadistic" behavior and use tactics that amount to "psychological oppression." While I hardly countenance "Jack Attacks," the tirades by Jack Connors, head of the ad agency Hill Holliday, I also don't believe the best bosses are sweethearts.

The best leaders take their firms and followers to places they've never been before-and, more important, places they never imagined they would reach. The chief's voice may be subdued or, more likely, strident at times. The reason, Fortune acknowledges, is the incredible demands these honchos place, first and foremost, on themselves.

Take Steve Jobs, one of Fortune's seven nasties. I've seen him, in his days at Apple, lose his cool on occasion. Not a particularly pretty sight.

Yet I was thoroughly taken aback by one of Jobs' "excesses," as chronicled by Fortune. A subordinate at Next Computer was showing Jobs shades of green for the company's logo. More precisely, she produced some 37 shades of green before coming upon one that pleased the master. "Oh, come on," the minion recalled thinking, "green is green."

Oh, no, it isn't!

Almost every step Jobs took at Apple (and Next) broke the mold; moreover, it defied industry tradition as set by the all-powerful, undisputed master of the universe (IBM). To say Jobs was fighting an uphill battle is to suggest that Charles Lindbergh's historic flight across the Atlantic was "challenging." Jobs was reviled and ridiculed. Yet he reinvented the computer world, in a way that makes Bill Gates' more recent contributions at Microsoft seem meager by comparison.

How did Jobs do it? By worrying about which shade of green was "right." He triumphed with the Apple II. Then the Macintosh. It was precisely his stratospheric standards ("insanely great" was a common Jobsism in days past) that allowed him and his enormously spirited teams to push past the existing frontier time and time again.

No, sir. Green is not green. Not if you're reinventing the planet. Which is not to applaud his tirades. But it is to suggest that for every disaffected Apple or Next employee burned by Jobs, there are probably 10 who by age 28 achieved Neil Armstrong-like lifetime highs at his side. Perhaps the bitterness of some stems from the subliminal realization they'll never soar so high again. It's a nightmare for a 28-year-old software designer, just as it is for 30-year-old Michael Jordan.

My two best bosses were my two toughest bosses. Neither was a screamer, although one came reasonably close. Both practiced psychological terrorism-though neither knew he was doing so.

Both set mercilessly high standards for themselves. And neither believed in barriers to achievement, including acts of God (which were seen simply as opportunities to demonstrate one's mettle as never before).

Both sent me home screaming. I recall literally a year of just about non-stop headaches in one case.

It doesn't jibe with the perfectly balanced life. But I'll tell you, I learned more, faster, from these two than ever before or since.

The perfect boss is, of course, aware of individual differences and knows exactly how far to push each individual to "attain maximum performance," or some such ideal.

Except I very much doubt bosses like that exist. Those with shockingly high standards undoubtedly cause casualties among their followers. Yet without these outrageous pioneers, we wouldn't get anywhere.

Am I callous? Yes and no. To countenance, under any circumstances, the infliction of pain is callous. But to fail to understand that no epic bridge or dam has ever been built, or fighter aircraft tested, without casualties is to fail to comprehend the real world of high-performance anything.

Fortune quotes experts who say these executive thugs suffer from low self-awareness. I'm sure that's true, and perhaps the toughies would benefit from counseling by a trusted peer (unlikely) or elder (slightly more likely) who would clue them in on the havoc they've left in their wake.

But, let's face it. If these chiefs were thoroughly self-aware they would probably not realize how insane (literally) their towering quests are. And the world would be a poorer place for it.

There is a lot of talk about "adaptive organizations," as there should be. In these perilous and fast-changing times, adaptivity is arguably Skill/Goal #1—and the bones of those, old and young, who failed to adapt litter the landscape.

Books can be and have been and will be written about the topic. Dozens of 'em. But I want to pound a stake into the ground. I doubtless wildly over-simplify, but I insist that there is a one-variable answer to the adaptivity issue—moreover, treatment of that variable is "the" answer to this conundrum and it has been with us, unchanged, for eons. It has been the determining success-fail, life-death factor for companies and armies alike.

In short: Adaptivity is more or less a 100% function of the workforce and how it is recruited and developed and encouraged and appreciated—or not.

Adaptive organizations will have workforces which ...

*Are hired for attitude and character and proven teamwork as much or more than for skill
*Are respected and trusted and visibly appreciated and celebrated
*Are in on pretty much everything in an environment of information sharing and transparency
*Are trained and re-trained ad infinitum—you can, in effect, never spend too much time or money on training and re-training
*Treat "learning new stuff"—each and every day—as a near holy responsibility
*Believe that every one of us and every outsider has something worthy to teach us
*Are routinely exposed to an "insane" variety of outsiders who offer constant stimulation and direct challenges to conventional organizational/marketplace wisdom
*Are given the autonomy (with concomitant accountability) to and encouragement to "try it," almost any "it," at the drop of a hat—and then try it and try it again and again
*Are guaranteed that "useful failures" are cheered rather than jeered
*Are bound by a coda that shouts "good enough is never good enough"
*Are all "dreamers with deadlines," committed to pursuit of the novel and disruptive—and equally committed to flawless and timely execution
*Laugh a lot at themselves and their foibles and pratfalls
*Are, while civil to a fault, irreverent about damn near anything other than integrity and decency
*Are responsible for each other's mentoring and growth
*Believe that their role—each and everyone—is to serve, to serve each other and to serve each member of our family of organizations (vendors, customers, communities, etc.)
*Are diverse to a fault—not legalistically diverse, but from every background imaginable
*Are insistent that each and every one is treated as an utterly indispensable member
of the team—there are no bit players
*Relentlessly pursue no less than EXCELLENCE in all we do, in tough times even more than in times of economic good health

And that's it!
(Or some list more or less like this.)

Of course the above requires inspired leadership which truly puts people first.
Blah.
Blah.
Blah.

Bottom line: If the workforce encapsulates the above ideas—adaptivity will be virtually automatic and a walk in the park.* (*Of course it won't be any such thing—but presumably you get the drift.)

FYI/I repeat: This is an incredibly un-new idea. (It's achievement is, alas, exceedingly unusual—but it has unmistakably been "the secret" for ages.)

Translation (if I was unclear):

A soaring vision is desirable.
An effective strategy is important.
Super-processes are a necessity.

But in the end, it's all about ... THE PEOPLE!*

*It's ALWAYS all about ... THE PEOPLE!

[Ed. This blog is also available as a PDF: "Adaptive" Organizations.]

(Above and below, taking trip #1 in my new 12-foot Vermont Packboat amidst fall foliage on Lake St. Catherine. Photo courtesy Susan Sargent; boat designed and built by Adirondack Guideboat, North Ferrisburgh VT.)

You can find the video in the right-hand column of our front page, or watch it here (Time: 2 minutes 19 seconds). Also available, a PDF transcript of the video's content: Excellence: It Can Happen Anywhere.

We're having a great time experimenting with ways to present Tom's oeuvre in digital format. For now, the ebook series is available for consumption on your iPhone, iPad, and through iTunes on any computer.

Much more digital content is in the works (ebooks, apps, etc.), so check back from time to time. For now, we'll start you off with the eponymous flagship ebook, Excellence Now. It's thoroughly inspirational and beautifully designed. If this doesn't light a fire under you to strive harder for Excellence in your work, we can't imagine what would. Enjoy!

In a recent post, Tom quoted David Lascelles to show how corporate mergers are contrary to nature. Lascelles uses bees as an example, relating that bee colonies split into separate colonies as they grow, before becoming too big. Lascelles says that nature is more about "growth, fragmentation, and dispersal" than it is about merging. "What the bees are telling us is that the corporate world has got it all wrong."

Beyond Lascelles's bees, there is another example, even closer to home, to demonstrate this point: humans.

For about 90% of the 200,000 years we have been anatomically modern humans we lived in bands that maxed out at about 150 people. When our groups started to grow beyond 150 people, we split into smaller groups that then continued to grow on their own, until they once again split. Anthropologist Robin Dunbar says that this number of 150 was meaningful: It represents the maximum number of relationships each of us can have with other people. The "Dunbar Number," as it is called, is a natural limit based on our cognitive capacity. (Dunbar shows that other primates, such as chimps, bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas, have proportionally smaller group sizes based on their smaller brains.)

Then, about 12,000 years ago we started to settle down into a sedentary "civilized" lifestyle, and shortly thereafter developed agriculture. This led us to live in larger groups, well past Dunbar's limit of 150 people, eventually leading to the urban centers we see today.

Although we usually think of the transition to agriculture and civilization as wonderful progress, it isn't so simple. In his book, Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization, Spencer Wells paints a very vivid picture of the ills that civilized life has brought us. Wells describes archaeological evidence that shows how human size, health, and life expectancy actually decreased after the transition to settled living and agriculture. (Wells says that life expectancy for humans who made it past childhood didn't catch up with hunter-gatherer levels until the 19th century.) He claims that warfare, mental illness, and social strife, in addition to many diseases, are all byproducts of the unnatural situations we have lived in for the past 10,000 years. We evolved to live one way, and now are trying to live another way. What we see every day as our natural setting is, in fact, a very unnatural way for us to live.

So, if we are looking for evidence from nature that our belief in corporate mergers and unchecked growth is misplaced, Lascelles's bees are only the starting point. We can also look into the not-so-distant mirror of our own history and recognize that our real success on this planet has been based on small, nimble groups who "spin off" new groups before growing too big.

Arie De Geus, The Living Company (father of "scenario planning" at Royal Dutch Shell): "Rose gardeners face a choice every spring. The long-term fate of a rose garden depends on this decision. If you want to have the largest and most glorious roses of the neighborhood, you will prune hard. This represents a policy of low tolerance and tight control. You force the plant to make the maximum use of its available resources, by putting them into the rose's 'core business.' Pruning hard is a dangerous policy in an unpredictable environment. Thus, if you are in a spot where you know nature may play tricks on you, you may opt for a policy of high tolerance. You will never have the biggest roses, but you have a much-enhanced chance of having roses every year. You will achieve a gradual renewal of the plant. In short, tolerant pruning achieves two ends: (1) It makes it easier to cope with unexpected environmental changes. (2) It leads to a continuous restructuring of the plant. The policy of tolerance admittedly wastes resources—the extra buds drain away nutrients from the main stem. But in an unpredictable environment, this policy of tolerance makes the rose healthier in the long run."

David Lascelles, Co-director of The Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation [UK]: "Since merger mania is now the rage, what lessons can the bees teach us? A simple one: Merging is not in nature. [Nature's] process is the exact opposite: one of growth, fragmentation and dispersal. There is no megalomania, no merging for merging's sake. The point is that unlike corporations, which just get bigger, bee colonies know when the time has come to split up into smaller colonies which can grow value faster. What the bees are telling us is that the corporate world has got it all wrong."

In Search of Excellence basics in 127 characters including quotation marks and spaces:

"Cherish your people, cuddle your customers, wander around, 'try it' beats 'talk about it,' pursue excellence, tell the truth."

Q.E.D.

Leadership in 140 characters: Energy. Enthusiasm. Passion. "People first" in her bone marrow. Curiosity. Integrity. "Ready. Fire. Aim." Sense of humor. A good accountant.

Tripped over this list—and, frankly, liked it. (After a few edits.) Here it is—FYI. (Download the PowerPoint version here.)

1. Read.


2. Write.


3. Talk.


4. LISTEN.


5. Appreciate.


6. Kind.


7. Walk.


8. Work.


9. EXECUTE.


10. EXECUTE.


11. Relentless.


12. Enthuse.


13. WOW!


14. PEOPLE.


15. Frontline.


16. ACT.


17. Anger.


18. Band.


19. Apologize.


20. Weird-out.


21. Why?


22. Network I.


23. Network II.


24. Wired.


25. EXCELLENCE.

The EXCELLENCE 25/Expanded

1. Read. (Out study 'em. Read wide. Read deep.)


2. Write. (Clear. Concise. Compelling. Powerful.)


3. Talk. (Presentation MASTERY. Study. Practice-PRACTICE-Practice. Storytelling, mastery of.)


4. LISTEN. (Study. Practice-PRACTICE-Practice. Understand enormous-MATCHLESS power thereof.)


5. Appreciate. (Engaged. Compassionate. Appreciative always. "Thank you" rules.)


6. Kind. (Pays off big-time. K =R =P/Kindness = Repeat business = Profit.)


7. Walk. (MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around. "In touch" as fetish. Practice!)


8. Work. (Work harder than the next person.)


9. EXECUTE. (SWEAT THE DETAILS WITH MANIACAL PASSION.)


10. EXECUTE. (SWEAT THE DETAILS WITH MANIACAL PASSION.)


11. Relentless. (Keep on keepin' on. "Know when to fold 'em": NO!! Master of "Plan B.")


12. Enthuse. (Enthusiasm begets Enthusiasm. Enthusiasm moves mountains.)


13. WOW! (Knock-your-socks-off standard for positively everything.)


14. PEOPLE. (People 1st. People 2nd. People 3rd ... Great-engaged people>>Great strategy. Best bosses = Best people developers. Your people are your #1 customers.)


15. Frontline. (First-line supervisors, quality of, determine just about everything.)


16. ACT. (Most tries wins! READY. FIRE! AIM. "Blame no one. Expect nothing. Do something." "You miss 100% of the shots you never take.")


17. Anger. (Impatience. Constantly question the status quo.)


18. Band. (Small, passionate, relentless bands of people change the world!)


19. Apologize. ("I'm sorry," enormous-STAGGERING power thereof.)


20. Weird-out. (Multiple, unusual sources of information and feedback. You are who you hang out with. PERIOD.)


21. Why? (Curiosity power! Always/repeatedly ask and ask and ask: "Why?")


22. Network I. (Work like a demon on wider-deeper relationships. Think R.O.I.R./Return On Investment in Relationships. NEVER WASTE A LUNCH.)


23. Network II. ("Suck down" for success. "Real work" happens 2-3 levels "down"—master the "working underbelly" of your own/customer/etc. organizations.)


24. Wired. (Use every trick in the Internet/Co-create/Social Media book.)


25. EXCELLENCE. (The only standard. Always capitalize all letters.)

EXCELLENCE. Always.
If not EXCELLENCE, what?
If not EXCELLENCE now, when?

"To lead people, walk beside them ... As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate ... When the best leader's work is done the people say, 'We did it ourselves!'" —Lao-Tsu

"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, 'We did this ourselves.'" —Lao-Tsu

(These first two quotes are quite similar. But the subtle difference in wording was such I decided to post both. Incidentally, the duo also suggest that the basics of leadership are invariant from millennium to millennium—I could teach an entire leadership course, circa 2011, around this/these quotes alone.)

"The illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn." —Alvin Toffler

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it." —Henry David Thoreau

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." —Leo Tolstoy

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." —Mark Twain

"Never lose a chance of saying a kind word." —William Makepeace Thackeray

You can find the video in the right column of the front page of tompeters.com or you can watch the video on YouTube. [Time: 2 minutes] You can also download a PDF transcript of the video's content: Excellence: Bias for Action.

You can download free pdfs of those sections from The Little BIG Things Synopsis Series* by clicking below:

#47 Success
#48 Big

*The Synopsis Series is an adaptation that gives you a taste of the BIG idea in each of the 163 Little BIG Things. More information on the book can be found on this page. The Synopsis Series as released thus far can be found here.

If you've collected all the sections, we'd like to take a moment to say thank you. We hope you've enjoyed receiving these installments.

You can download free pdfs of those sections from The Little BIG Things Synopsis Series* by clicking below:

#44 Now
#45 Impact

*The Synopsis Series is an adaptation that gives you a taste of the BIG idea in each of the 163 Little BIG Things. More information on the book can be found on this page. The Synopsis Series as released thus far can be found here.

Herewith (and my apologies for the wordiness):

In 2008 in a participant document accompanying a seminar in Dubai, event speaker and former McKinsey & Co. Managing Director Rajat Gupta said in response to an interviewer's question: "The science of management continues to develop as scholars and global business leaders refine their approaches to organizing their enterprises to ensure both profitability and sustainability. There is surely no 'one size fits all' solution that can guarantee success in business. However, among the array of techniques and theories that can help strengthen business, I have always found that the 7-S framework offers a sound approach to combining all of the essential factors that sustain strong organizations: strategy, systems, structure, skills, style, and staff—all united by shared values. The 7-S framework remains one of the enduring elements of diligent, focused business management."

Gupta's rather strong comment came 28 years after Business Horizons, in its June 1980 issue, formally birthed the 7-Ss in an article by Bob Waterman, myself, and Julien Phillips titled: "Structure Is Not Organization."

And the Business Horizons article, in turn, came three years after I, fresh from receiving my Ph.D. in Organization Behavior at the Stanford business school (completed while on leave from McKinsey), was summoned to the firm's New York office and handed a fascinating assignment.

Relatively new McKinsey Managing Director Ron Daniel was launching a priority effort to renew McKinsey's intellectual capital—though that term did not exist at the time. (It was more or less called "R&D.") McKinsey's fabled advisors to top management were under an assault of ideas from Bruce Henderson's upstart Boston Consulting Group. And Daniel was determined to respond with vigor.

A major project on business strategy (the hottest of topics in 1977) had its home port in New York. But Daniel, from his own client work, was bedeviled by the frequency with which clever strategies failed to be implemented effectively. Though not a partner, I was asked to look at "organization effectiveness" and "implementation issues" in an inconsequential offshoot project nested in McKinsey's rather offbeat San Francisco office.(There was a third project, on "operations," run out of the Cleveland office.)

I should note that McKinsey's arsenal mostly consisted of "strategy" and, secondarily, "structure." All that was not to be cured with a scintillating strategic plan was to be dealt with by re-arranging the boxes on the formal organization chart. I exaggerate, of course—but not by much.

I finished a tour in the U.S. Navy in 1970 and went off to Stanford to pursue an MBA and eventually Ph.D. In neither of those pursuits was a page of Peter Drucker assigned. Instead I fell under the sway of the likes of Jim March (at Stanford), Herb Simon (March's partner and subsequent Nobel laureate in economics), and Karl Weick (then at the University of Michigan). Simon's Nobel stemmed from work on "bounded rationality" and its close kin, "satisficing"—the characteristic organizational pursuit of "satisfactory" rather than "optimal" decisions. March went much further, giving us such formulations as the "technology of foolishness" and "garbage can" models of organization, featuring, for example, solutions (pre-dispositions) wandering about organizations in random pursuit of problems to solve.

All of which is to say that I was attuned to an examination of organization effectiveness and implementation that went far beyond the mechanical manipulation of "charts and boxes."

I began my work with a grand tour of McKinsey offices world wide and business schools from inside and outside the USA. At home I visited with the likes of Professor Simon at Carnegie Mellon and, in Norway and Sweden, various researchers examining work group effectiveness—e.g., the Volvo crowd in Sweden and Einar Thorsrud in Oslo, running work group/self-management experiments on supertankers!

Upon returning, I pondered my findings and began tentative presentations around McKinsey. In a 1978 article in Organization Dynamics, "Symbols, Patterns and Settings," the first public expression of these ideas, I discussed unconventional change levers, influenced mightily by Jim March, such as the leader's allocation of time per se as a principal "power tool."

Progress of sorts followed, but it was a slow crawl until Bob Waterman was assigned as my putative boss. Bob, whose principal avocation was and is painting, had broad tastes and an inquiring mind—e.g., he became mesmerized by Karl Weick's work in a flash. More important, he was a damn good consultant—and wanted our work to be constructed in a way that would help the average McKinsey-ite take a shine to issues of organization effectiveness. (Which was, after all, the point of the exercise.)

Bob was great friends with Tony Athos, a professor at the Harvard Business School—and known worldwide as a master teacher. He enlisted Tony to help us turn our ramblings into something "crisp" (a favored McKinsey term) and memorable and "user friendly," as we say these days.

At a two-day séance in San Francisco, Bob and Tony and I, and Tony's cohort Richard Pascale, arrived, more or less full-blown, at the "7-S framework." (See immediately below.) The only, though significant, alteration became Tony's beloved "superordinate goals" morphing into "shared values." Tony was insistent that, corny as it appeared to be, we develop an alliterative model—find stuff that began with "Ss" in this case. In retrospect, it was a move of near genius. In my opinion, without the alliteration, which I initially found juvenile, the concept would not have been the sort being touted by Mr. Gupta almost 30 years later.

The shape of the "model" was also of monumental importance. It suggested that all seven forces needed to somehow be aligned if the organization was going to move forward vigorously—this was the "breakthrough" (a word I normally despise) that directly addressed Ron Daniel's initial concerns that had motivated the project. As we put it in the 1980 Business Horizons article, "At its most powerful and complex, the framework forces us to concentrate on interactions and fit. The real energy required to re-direct an institution comes when all the variables in the model are aligned."

Whether or not it was at the aforementioned séance, the other seminal idea—that there were "Soft Ss" as well as "Hard Ss"—emerged as well and lasts to this day. I continue to say, over 30 years later, that the power of the 7-Ss and In Search of Excellence (1982) and my subsequent work can best be captured in six words: "Hard is soft. Soft is hard." That is, it's the plans and the numbers that are often "soft" (e.g., the sky-high soundness scores that the ratings agencies gave packages of dubious mortgages). And the people ("staff") and shared values ("corporate culture") and skills ("core competencies" these days) which are truly "hard"—that is, the bedrock upon which the adaptive and enduring enterprise is built. To state the obvious, we very much included the "Hard Ss" (Strategy, Structure, Systems) in our framework, then added the "Soft Ss" (Style, Staff, Skills, Shared values—or Superordinate goal); and insisted that there was no precedence among them. Deal with all seven or accept the consequences—likely less than effective implementation of any project or program or increase in overall organization performance.

As mentioned at the outset, the coming out party was the June 1980 Business Horizons article. Then Athos and Pascale subsequently used the model in their popular The Art of Japanese Management (1981), and Bob and I included it in In Search of Excellence (1982).

At one point there was a movement to oust me from my humble office when an Op ed I wrote appeared in the Wall Street Journal in June 1980, emphasizing the primacy (yes, I dared use "primacy") of the "Soft Ss." (Bob W saved me, as he seemed so often to have to do.) On the other hand, my favorite certification of our approach came almost 20 years later from the ultimate "Hard S guy," McKinsey alum Lou Gerstner, in Who Says Elephants Can't Dance, summarizing his IBM turnaround effort: "If I could have chosen not to tackle the IBM culture head-on, I probably wouldn't have. My bias coming in was toward strategy, analysis and measurement. In comparison, changing the attitude and behaviors of hundreds of thousands of people is very, very hard. [Yet] I came to see in my time at IBM that culture isn't just one aspect of the game—it is the game [my emphasis]."

While the "Soft S" emphasis has been my life's work, I admit to astonishment when coming across a quote like the one from Rajat Gupta that opened this paper—suggesting three decades of staying power for our little model. I guess Tony Athos was right about the power of alliteration!

Tom Peters
Golden Bay
New Zealand
09 January 2011

Note to readers: For the best explication of the 7-Ss, the 1980 Business Horizons article remains a peerless source.

You can download free pdfs of those sections from The Little BIG Things Synopsis Series* by clicking below:

#42 Re-imagining
#43 Wow

*The Synopsis Series is an adaptation that gives you a taste of the BIG idea in each of the 163 Little BIG Things. More information on the book can be found on this page. The Synopsis Series as released thus far can be found here.

You can download a free pdf of this section from The Little BIG Things Synopsis Series* by clicking below:

#41 Special Section: The Top 50 "Have Yous"

*The Synopsis Series is an adaptation that gives you a taste of the BIG idea in each of the 163 Little BIG Things. More information on the book can be found on this page. The Synopsis Series as released thus far can be found here.

You can find the video in the right column of the front page of tompeters.com or you can watch the video on YouTube. [Time: 2 minutes, 56 seconds] You can also download a PDF transcript of the video's content: Excellence: Cross-Functional Communication.

You can download a free pdf of this section from The Little BIG Things Synopsis Series* by clicking below:

#38 Details

*The Synopsis Series is an adaptation that gives you a taste of the BIG idea in each of the 163 Little BIG Things. More information on the book can be found on this page. The Synopsis Series as released thus far can be found here.

Q.E.D.

You can download free pdfs of those sections from The Little BIG Things Synopsis Series* by clicking below:

#32 Listening
#33 Special Section: Quotations 34

*The Synopsis Series is an adaptation that gives you a taste of the BIG idea in each of the 163 Little BIG Things. More information on the book can be found on this page. The Synopsis Series as released thus far can be found here.

You can find the video in the right column of the front page of tompeters.com or you can watch the video on YouTube. [Time: 1 minute, 16 seconds] You can also download a PDF transcript of the video's content: Excellence: Courtesy Matters.

If you haven't already, read Tom's story of the Two-Cent Candy. What's your or your organization's Two-Cent Candy? Experienced a particularly Excellent one? Please share the story with us, including how it changed your or your customers' perception/reality.

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