Tom Peters: In Search of Excellence

We interview Tom Peters, uber-guru of business management and author of 'In Search of Excellence' and many others. We talk to him about the current crisis and how to be 'people first' in organisations.


09:48 Interview with Tom Peters

00:35 Insights & Takeaways
10:00 Interview

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Twitter: @tom_peters

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Transcript

Marcus Kirsch: 0:16

Welcome to the wicked podcast where we read business books you don't have time for. I'm Marcus Kirsch. And I'm Troy Norcross, and we are your co hosts for the wicked podcast,

Troy Norcross: 0:27

we take from the 1000s of business books out there and test the author's ideas by comparing them to real world challenges. With over 40 years or projects between us, we've got quite a bit to compare against. We give you the condensed takeaways followed by an interview with the author's we

Marcus Kirsch: 0:43

know you want actions, not theories and his actions that we want to help shape, because that's what the wicked podcast is all about helping you to become a wicked company.

Troy Norcross: 0:54

So Marcus, typically we read a book, and then we invite the author on to discuss the book, in this particular case for the author of up the organisation, the author's not around anymore. So you did a really great job in going to find Tom Peters. And we were really lucky to get time with him. He's written a couple of books subsequently, like In Search of Excellence. But at the end of the day, today, we've got so much going on with COVID. What Tom really wanted to do was have more of a general chat. So what I'd like to do, because we don't want to cheat our audience, what are the three big takeaways that we got from reading up the organisation? Yes, so

Marcus Kirsch: 1:30

we went a bit of format for that one, but given the COVID-19 situation, and given that we can talk to someone like Tom, who's been in the business for over 40 years, and who's from same generation as Robert Townsend, and there's a connection between them. It was great to approach it as what do organisations really need today? Has it changed from over 5060 years ago? Is there any new wisdom is the old wisdom still valid, was a great conversation. Now, interestingly, even though we were starting at a different point with the conversation, both in Robert Townsend's book, and the evidence and the stories, Tom told us, what it comes down to, in my opinion, is it's all about people. It's evident when you listen to the interview. And when you read Roberts book, because Robert says, Well, you can start reading the book anywhere you like, it's full of lots of little stories. But if you want a particular good point to start the book with, start with the people section. And that came through the interview with Tom as well. It's all about people, the significant difference of more successful, less successful organisation lies and how much they enable their people. As an organisation, you're into people business, that's your greatest value and asset and opportunity. And if you do it, right, you have an amazing organisation that can adapt to anything. And if you're not doing it right, then you're being very ineffective, and you will struggle all the way. So my main takeaway is, it's about people.

Troy Norcross: 3:18

And on that point, if we look back to one of our previous episodes, Sonny Giles, she covers a lot of very, very much the same ideas, which is people with the edge of the organisation need to be empowered to be able to make decisions. So again, it's building an organisation with power all the way through the organisation, and especially at the edge, and pulling that forward. And I think whether we're talking about you know, Sonny's book, the new science of radical innovation, or Robert Townsend, up the organisation, or, you know, Tom Peters book, you know, In Search of Excellence, a lot of these ideas have been around for a long time. And during the interview, you make some really great points about Okay, everybody knows it. The data is there, the scientists there, the researcher, is there that this is what should be happening. Why is it not happening? And I think that we we came away with a couple of things that are my big points, and they're, they're big points for me in general, which is, we are still very much short sighted end of quarter focused, we're still very much focused on how do we get returns for our shareholders as the only main result or purpose of the company even existing. And that's, that's a real kind of challenge that we've got to get into. And we still don't trust, we don't trust enough within the leadership and the leadership doesn't trust the employees enough. And so we need to have longer term thinking, we need to have more balanced capitalism across all the stakeholders. And we need to develop more trust. And if we can do those things, we can start applying a lot of the principles that we already know work. And of course, changing those three things is not trivial. I liked his reference to the the Drucker Institute in Los Angeles or at least in Southern California, and the fact that they're trying to shift that mindset away from exclusively thinking about shareholder capitalism. So those are my takeaways.

Marcus Kirsch: 5:18

Yes, I think that's something we seen in our projects, often the way companies are still using investment where within three to six months, they expect a return. That's not how people work. People need to learn, they can learn on the job in the project very quickly, but the benefits will come a bit later. And companies don't seem to invest in that in the right way with the right expectation. So it's a big blocker, to short term thinking and short term short term game games are thinking and Tom mentioned how this is, and uses different words here. How this is just a mindset that still comes from business schools that hasn't changed in the last 5060 years. Despite the fact that Robert Townsend spoke was on the top list of the Wharton School of Business, for example, for 50 years, it seems that everyone's reading it, but no one's doing it because the blocker and incentive of short term gains is so high. So it's interesting that important organisations like the Drucker school are starting to really work on ideas how to shift that, and I think we can generally see a trend, even outside of the business schools, people who create new organisations are looking at new ways to form and shape companies down to the legal level, not just on the beanbag, into a design level, like we work there literally. Because the shareholder value is legally ingrained in all in companies, people are looking at the legal aspects of organisations and how to change that. So in other words, short term gains are blocking long term progress and benefits. The main source of long term benefits are people and their behaviour, not technology. Technology only performs if the behaviour is right, which means whatever technology you're using, if the people and behaviour around it doesn't work, your technology won't work and won't give you the benefits. So it's people, people only change and progress through trial and error. We are highly complex as individuals as teams. So if you want to bring change and new value, you have to let people experiment. Because every organisation is unique, because it's made out of unique people. If you don't let them experiment and expect benefits with the cookie cutter solution that everyone promises will save you, you're likely go wrong, you'll fail. So then you have no benefits. So you need organisational agility, agility, to experiment, in order to create value for your organisation in the way that works for you. That needs trial and error. There's no one size fits all, it just doesn't exist. So that customization or change period, in order to get to the best benefits for your organisation needs to be calculated in and that needs organisational agility. That means you need the ability to fail because on your first chart, you will not get it right is to higher risk to get it wrong. Because organisations are so complex, if you give yourself that time, you will exponentially more easily succeed and get to your benefits. If you don't, then you're contributing to the 70% or more percentage of change projects that are not returning the business benefits you're looking for and you're Miss investing. And that's in big parts missing. And the main reason for that is short term gains that are blocking that phase to be part of your process.

Troy Norcross: 9:24

And without using too many kind of trite words, it's agility as in Agile.

Marcus Kirsch: 9:31

Yes, yes, organisational agility is a thing that goes all the way from an individual and learning and being able to be open using your best potential and being allowed to do so. So being allowed to fail progress learn love those thoughts.

Troy Norcross: 9:46

Marcus, let's let's go to the interview.

Marcus Kirsch: 9:49

Yes, that's Hello, Tom. And thanks for joining us in a very interesting times. So we're in week eight, nine of The covid 19 pandemic economic reality looks fairly bleak right now. Millions of people are out of their job businesses are in a situation that is unprecedented for most people on this planet. Some people have been through recessions, but not quite like that we have comparisons back to the Great Depression back in the US. First question, you have been doing this for decades, you've seen a lot of things, you talk to a lot of organisations with a lot of very great advice and wisdom. What in this time, after 50, or 60 years of books and advice have been existing around the situation we're in? what we should be doing? What are your thoughts?

Tom Peters: 10:44

Well, one thing is, as you well know, you're dealing with an old man. And all men are old men or women, whether you're religious or not, are thinking about the fact that they're not going to be around forever. And I'm trying to take advantage of that relative to the people who are half my age. And to say that this is an extraordinary moment. If you go back to the 1918, Spanish flu, this is a once a century moment, arguably at least, and Ms. Or Mr. business leader, what you have done in the last handful of weeks, or what you will do in the next handful of weeks ahead, is your reputation is what your life will have been all about. If you misbehave in May of 2020, you have put a big black mark against, you know, your professional and adult life as far as I'm concerned. And so I'm I'm really I'm, I'm in a empathetic mood. But relative to managers and leaders, I'm in a brutal move. You know, I have been saying since we started the research are In Search of Excellence in 1977. put people first. And, you know, when we did the research in 1977, which led to In Search of Excellence in 1982, there was a big theoretical part of that book, which I doubt that any practising managers read. But you know, I did it for my conscience, if nothing else, because I just gotten a PhD in Organisational Behaviour at Stanford. And, you know, we went back to McGregor and we went back to Chester Barnard and I don't remember how far we went back, we, you know, we didn't go back quite to Adam and Eve. But we said there's a strand here and probably McGregor is the is the is the most public godfather of it all Theory X and Theory Y. Theory X beat the crap out of people in theory, why treat people as if they were, you know, basically intelligent human beings. And so, you know, I just am working on a new book, and it has two cover pages. And the first cover page deals with the excellence thing. And the second cover page just has two words on it. People First, and I said to somebody, this is my Summa, this is my last act. And I've been saying people frigging first for the last 43 years when somebody please listen. And you know, I was, the book was a little bit selfish as a last act. Now it seems less selfish, because I think that people first message Hello, first of all, and let's talk to the people that you and I are talking to right now. My one liner, which I sort of believe, if you are Tony Robbins, and you walk into an audience of 1000 people you expect to change 1000 lives. If I walk into an audience of 1000 people, I hope that three people will really be influenced by what I've said. And those are people who believed what I said before I ever walked in the room. But I gave him a good, quick steffes kick in the butt and said, let's get on with it. So, you know, I mean, I'd love for us to using American baseball numbers I'd love for us to bat 1000 I'd love for us to be you know, the Tony Robbins egocentric, let's get 1000 out of 1000 but you know if you can get what's the deal and I'm not expert on this there's a there's a someplace and in Israel and Tel Aviv or Jerusalem where if you save the single life, you get the planet tree, if you can get to you know, you guys, me guys, if you can really help a couple people seriously, you've had one hell of a good day. And so I'm more than willing to make this the latest or the last or the next, the last or whatever effort to say, you know, you do the people stuff and In my personal life test is can I walk past a mirror? Look at the mirror and not barf is a wonderful thing. DAVID BROOKS is a New York Times columnist in the in the US, and he wrote a magnificent little column that was called eulogy virtues versus resume virtues. And he said, the resume or the CV virtues is where did you go to school? How many ranks? Did you go up in your corporation, or whatever else it is, and all of those kinds of accomplishments. He said the eulogy virtues are the ones where we ask questions like, How well did he treat people? How well did he take care of people? And you know, I, I think that little one liner eulogy versus resume virtues is as good as anything as any of the Greek philosophers turned out. So that's my very long winded answer to your question, but it's a complicated question.

Troy Norcross: 16:00

And I think it's really interesting. One of the things that I used to see written, like in newspapers, or at least in a book that I read a long time ago, was on the headstone. I asked, only to be remembered, you know, because for them, life eternal was in the memories of those lives whose people they touched, and you wanted to touch people's lives in a positive way and leave a positive, lasting impression. So you're walking past a mirror and not puking I completely resonate with?

Tom Peters: 16:26

Well, there's a, my third book was dedicated to the mayor of a very tough American city, Baltimore, his name was William Donald Schaefer. He made a lot of very good things happen in Baltimore, some of which have slipped back in the last 20 years. But that's another story. But when he when he retired from May or Allah Tate to become the governor of Maryland, I was at the big goodbye party that was thrown in a hotel or something. And in after all of us did all of our hearts, you great stuff, Schaefer got up. And I still remember, he said, I only want to be remembered by two words, which are on my tombstone, and the two words are he cared? And, you know, that's about as good as it gets. And, you know, I think it's, it's an awful time.

Unknown: 17:25

And it's

Tom Peters: 17:27

a wonderful time. Because it is a time where with the right effort, you really can be of significant help to a lot of people. And, you know, and the stuff that infuriates me, is, you know, the stuff that I read that says, bosses who are now doing the work for from home thing, and they're doing zoom all day long with 23 meetings, and they're trying to keep productivity up. Well, as far as I'm concerned, I hope they get a special seat on Don taze ninth, or new 10th ring of hell fun, fundamental, fundamentally, it's, it's time to make a difference. And of course, that the sucker play, which is the last 40 years of my life. If you do these things, you end up making a lot of money. It's not, it's not as if you're there's nothing out truest, about being thoughtful and caring and paying decent wages to your employees. It is the best known way to humankind, unless you got suckered in by the shareholder value maximisation crap, it is the best way in the world long term, to serve customers to be part of communities, and so on. And so this should be the world's greatest good news story. And it is for some people. Any other thing which and I don't know whether this is a problem for you guys, I doubt that it is, as much as it is. But this horrible thing called management gurus, which incidentally, was started by the Economist magazine, this this thing about, suppose there are a set of people like that. And I obviously people identify with me with that, so I can't escape the management guru class. X is if 90% of the world work for either the footsie 100 or the fortune 500. And they pay no attention whatsoever to the smaller businesses. And the smaller businesses are the ones that create all the jobs and where all of us work, whether we are Kenyans, Brits, Americans, Canadians or whatever. And there are a lot of small business leaders who get this and a lot of small business leaders let me say and not be not the I don't know what the term is a smart alec or what have you. I certainly understand the small business that has lost all of its clients. And the person who started the business let's call it a 10 table restaurant, add the mortgages home and keep it out of school in order to start the restaurant, and now he can't pay the mortgage. I am not asking him to or her to play God relative to employees. So there are situations obviously, where the word dire is not even significant enough.

Marcus Kirsch: 20:18

What comes to my mind is that having worked in last couple of years, rather much, much larger organisations, don't worry that those ideas have been around for a long time. I've rarely seen them anywhere implemented like that, why? Why is there seemingly a, potentially a threshold where at some point, that narrative stops and suddenly gets either pushed out of an organisation upon a certain size, or doesn't get through, on its being paying lip service to, and seems to be really, really hard to at least be implemented. I mean, whenever ever talked to a C level person, they seem to still sort of get it. But they seem to at best struggle to ever implement this to go people first and do have to to mega is really, in place actually working. There's enough case studies to show that that brings amazing value out of people because people are going to be happier at work, they're going to be healthier work. They're going to feel a purpose, they're going to feel safe, they're going to feel trusted. Have you ever seen where this sort of starts to really tripped over? Or why any reasons why just suddenly has such a such a hard time to get into bigger organisations. Maybe it's the Quakers we

Tom Peters: 21:23

have because we haven't shut down all the business schools in the world. We closed their doors tomorrow morning, the world will be a better place. And we can come back to that there's a there's a one this Henry mintzberg is a Canadian researcher, you guys probably know him. But Henry, I'm skipping answering your question, and I'll come back to it in a minute. Henry, one of Henry's many pieces of research, looked at graduates with professional degrees like engineering and business versus liberal arts graduates. And what he discovered, which is in retrospect, like most things like that, not surprising, at least the first half is engineering and MBA grads got something like twice as many job offers, and the average starting salary was 50%. higher than that for the liberal arts people. But then the fascinating thing that kicked in at year 20, the liberal arts people had dramatically surpassed the professional school people, and, you know, literally rank salary or at least on those kinds, you know, those kinds of numbers. But, you know, let's let's go back to your initial question. It's obviously lunacy to blame it on one person. And so this is a lunatic answer in part. And that is Milton Friedman. 1970 maximise shareholder value. And he basically said anything that smacks and he used the framing term of social business is not in the business of social responsibility, it is there to make money for shareholders, but here are the hard numbers in 1970, and these are American firms to be sure, in 1970 50% of earnings, went to shareholders, et cetera, and 50% of earnings went to employees research and development and so on. It is now 50 years later, hard nosed research that was done in about 2017 or something like that said, we have now reached a point 5050 remember, 50 for the shareholders basically 50 for employees, that's not accurate, but it's a decent approximation, it is now 91% for shareholders, 9% for employees. And you know, the games that you have to play are games, like, you know, stock repurchases and all kinds of crap like that. So I won't blame it entirely on the non Friedman there was also Michael Jensen at the Harvard Business School who usually gets the same credit, you know, as as Friedman. But there, there was a dramatic change, at least among the big companies. You know, seven, and obviously, we could talk for two days, which I would rather do rather than a short period of time. There was a book the name which I don't remember which, but which I quoted recently. And the guy who wrote the book, who is a consultant, was sitting with a CEO. And they were doing and they were going through the public ish annual review and so on and off. Good stuff that happened, and all kinds of wonderful reasons for that they had taken care of employees, Baba, Baba, Baba Baba blah. And so our friend who wrote the book, turned to the CEO, and said, Why do you think other CEOs don't do this? The CEO said, You know, I don't know. But I think they're kind of embarrassed. You know, they think they should be looking at shareholder or at spreadsheets. But the two things went through my mind, first of all, was shareholder value. And the second one was that In Search of Excellence, has, in retrospect, a day when everything changed, and it's a direct response to your question. And that day was when my co author Bob Waterman, and I, who were in the Mackenzie, San Francisco office, drove 30 miles down the road to Palo Alto, which is not the Palo Alto of today, and had a meeting with the president of the Hewlett Packard company. And on that day, I was introduced to the HP way. And in particular, I was introduced to MBW a, which is managing by wandering around, and managing by wandering around to me is the answer. You know, I treat it as a metaphor, not something literal. And that's particularly true now with the work from home. But managing by wandering around means being in touch with the people who do the work. And you know, it was this doesn't sound believable. But I'm willing to put my hand on a Bible. We're wandering around with john young, the president of HP. And there's a computer terminal big old computer terminal on a desk somewhere, and this old guy is talking to this young kid who's 26 or 27. And and john said was eight, he said, Come on over here, I want you to meet bill Hewlett. And you know, Bill hill with that, I don't know, he's probably in his 60s. And Bill was having just a chat with this kid. And they were just chatting with each other about, you know, the things that kid was working on and so on. But, you know, that's, that's it was it was a miracle moment. And it's what I've been looking for ever since. But and you know, I had this other. I had, you know, I hate words like epiphany. But my wife and I spend not this year because of the problems. My wife and I spent a couple of months, each North American winter in New Zealand. And we have a little what's called a batch short for bachelor, a little cabin, on the Tasman Sea. And we had the most gorgeous beach in the world in front of us. And this was lat two years ago, and I was 75. And it's really embarrassing to be 75. And still thinking about management theory. But I was out on the beach, and I was thinking about em. Pathetic, those beautiful beach in the world. I'm on the beach, age 75 thinking about NBA. But I mean, it's really embarrassing. But I had an epiphany. And my and I'm willing to call it an epiphany in this instance, in my epiphany was, Why do you do MBA? Do you do it to learn about what's going on at the front line? Sure. But you do MBW A for one reason. And that reason is because it's fun. It is a kick to be in the distribution centre at 2am in the morning with the people who are slaving away and chatting with them about whatever else there is. And then my hard nosed answer was, and if you are doing MBA, and it is not fun, return to your desk, find a piece of paper, find a pen, and put your resume and put your resignation letter together. And you know, I really do somebody you may have run into him. As usual. I don't remember his name. There aren't as many books on hiring is there ought to be. And my bias is, you should never hire anyone. And there are other measures and I don't like the quantity measure. But the EQ the emotional quotient, never hire anyone for any job who doesn't have a high EQ. Yeah, there are. It's the worst thing you can say academically is there are two kinds of people in the world. But there are two kinds of people in the world. There are people who give a shit about people and there are people who don't really care all that much about people. One of my favourite quotes in my most recent book was from a guy, Peter Miller i think is his name, and he heads a middle sized biotech startup. And his wonderful one liner, which to me was delivered directly from God through the heavens was we only hire nice people. And he said, Okay said I'm in an incredibly complex business. And in order to be in some jobs, you have got to have some kind of a microbiology degree. And I know you two guys are smarter than any other human beings on earth, but which were you and I don't even understand what the degree name is. But he said, let's take that degree. And it's, you know, microbiology neuro microbiology said, guess what? There are actually in the world, a lot of people who have those degrees, don't hire the jerks. And it's and it's not a matter of, you know, frontline employees who are flight attendants at airlines, it is a matter of jobs where there are PhD science degree requirements, hire the good ones, hire the nice ones. And he does, you know, he is his is really is really hard. No, you're the CEO. I'm telling you about my, you know, my academic experience, you want to weep is so good, and your hand is itching to hire me. But I, the CEO, cannot hire you. Because after you have interviewed with me, you must, and he used the term Not me, you must run the gauntlet. And running the gauntlet is about 15 interviews. And a couple of them may be with scientists, others will be with the receptionist. They'll be with a 28 year old in the finance department. And any of those 20 people or 10 people who you have to interview with, has veto rights. They can say Nope, not a good fit. And you know, take your 11 year spent getting your PhD and sell it to somebody else. There was also, I'm really irritated that it didn't come out in time for my last book, there was a incredible I am occasionally accused of using hyperbole, but this is not hyperbole. There is an incredible study that Google did. And it was a study of their best employees and their most innovative teams. And it is said by the person who reported that there was shock and amazement in the executive areas, the best Google employees had eight traits. And seven of those traits were soft skills, like listening, cooperating, appreciating other people's points of view. And then the stem stuff, the science, technology, engineering and math came in at the bottom, then they did the most innovative teams and the same damn thing happened. And you know what they discovered with the teams that weren't so good that you didn't have the people skills, there was intellectual bullying, which really rang a bell with me, it is some damn Stanford 23 year old who has an IQ of 750, and knows that God endowed him with greater intelligence than any living human being on earth. And he is going to let you know about that. And you know, Google did something, which I think is absolutely appalling, disgusting, and stupid. And that is they classify people as a players and B players, which is a perfect way to de motivate 50% of the people in the organisation. Yeah. But yet at At any rate, it was the MBA it I don't know why people well, I do know, we promote the wrong people. You know, there's, we promote the people who have the technical skills. Let's talk for the next three hours, except it'll really be adult tape because I will be weeping through most the

Marcus Kirsch: 34:05

way it's the way it's the way organisations still seem to sort of hire and it's like, it's been mine and Troy's issue for a long time, because we're not having one skill we're sitting across, you know, like t shirt, whatever you call it. And the thing there is that Yeah, as you said, there's it's not just managing by walking around. But, you know, again, was just a disservice about working from home, the biggest thing people are missing, they could walk up to a desk to someone have a chat and know what they're actually doing the transparency that gives that you the value that it gives to you as anyone working in a group of people that you know what's going on and you know, when you can help No, there's there's a whole de risking aspect to it, where we naturally do this, right. We talked to a couple of people when we feel uncertain. We don't feel like safe enough to to come up with the decision or knowing exactly what we need to know. And people do that every time. It's like a chef. tasting the food while they're cooking is all good. bit of extra salt with extra pepper, same thing, right? There's this value. So you and I like when you're saying, you know, managing, by what by walking around, and then you're talking about the lunches as well, same thing, right? All this volume build up about, you need to, if you know a bit more what's going on around you, you know your context better, you get more information streams. And sometimes also you get stuff done, because you know, the people who sit in the different areas, and actually you can get stuff done quicker, because you can give them just a phone call, then value there is immense. as a consultant, you go into a an organisation where you don't know a lot, you don't know who to call, who to talk to him, whatever. And you spend time trying to establish that. So the quicker you get to the people who know each other, or you're in an environment where people know each other like that, they'll tell you in a split second, I'll just talk to him, you get it done. You know, that's efficiency. It's people have that purpose. They like those stories to share, like, Oh, yeah, the guy from accountancy and and over in HR and whatnot. And you know, what, the developers? Yeah, if you talk to the team guy over there, you'll get it sorted out, that makes a good company, right? What you just talked about is, I haven't got 100 case studies on that, where people give different names to that. But there's evidence that this is enabling everyone to be happy, at work to do more stuff to get stuff done. And to to to generally just just just de risk and actually run things better.

Troy Norcross: 36:29

And to piggyback on top of that, what what I find interesting is, it's not just management by walking around and learning. It also gives the leader the chance to express the vision to actually empower those people to make decisions to let them do the leading from the front lines. And I think that sometimes the vision gets lost or doesn't get communicated. I work with a lot of startups. And with a startup, everybody can knows what's going on, because there's only six people in the organisation. But when you've got 6000 in an organisation, and you get a situation like the current pandemic, where everyone is suddenly remote working, you want to make sure that people feel like they're informed that they're empowered and that they can actually make change and move things forward without the kind of traditional micromanagement.

Tom Peters: 37:14

Yeah, I mean, I, I'd go both sides of that coin, and I haven't got it in front of me, it was one of those papers we sent you. There was a community college, which put out something to all of its employees, a list of 10 things. And the 10 the 10 things on the list was you're not supposed to be as productive, productive, productive as in the past. And, you know, I got a tweet this morning of a guy who was side himself with joy, because in the middle of one of the work from home meetings, he was a boss, his five year old came in and jumped up on his knee. Now I've watched that happen or watched videos of it. And when the five year old jumps up, Dad tries to push or Mom, dad probably push the five year old away, but when the when the boss picks the five year old up and gives him a big hug. You have done one of the single greatest motivational acts history of humankind. And and you know, it's it, it, it really it really is huge. But yeah. MBW A is a metaphor. Yes. And bw A, which is why to me, it works in the work from home thing. It is a metaphor for engaging with people. You know, when you started the words you said it reminded me years ago of a company that I visited, and they were working on new works. And they put a series of little comfy chairs, or couches, outside where the outside the restroom doors, and they said people go to the restroom come out of the restroom. And there are a couple of people there. So why not sit down and have a random and casual chat because it is it is it is worth its weight in something that is so much one of the things you said by the way, I believe that we can do a lot of this stuff and use the exact language in work from home. But what is going to be incredibly difficult is a work from home meeting is going to be the quote unquote, right people to deal with the issue. And so at the work from home meeting, about the product, you're not going to have the opportunity to have that casual chat with the person in finance or the person or and I really believe that lateral miscommunication whether it's war and a big battle or whether It's, you know, a little commercial activity. Lateral communication is everything. You know, there there there, there are two things that I believe in lateral and down. It's a silly term, but I call it sucking up versus sucking down. And the winners are the ones who suck down. And the losers are the ones who suck up. Unfortunately, that's not always true. which incidentally, takes me to another of my favourite issues of the last 24 years. And that is, women are a lot more comfortable doing lateral and down stuff than men. You know, I, the whole women's thing started for me, and I can, and this is really bad to say, because it sounds like stuff like this is crap. But it's true with a conversation at a seminar of mine with a senior at&t systems telecoms executive. And he said to me out of the blue, he said, I only hire women. And I said, Well, that's cool. What's the point? And he said, women are willing to invest. Women don't worry about rank, they are totally willing to invest in conversations with people who were three levels below them. Guys are rank conscious. And they won't talk to anybody unless the person has the same rank as they do. And it's that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but it's actually not too much of an exaggeration. And you know, God. Yeah. And yeah, I got in a fight on Twitter a few days ago that, you know, got my hackles up when somebody was saying, there are no gender differences. And, you know, I know that I want to, I want to Twitter but button more than block, which is punch in the nose. No, I'm too old, because everybody else is faster than I am and stronger than I am now. Not that I ever was very strong.

Marcus Kirsch: 42:07

At the extension of that this, like, apart from the fact that I would totally agree with that. Because I know plenty of women with kids, you know, when you talk about having on zoom, the kid runs in, the guy goes, like, pushes the kid out, a woman's first reaction would be to put the kid on their lap, and like, Are you okay, yoga, you find? Okay, fine. Now go back, please, because I'm doing some stuff, you know, they're inclusive, and they just go with it, rather than a motivator confused about it. And it's really weird. It's like, you know, the guys trying to be non human, and the women are naturally just going what? They're being authentic. Right. And the other thing is also, then, and then you go quickly to the inclusion. So because one of our backgrounds is service design, and you don't you do a lot of research with customers. And one of the biggest thresholds I found is to get people out on the street into a shop, look at the store, look at what's actually going on where you're selling stuff where you're offering your offer. Most people don't even step out of the office and you go hang on a second, if you can't be amongst the people that you're actually serving. How are you ever going to get them? How are you ever going to include them? Why are you there? There's plenty of places I went. And we did workshops on you know, ideas about what we should do, we had a lot of information about what the customer is doing. It was still the threshold to say, Why Why don't we invite two customers in here? What do you mean to customers, but they're not working here? And like, isn't that safe and whatnot? There's no get them in? haven't talked to actually, as Have you talked to them, see how they really feel what they really want, and then act on it. It's a simple, cheap thing you can do yet. So many organisations have have this where it's like people who step into a car, and then get road rage, right? Second, you step into a car, you get really impatient with everyone else in traffic, you become someone else, why becoming someone else, just because you walk into an office space, I don't get that. The second you walk out, you actually have the same complaints about the service and offer a product. So why don't you take those guys into a workshop into your office into whatever we have a workshop and actually be inclusive, be authentic about like, yes, we want to really want to hear from you. Yeah, it happens. It's man.

Tom Peters: 44:15

There was a guy, I don't know whether you've run anything into life. I've forgotten what the business was. But he was fabulous. He would have a conference about every three months with customers who they had lost. You know, why? What did we do? And he said, he said, he said he did it because he genuinely wanted to learn. But he said it was a sucker, but 80% of them ended up coming back. Exactly. I mean, there are two there are two issues. I mean, there's my issue or my you know, magic formula where I want to hire for EQ. But the part I think you referred to earlier, which is scarier is why do people Have these instincts and then lose them when they get into an organisation. You know, and and I do think starting with a high IQ helps. But there are a lot of people who think they're suppose there was a story somebody told me 1000 years ago and it sounds silly, but it has a, you know, some resonance. And, and there was a guy who got promoted the boss, and he hid in his office. And, you know, some consultant like you guys came around and talk to him. And they said, Why do you hide this in your office? And he said, because that's why but what bosses are supposed to do? And he said, Why do you say that? And he said, because that's what my boss did. And you literally, I mean, it sounds so juvenile to say that, but there's a lot of truth in it. You know, and, and, I mean, on the other side of the coin, like life is complicated. Open, all the research says open offices don't work. And, you know, which thrills the daylights out of me. But that's selfish, because I die before I work. Oh, I've got to make my book plug. We are 20 years into the century and I am willing to anoint a business book as best business book of the first 19 years of the century. And that is Susan Kane's book quiet. If you if you had Susan on, we've not yet

Troy Norcross: 46:35

Susan on one of my friends. Were just telling me about the book quiet, she was really, really enjoying it. So it's already on my reading list.

Tom Peters: 46:42

Yeah, I adore it. I mean, what she basically says is, and I remember the first time I read after I read the book, when I went to speak to a group, she basically says, we dismiss roughly 40% of the population who are introverts. And you know, she goes through the research and if you're an extrovert, you are considered smarter, you are considered more creative, you are considered to be more physically attractive, just because you run at the mouth. And and there's an incredible bias against introverts, you know, because you're doing an interview, and you Ask an Introvert a question. And Jesus, the guy actually thinks before he answers, but he's sitting there silently for 45 seconds, at which point you decide he's dumb. And he's sitting there actually, because he's smart. But it's a beautiful, beautiful book. And Susan has, you know, lawyer training. And I only say that, because this is not somebody with a philosophy degree from Oxford, who is going on about the wonderful things in life. She's trained as a lawyer, the book has got enough hard nosed research that, you know, sink an ocean liner. And it's, it's just, and she started something it's web based, you can check it out before you get in touch with her. And it's called The Quiet Revolution. And she's really pushing this thing. And I remember because, you know, I'm just the crackpot, I read the book. And I went in, and I was talking to leadership in a multibillion dollar electronic companies, companies. And I said, By the way, I just read this book, and I want to declare here publicly, you all in this room are jerks. And if you do that, with a smile, you can get away with it. And I said, because my suspicion is, you are pissing away 50% of the world's talent. And you know, we had a lovely friendly conversation, but that also Incidentally, calling people jerks. It goes back to the other conversation I, I am, he said, with absolute humility, I am considered to be a pretty good speaker. And I am convinced that I have only got one secret. And that is, I am one of the better readers of body language. If you can read the body language of an audience, you can give a good speech. And I, you know, I believe that religiously, I actually talked to a psychiatrist asking whether I was nuts about this, I said, my, my guess is that during a speech in the course of five minutes, I probably make 50 to 100 micro adjustments to what I'm saying, based on some subliminal stuff about you're in the third row and you're frowning, and I am desperate to get that frown off your face. And so I use a little bit of a different tone and so on.

Troy Norcross: 49:44

Does that does that kind of factor into the fierce listening that you mentioned in one of your papers? You're almost listening beyond just the word is listening to the body language?

Tom Peters: 49:54

Absolutely. Well, and you know that and this is interesting route to work from home. There's a Stanford Business School researcher who lost sheep. It's based on others research, which is then reinforced by our own, that says your body language is five to seven times more important than the words you use. And you know, and she says the research is there. So you can put a quantum number on it, you know, you can, you can say, five to seven times more powerful. And, you know, I, I believe that in spades, which is another another issue where there are quantitative numbers is in this, the, I'd always heard the number seven to eight. And again, I trust the sources. Positive commentary is 30 times more powerful than negative commentary.

Marcus Kirsch: 50:52

Yeah. Similar things about 1015 years ago, where was it? An 85% of communication is actually body language. It's not wearable, it's that part. Yes, significantly more impactful. And I

Tom Peters: 51:05

think we can do eyeball body language stuff in work from home, maybe I I am deeply concerned about it.

Troy Norcross: 51:16

Is it true that the old days when they talked about on telephones, so long before zoom or anything else like this? And they said, if you're on the phone, smile while you're on the phone, because your smile will come through? I mean, it's not the words, but if you're physically smiling, the tonality comes through, and people can tell a difference.

Tom Peters: 51:36

Absolutely. Yeah, that's, that's, I don't want to acknowledge that I agree with a single word that has ever come out of Tony Robbins, his mouth. But what that did buy was some line that said before you walk into an office or what have you stand in front of a mirror and smile for 30 seconds. And you know, that apparently, you can demonstrate that that must kill it tore transformation actually does neuro bio stuff in your brain and you know, we're doing all the neuro research now, which shows what lights up when you do this, that and the other. But that makes you know, that makes perfect sense to me. I, I, I bought a book years ago that was called One minute, one minute meditation. Excuse me, I have got a cough that is five months old, came from the summer, it doesn't mean that I'm sick. So you know, I'm always nervous when I'm coughing that part out,

Unknown: 52:37

you can cut that out.

Tom Peters: 52:41

Yeah. But anyway, whatever. Yes. I, I'm actually, he said, with total confidence, I know it's gonna fail. I'm actually working with a good business school dean now. And we are trying to see if we can use this as a moment to put the people courses ahead of the finance courses and use this magical moment as maybe an opportunity for a little of MBA reformation.

Marcus Kirsch: 53:15

That sounds great, because I think I read somewhere you're waiting to be called out or asked to put a proper MBA project programme together? For some good,

Tom Peters: 53:27

a lot of baloney that there are great people and MBA programmes. There's no, of course, I'm not quite the jerk that I appear to be.

Marcus Kirsch: 53:35

But if I take no, you know, it's good that someone pushes these things out a bit harder, because other ones no one seems to be listening. So but if I take a couple of things there together and adding some of our own experience, like, you know, that seems to be this thing, where maybe today more than ever, as an organisation, you really need to connect to reality, right? And current reality means you connect to people, that means the customers or whatever you offer, to understand what they actually want to have a purpose as an organisation and internally, for the people who make your organisation to understand better to enhance and produce better processes internally so that people are actually can work the best way they can. Why not closer to reality as an organisation to actually create impact?

Tom Peters: 54:24

I haven't got a clue, I think. No, I mean, I, I'm like you. I want it to be a magical moment. And God knows I want it to be over. You know, there's a lot of suggestion that we're going to be dealing with this for a year or so. And I hate to use the word that will help but relative to the transformation, you would have to be pretty Deaf done. going blind not to have it, change you, and you will be surrounded by people who become ill, you may lose a loved one. And you hope that's a transformational thing. And you hope since you are an intelligent person, that you will bring that into your working life. You know, I'm a little angry at my self right now. And that is because when I look back, and I'm talking about specific words, in the English language, I have not used I've used the people stuff that haven't used the word community enough. And I'm gonna I'm becoming a nutcase. And I want to be more and more of a nutcase on two dimensions, first of all, an organisation is a community. And if you think about it, as a community, you won't think about it quite so much as an organisation chart. And secondly, relative to your point, particularly about customers, is I am, I am, I've stopped using the word customers, and I now use the word customers and community as a small business person with not tiny, I mean, that that's probably important too. But let's call it that 50 or 100. Person organisation, I'm a community member, I'm important to the community, I owe things to the community. And, you know, I'm, I'm just as I said, I'm, and this has come out of all this, I'm a nut case about that word. And you know, with any luck, it'll stay that way about what's what will, will there be a transformation or not, I really don't have a clue. I am a born pessimist, which surprises some people. And, as are you guys, in probably a lot of people, I am reading a lot and there is incredible confusion in the data. But if the economic situation gets as bad as it could get, I don't know what the hell is gonna happen socially, politically, or otherwise. You know, there was a medium article a few days ago that went around and got a bit of fuss, said charmingly, it's all over for the UK in the United States, you know, other people may pull out of this thing, but not the Brits and the Americans. Unfortunately, the argument was not entirely specious. You know, we do have the problem with the two blonde guys who are running our countries, but that's for you know, that's for another day's effort. coupon guys with really bad hair days every day. I, I haven't got any magic. And as great as you all are, neither do you. But we can hope we can do our professional best to. And you probably have had more practical experience. In the last 90 days that I have. There are people that are reverse Asian, and there are people who haven't risen to the occasion. You know, there are people who are pushing their w f. h teams for productivity, productivity, productivity, and acting as if life is exactly the same as it was except you just don't happen to be in the office. But there's got to be some transformation. But you know, it's not going to be as much as I want and is from judging from our last few minutes together as you guys want. But once again, we're not going to change everybody, and relative to what the three of us are doing together right now or with our lives. Maybe we can help a few people and catch a few people who are on the cusp. I don't consider that. As a loss I consider is a win I really do by the Israeli thing is seeming seeming, assuming it's true that if you can, if you can help help a small number of people have a slightly different view of the way they work in the world. You know, God has given you a great gift in that regard. And I'm not a realist. This person, so I guess it's a lowercase g God.

Troy Norcross: 1:00:04

I've got two things. I want to say one, actually, one thing I want to say on one question, you were talking about the word community. And when I talk about how we got here, and it used to be that capitalism, pre 1970, was balanced across all the different stakeholders, which were shareholders, customers, employees, the community, ie taxes and the environment. And then it got very unbalanced to where only the shareholders

Tom Peters: 1:00:33

mattered.

Troy Norcross: 1:00:34

And trying to find a way back to a more balanced version of capitalism is something that I think that we've got an opportunity to do on the environment on the community on the customers on the employees, without totally shafting the shareholders in the process. And that kind of spins me into my question, which is, in the UK, British Airways, the flag carrier has decided that out of 42,000, employees, they're going to lay off 12,000, they don't see airfare or air travel, returning for the next 18 to 24 months. I know a number of VA employees, one of which is my partner. And they all say the same thing. You know, what redundancies are going to happen, people are going to lose their jobs, we get it. But at the same time, VA is trying to redo the contract, to apply worse working conditions and lower salaries, and capitalise on this pandemic, as a way to make their main product, which is indeed the customer service given by the cabin crew given by the flight crew given by the people who work the desks in the baggage handlers and taking advantage of them when they shouldn't. If you're the CEO of British Airways, how do you go into a boardroom? And say, no, we're not going to screw the employees, we're going to double down and we're going to take good care of the people that we still need. How do you say that in a boardroom?

Tom Peters: 1:02:01

You have to have boss? That's ridiculous. I you probably remember a few minutes ago, I talked about the company where I introduced the Susan Cain stuff. And I remember talking to the CEO, and this was it was electronic components. And I think it was about a $3 billion company. And he said, when I talk to my board members, I tell them, that if they want a 50% increase in profits in the next 18 months, I know exactly how to give it to him. He said unfortunately for them, they'll have to get rid of me because I'm not going to do it. And, you know, I worked for McKinsey for years. And it has gotten a bad rap in the last couple of years for unfortunately, very good reasons. But the thing that nauseated me most was a guy I don't remember his name, but he headed one of the pharmaceutical companies and he really misbehave. But there was a practice a consulting practice at McKinsey that was informally called by and cut you by a firm, you get rid of 30% of its employees, and you're guaranteed to have 36 months of increased profitability before the whole damn thing implodes. And you know, that literally, literally makes me nauseated. I will say, I really want to turn you guys on to the people who run the Drucker Institute down in over in Claremont in in the LA area. And, you know, they they really are going after this shareholder value maximisation stuff, but there is extraordinary research done by McKinsey that says the long term investments pay off in dollar numbers that are an effing believable, you just don't get it the first year. And I know you know this. We both know neither, you know, I was born many more yesterday's before. But we both know having not born yesterday, that if that CEO does have the guts and does have the nerve and is willing to retire and is willing to give up his frigging stock options, and is willing to not take his $30 million home. He can do it or she can do it. And it you know, and I'm trying to be totally focused on women but being an old boy, it takes balls it takes guts it takes you know, I don't get it. I just don't get why having 75 million dollars in the bank is not enough for you and you need another 25 from your stock options. I don't understand these people as human beings, I just never want. I said to somebody, and you know, jamie diamond partially because he's probably physically attractive and has a nice smile, I would love to be in a meeting and be introduced to jamie diamond and have the pleasure of being unwilling to shake his hand. He he had $40 billion in fines for screwing up during that crisis in 2007. And we still treat him like an adult. I don't know what you know, the old too big to jail. I don't know whether you want to be in jail or not. But no living human being should ever have to have COVID or no COVID to have your hand infected by his hand. I did once achieved my dream in that regard. It was when I was teaching at Stanford, and they had an advisory board meeting. And Robert McNamara was on the advisory board. And I had spent two years in Vietnam. And so I had the great privilege of being introduced to him and not shaking his hand. You know, you don't you don't get many opportunities, like serve no practice. No practical purpose at all. But

Unknown: 1:06:21

I, oh,

Marcus Kirsch: 1:06:24

I'm terribly sorry, we get you to this dark, dark place. While you were I'm sorry

Tom Peters: 1:06:32

about why the CEO doesn't have the nerve, the blood. Look,

Marcus Kirsch: 1:06:36

I just had I just said earlier this week, a story that I didn't know either. And that comes back from history is not a personal one. But you know, I mean, I've been I think we've all been tormented and pummelling and didn't quite understand why certain things are the way they are. But so I just heard a story about back in Henry Ford, were actually back when he introduced, I think this killing whatever factory thing he did, which at the time was a great cutting solution to things and to entail mass production. But I think what you did at some point, people say, what someone told me earlier this week was that he changed the what at the time was a 12, to 16 hour, day, to an eight hour day, and doubled worker's salary. And everyone called him absolutely crazy. And then, months later, the productivity went through the roof. So he proved everybody wrong. Now, there was even a longer time ago than we've been on this earth. And, you know, now we're seemingly slow rolling back that I mean, you know, asked me, I've been spending 14 hour days on by month, month, month over month on projects. And I've seen organisations asking more and more hours, often unpaid from people in order to enhance productivity by basically just adding more unpaid hours, and it's all this crazy factory setting on Is that all you have, you know, like, a good 100 years ago or more, someone said that Actually, no, that's not, that's not a great idea to grind people down. Let's give them some extra time to think. And then you might actually get innovation or at least some considerable, you know, they can actually make some informed decisions, because they have the time to think about it, by the way, so they're not just going to be factory drones anymore. So I just looked at that earlier this week. I'm like, Jesus, this is insane. Right? Have we learned anything? So we talked a lot about things where, you know, similar organisational, learning anything, but so I'm aware of time, so we need to wrap this up very soon. So is there is there a single thought how we can get get a better narrative out? Because it seems to be it's a lot about communication, just like any change and transformation project I've ever been in. It's 50% success is about communicating this right, talking to people, helping people that everyone understands what actually is going on and what we want to do. Do we have hope for that?

Tom Peters: 1:09:12

Well, I think I think there's some hope I do want to reinforce one thing that you said. Doug Froman, who was an Intel guy, and one of the godfathers of Israeli high tech industry wrote a wonderful book called leadership the hard way. And one of his first things is he said the average leader should have 50% unscheduled time. And he said, kind of what you just said, he said, leaders are paid to think and and not to react. But the only problem I have and I know I know we're not going to disagree with about this is it goes back to body language, and so on. Communication, per se. I'm not sure. Fierce listening. Yes, you know that there was a wonderful one liner? Well, I've heard a couple of versions of it. But the one I remember was Churchill's mother, who was an American, said, I went to a dinner. And when you talk to Mr. Gladstone at the end of the conversation, you knew that he was the smartest person in the world. When I turn to my left and talk to Mr. Disraeli, at the end of the conversation, you thought you were the smartest person in the world. And yeah, I've heard other I've heard other other commentary like that. I mean, it's with to PMS, it makes it, you know, a little a little bit more powerful, but I watched it, I was not involved with the administration. So I'm not showing off. Bill Clinton was like that. Clinton, Clinton, and I've heard Junior people say, and I did sit next to me that dinner one time, he absolutely makes you feel as you're the only human being on Earth, you have no idea that you're talking about a person who had 7000 nuclear weapons, you know, at his command, he just, he makes you feel good. So and I don't want to even use words like genuine communication. I mean, we have to remember, first of all that communication is is is two ways. And

Unknown: 1:11:44

I,

Tom Peters: 1:11:47

I've never even heard of a good training course, in listening. But there's no reason why there shouldn't be one. And when I was writing something about listening, a couple of years ago, I just went to Amazon, and found 25 books, and I'm sure most of them are great. But on the topic of listening, you can break it down, like neurosurgery. And you can probably not transform yourself, but you can get a little bit better. And back to the other topic, it is clear neuro biologically neurobiologically that women are better listeners than men. There's a wonderful little experiment, it was in a book, it was reported in a book called The female brain. And by day, three, after birth, the female baby is making three times more eye contact with her fellow human beings than the male is. And it is that Darwinian community thing I I believe it is, I totally agree with you with I don't I just I don't know how to answer the question. You've got to care. It's the, you know, my guy who said he wanted his tombstone to say he cared, I've got to feel something about you. As my fellow human being, I think I can communicate with negative vibes as well as I can with positive vibes. And so that's why I'm not willing to buy the word communication, per se. I've got to have a couple of adjectives around. I've got a I got my what my wife is always on my case, if we're ever in a cab or an Uber, because I like to talk to taxi drivers. And she said to me one time, and this was we were in Washington, DC, she said, Why do you always like to talk taxi drivers? And I said, Susan, because they're much more interesting than you and I are, you know, you get to Washington, DC and half the taxi driver. They've gone through starvation. They've gone through revolution, they probably had a second cousin who was beheaded three blocks away from home. So much more about life than you and I do and, and that's not a throwaway line. You know, it really is the case. I mean, the other thing I'd said about that is if you have more than a 30 minute cab ride and you do not know the names of the cab drivers children and what years they are in school, I don't want to know you as a human being. I had a wonderful thing happened happened in one that was doing something and a guy was driving me around. I was I felt honoured because he also drove Mick Jagger, but he was driving me around and he looked at me at one point he said, You know there are two kinds of people who sit in the backseat of this car. And I said, Okay, he said there are people who remember their roots. And there are people who think they deserve to be there. And, you know, I thought that most of life was explained with with that single sentence, but, you know, give me the one who remembers their roots. And I think the communication will be different than from the one who thinks that he or she ought to be sitting in the backseat. And I don't know how to bring about change in that. Your younger

Marcus Kirsch: 1:15:34

people, as the people have already sitting there thinking they have to, they deserve to be driven around don't even know where they're driving to. They just say like, oh, get me home. I don't know. I don't know why. You know. I think it's a great final statement to bring us back to the essence of what we're talking about. Get back to humanity, like look at who people are, what they want, who we are. That's gonna save you. So thank you so, so much, Troy.

Troy Norcross: 1:16:02

And thanks very much for being on the wicked podcast. We will be in touch with you. I'm gonna go and stop the recording now. You've been listening to the wicked podcast with CO hosts Marcus Kirsch and me Troy Norcross, please

Marcus Kirsch: 1:16:15

subscribe on podomatic iTunes or Spotify. You can find all relevant links in the show notes. Please tell us your thoughts in the comment section and let us know about any books for future episodes.

Troy Norcross: 1:16:28

You can also get in touch with us directly on Twitter on at wicked n beyond or at Troy underscore Norcross also learn more about the wicked company book and the wicked company project at wicked company calm