The Challenge: To Create More Value in All Negotiations

							“I am often asked …
  “I am often asked by
would-be entrepreneurs
seeking escape from life
 within huge corporate
  structures, ‘How do I
 build a small firm for
  myself?’ The answer
   seems obvious …
 “I am often asked by would-be entrepreneurs seeking escape from
life within huge corporate structures, ‘How do I build a small firm for



        Buy a
   myself?’ The answer seems obvious:



 very large
 one and just
wait.”                       —Paul Ormerod, Why Most Things Fail:
                Evolution, Extinction and Economics
Excellence.
  Always.
Gartner Group/PPM & IT Governance Summit
    Tom Peters/San Diego/22 June 2011
         (Slides @ tompeters.com)
   NOTE:      To appreciate
this presentation [and ensure
 that it is not a mess], you need
        Microsoft fonts:
 “Showcard Gothic,”
   “Ravie,” “Chiller”
    and “Verdana”
    “Breakthrough” 82*


  People!
Execution!
Excellence!
  *In Search of Excellence
Hard Is Soft
Soft Is Hard
   The Pursuit of … Balance

 Hard Is Soft (Plans,
    Systems, #s)
 Soft Is Hard (people,
 Culture, customers,*
values, relationships)
        * “sales” > “marketing”
           “service” > “sales”
What Works.
What Doesn’t.
             No.
       “Optimization”
      “Centralization”
“We’ve got to get this right.”
   “Let’s get organized.”
   “Perfectly compatible”
         “Synergy”
     “Benchmarking”
      “Best practices”
 “Low standard deviation”
            “Big”
           Yes.
          “Satisfice”
    “Requisite variety”
“RADICAL decentralization”
 “High standard deviation”
         “Resilience”
“Focus”/“Niche”/“Mid-size”
 “Let’s get DIS-organized.”
           Yes.
          “Satisfice”
    “Requisite variety”
“RADICAL decentralization”
 “High standard deviation”
         “Resilience”
“Focus”/“Niche”/“Mid-size”
 “Let’s get DIS-organized.”
    “Mr. Foster and his McKinsey colleagues
collected detailed performance data stretching

 back   40 years for 1,000     U.S. companies.



They found that       none
the long-term survivors managed to
                                            of

outperform the market. Worse, the
 longer companies had been in the
   database, the worse they did.”
                —Financial Times
   You don’t
Dick Kovacevich:




 get better
   by being
 bigger. You
“Data drawn from the real world
 attest to a fact that is beyond
          Everything
our control:
  in existence tends
   to deteriorate.”
    —Norberto Odebrecht, Education Through Work
             Public Enemy #1: I.C.D.
            Immutable Centralist Drift

    “Once a system grows sufficiently complex and
 centralized, it doesn’t matter how badly our best and
  brightest foul things up. Every crisis increases their
 authority, because they seem to be the only ones who
                                But
  understand the system well enough to fix it.
their fixes tend to make the system
even more complex and centralized,
  and more vulnerable to the next
   national-security surprise, the
   next natural disaster, the next
     economic crisis.”             —Ross Douthat/NYTimes
   #4 Japan
    #3 USA
   #2 China

#1 Germany
 MittELstand*
*“agile creatures darting between the
 legs of the multinational monsters"
“Be the best.
 It’s the only
market that’s
not crowded.”
 From: Retail Superstars: Inside the 25 Best
Independent Stores in America, George Whalin
Jungle Jim’s International Market, Fairfield, Ohio: “An
adventure in   ‘shoppertainment,’          as Jungle Jim’s
                                           1,600
call it, begins in the parking lot and goes on to
cheeses and, yes, 1,400 varieties of hot
sauce —not to mention 12,000 wines priced
from $8 to $8,000 a bottle; all this is brought to
you by 4,000 vendors. Customers come from every
corner of the globe.”

Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland, Frankenmuth,
Michigan, pop 5,000:  98,000-square-foot “shop”
features the likes of 6,000 Christmas
ornaments, 50,000 trims, and anything else you
can name if it pertains to Christmas.

Source: George Whalin, Retail Superstars
    “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
                                       Pruning hard is a
      putting them into the the rose’s ‘core business.’
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.” —Arie De Geus, The Living Company
 “The secret of fast
    progress is
inefficiency, fast
  and furious and
numerous failures.”
       —Kevin Kelly
 “Never forget
the all-important
  … last 98%.”
Conrad Hilton …
Conrad Hilton, at a gala celebrating his
 career, was called to the podium and

asked,“What were the
    most important
lessons you learned
   in your long and
     distinguished
  career?” His answer …
  “remember
  to tuck the
shower curtain
   inside the
   bathtub.”
“Execution         is
  strategy.”
     —Fred Malek
“Costco figured out the
big, simple things and
executed with total
   fanaticism.”
     —Charles Munger, Berkshire Hathaway
“When assessing candidates, the first thing I looked for was
                             Does she talk
energy and enthusiasm for execution.
about the thrill of getting things done,
 the obstacles overcome, the role her
 people played —or does she keep wandering back
                       to strategy or philosophy?”

 “I saw that leaders placed too much
emphasis on what some call high-level
   strategy, on intellectualizing and
  philosophizing, and not enough on
implementation. People would agree on a project or
         initiative, and then nothing would come of it.”

 Source: Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan/Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
“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

                     [Yet] I
   thousands of people is very, very hard.

came to see in my time at IBM
that culture isn’t just one
aspect of the game                     —it is
the game.”  Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance
                                             —Lou Gerstner,
  #1.
Period.
XFX = #1*
  *Cross-Functional eXcellence
 Never
waste a
lunch!*
 *The “sacred 220 at bats”
“Personal relationships
are the fertile soil from
which all advancement,
     all success, all
  achievement in real
    life grow.” —Ben Stein
    “Allied commands depend on
          mutual confidence
        and this confidence is
           gained, above all
through the    development
         of friendships.”
     —General D.D. Eisenhower, Armchair General*

          *“Perhaps his most outstanding ability [at West Point]
                  he made friends and earned
  was the ease with which

  the trust of fellow cadets who came from
widely varied backgrounds; it was a quality that would pay
          great dividends during his future coalition command.”
R.O.I.R.* >
  R.O.I.
 *Return On Investment In Relationships
               “XFX     Social              Accelerators.”
1. EVERYONE’s [more or less] JOB #1: Make friends in other functions!
(Purposefully. Consistently. Measurably.)
2. “Do lunch” with people in other functions!! Frequently!! (Minimum
10% to 25% for everyone? Measured.)
3. Ask peers in other functions for references so you can become
conversant in their world. (It’s one helluva sign of ... GIVE-A-DAMN-
ism.)
4. Invite counterparts in other functions to your team meetings.
Religiously. Ask them to present “cool stuff” from “their world” to your
group. (B-I-G deal; useful and respectful.)
5. PROACTIVELY SEEK EXAMPLES OF “TINY” ACTS OF “XFX” TO
ACKNOWLEDGE—PRIVATELY AND PUBLICALLY. (Bosses: ONCE A DAY
… make a short call or visit or send an email of “Thanks” for some sort
of XFX gesture by your folks and some other function’s folks.)
6. Present counterparts in other functions awards for service to your
group. Tiny awards at least weekly; and an “Annual All-Star Supporters
[from other groups] Banquet” modeled after superstar salesperson
banquets.
7. Discuss—A SEPARATE AGENDA ITEM—good and problematic acts of
cross-functional co-operation at every Team Meeting.
  “His habit was to let the
locals get primary credit—
unheard of! Sometimes he
    disappeared into the
woodwork entirely. He had
 the whole __PD working
   their butts off for him,
 including the [temperamental]
Chief.” —close colleague of senior federal law
              enforcement officer
             Women’s Negotiating Strengths
*Ability to put themselves in their
 counterparties’ shoes
*Comprehensive, attentive and detailed
 communication style
*Empathy that facilitates trust-building
*Curious and attentive listening
*Less competitive attitude
*Strong sense of fairness and ability to persuade
*Proactive risk manager
*Collaborative decision-making

Source: Horacio Falcao, cover story, World Business, “Say It Like a
Woman: Why the 21st-century negotiator will need the female touch”
“AS LEADERS,
  WOMEN
RULE*:                         New Studies find that
      female managers outshine their male
     counterparts in almost every measure”
            TITLE/ Special Report/ BusinessWeek

*Projected to be   80% middle managers by approx 2020
Loser:   “He’s such a
          suck-up!”
Winner:   “He’s such a
           suck-down.”
“I got to know his
    secretaries. They
[Icahn’s]

    are always the keepers of
           everything.”
               —Dick Parsons, then CEO Time Warner,
            on dealing with an Icahn threat to his company




“Parsons is not a visionary. He
is, instead, a master in the art
        of relationship.”
                 —Bloomberg Businessweek (03.11)
     “I believe that it is more
   important for a leader to be
    trained in psychiatry than
  cybernetics. The head of a big
company recently said to me, ‘I
am no longer a Chairman. I have
   had to become a psychiatric
   nurse.’ Today’s executive is
 under pressure unknown to the
     last generation.” —David Ogilvy
    “Don’t ever use that word


 ‘synergy.’ It’s a                  hideous
word. The only thing that works
 is natural law. Given enough
time, natural relationships will
     develop between our
   businesses.” —Barry Diller, responding to a
      student question, address at the Harvard Business School
  (from Marshall Goldsmith, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
  #1.
Period.
“The doctor
 interrupts
   after …*
*Source: Jerome Groopman, How Doctors Think
18 seconds
[An obsession with] Listening is ... the ultimate mark


                                                   of    Respect           .
Listening   is   ...   the heart and soul of Engagement.
Listening   is   ...   the heart and soul of Kindness.
Listening   is   ...   the heart and soul of Thoughtfulness.
Listening   is   ...   the basis for true Collaboration.
Listening   is   ...   the basis for true Partnership.
Listening   is   ...   a Team Sport.
Listening   is   ...   a Developable Individual Skill.* (*Though women
                       are far better at it than men.)
Listening   is   ...   the basis for Community.
Listening   is   ...   the bedrock of Joint Ventures that work.
Listening   is   ...   the bedrock of Joint Ventures that grow.
Listening   is   ...   the core of effective Cross-functional
                       Communication* (*Which is in turn Attribute #1 of
                       organizational effectiveness.)

[cont.]
             Could It Be This Simple?

   In-effective leaders …

                   TALK.
       Effective leaders …

             LISTEN.
   Inspiration: Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter ,
Liz Wiseman [Some “hard” evidence that effective leaders, in terms of % of
elapsed meeting time, talk less than half as much as less effective leaders.]
"When I was in medical school, I
 spent hundreds of hours looking
into a microscope—a skill I never
 needed to know or ever use. Yet
 I didn't have a single class that
   taught me communication or
  teamwork skills—something I
  need every day I walk into the
 hospital.” —Peter Pronovost, Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals
  Is there a full-bore
   training course in

               100%
 "Listening" for
     of employees, CEO
  to temps? If not, There
[damn well] ought to be.
#7: K = R = P
“Courtesies of a small and
trivial character are the
    ones which strike
 deepest in the grateful
and appreciating heart.”
              —Henry Clay,
     American Statesman (1777-1852)
 "Let's not forget that small
   emotions are the great
 captains of our lives."—Van Gogh
 “When dealing with people,
remember you are not dealing
  with creatures of logic, but
  with creatures of emotion,
   creatures bristling with
 prejudice and motivated by
  pride and vanity.” —Dale Carnegie
K = R = P*
  *Kindness =   Repeat Business = Profit
                            139,380 former
            Press Ganey Assoc:
              patients from 225 hospitals:




none                               of THE top 15 factors

 determining Patient Satisfaction
referred to patient’s health outcome.

   Instead: directly related to Staff
  Interaction; directly correlated with
     Employee Satisfaction
Source: Putting Patients First, Susan Frampton, Laura Gilpin, Patrick Charmel
“I regard apologizing as the
   most magical, healing,
 restorative gesture human
 beings can make. It is the
centerpiece of my work with
executives who want to get
  better.” —Marshall Goldsmith, What Got You
 Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become
                  Even More Successful.
 With a new and forthcoming policy on
apologies … Toro, the lawn mower folks,
 reduced the average cost of settling a
        $115,000 in 1991 to
 claim from
 $35,000 in 2008 … and the
  company hasn’t been
    to trial in the last
         15 years!
 Relationships          (of all varieties):
                          THERE
       ONCE WAS A TIME WHEN A

  THREE-MINUTE
  PHONE CALL WOULD
  HAVE AVOIDED SETTING OFF THE
DOWNWARD SPIRAL THAT RESULTED
    IN A COMPLETE RUPTURE.*
*divorce, loss of a BILLION $$$ aircraft sale, etc., etc.
Why Must I …
  “You have to
   treat your
 employees like
customers.”  upon being asked his “secret to success”
                                                       —Herb Kelleher,



     Source: Joe Nocera, NYT, “Parting Words of an Airline Pioneer,”
on the occasion of Herb Kelleher’s retirement after 37 years at Southwest
     Airlines (SWA’s pilots union took out a full-page ad in USA Today
  thanking HK for all he had done) ; across the way in Dallas, American
            Airlines’ pilots were picketing AA’s Annual Meeting)
Brand =
Talent.
          Our Mission
To develop and manage talent;
     to apply that talent,
    throughout the world,
   for the benefit of clients;
    to do so in partnership;
     to do so with profit.
               WPP
            Oath of Office: Managers/Servant Leaders
Our goal is to serve our customers brilliantly and profitably over
 the long haul.
Serving our customers brilliantly and profitably over the long
 haul is a product of brilliantly serving, over the long haul, the
 people who serve the customer.
Hence, our job as leaders—the alpha and the omega and
 everything in between—is abetting the sustained growth and
 success and engagement and enthusiasm and commitment to
 Excellence of those, one at a time, who directly or indirectly
 serve the ultimate customer.
We—leaders of every stripe—are in the “Human Growth and
 Development and Success and Aspiration to Excellence
 business.”
“We” [leaders] only grow when “they” [each and every one of our colleagues] are
 growing.
“We” [leaders] only succeed when “they” [each and every one of our colleagues]
 are succeeding.
“We” [leaders] only energetically march toward Excellence when
 “they” [each and every one of our colleagues] are energetically marching
 toward Excellence.
Period.
“The leaders of Great Groups …
 love talent … and know
where to find it. They … revel
  in … the talent of
others.”             —Warren Bennis & Patricia Ward Biederman, Organizing Genius




                “Connoisseur
PARC’s Bob Taylor:

             of Talent”
        From
Les Wexner:
 sweaters to
   people!
                     The Memories That Matter

The people you developed who went on to
 stellar accomplishments inside or outside
 the company.
The (no more than) two or three people you developed who went on to
 create stellar institutions of their own.
The longshots (people with “a certain something”) you bet on who
 surprised themselves—and your peers.
The people of all stripes who 2/5/10/20 years
 later say “You made a difference in my life,”
  “Your belief in me changed everything.”
The sort of/character of people you hired in general. (And the bad
  apples you chucked out despite some stellar traits.)
A handful of projects (a half dozen at most) you doggedly pursued that
  still make you smile and which fundamentally changed the way
  things are done inside or outside the company/industry.
The supercharged camaraderie of a handful of Great Teams aiming to
  “change the world.”
Hang Time!
  “You will become
like the five people
you associate with
the most—this can
be either a blessing
  or a curse.”—Billy Cox
           We
The “Hang Out Axiom I”:

 are What We
Eat/We Are the
   company
    we keep
Measure/Manage: Portfolio “Strangeness”/Quality
                  Staff
              Consultants
                Vendors
 Out-sourcing Partners (#, Quality, Diversity)
      Innovation Alliance Partners
               Customers
  Competitors (who we “benchmark” against)
          Strategic Initiatives
  Product Portfolio (Line extension v. Leap)
             IS/IT Projects
              HQ Location
              Lunch Mates
               Language
                 Board
                  Etc.
     The “We are what we eat”/
  “We are who we hang out with”
    Axiom: At its core, every (!!!)
 relationship-partnership decision
(employee, vendor, customer, etc,
etc) is a strategic decision about:


   “Innovate,
  ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ ”
“Diverse groups of problem solvers—groups
  of people with diverse tools—consistently
  outperformed groups of the best and the
   brightest. If I formed two groups, one
  random (and therefore diverse) and one
consisting of the best individual performers,
 the first group almost always did better. …

Diversity trumped
ability.”                  —Scott Page, The Difference:
   How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups,
             Firms, Schools, and Societies
Once a month on, say, a Friday, invite
 somebody intriguing, in any field,
   to have lunch with your gang.


     “Freak
   Call it:



   Fridays”
   “Companies have
 defined so much ‘best
 practice’ that they are
   now more or less
identical.”—Jesper Kunde, Unique Now ... or Never
 “The short road
  to ruin is to
  emulate the
 methods of your
adversary.”— Winston Churchill
WTTMSW.
       READY.
        FIRE!
        AIM.
H. Ross Perot (vs “Aim! Aim! Aim!” /EDS vs GM/1985)
   “We made mistakes, of course. Most of them were
omissions we didn’t think of when we initially wrote the
 software. We fixed them by doing it over and over, again
and again. We do the same today. While our competitors
are still sucking their thumbs trying to make the design


perfect, we’re already on prototype* version    #5.   By
the time our rivals are ready with wires and screws, we


 are on version   #10. It gets back to
 planning versus acting: We act
 from day one; others plan how
     to plan—for months.”
               —Bloomberg by Bloomberg
         *C.f. INTUIT (Months to week w/customers)
 “Burt Rutan wasn’t a fighter jock; he was an engineer who
had been asked to figure out why the F-4 Phantom was flying
pilots into the ground in Vietnam. While his fellow engineers
   attacked such tasks with calculators, Rutan insisted on
  considering the problem in the air. A near-fatal flight not
 only led to a critical F-4 modification, it also confirmed for
  Rutan a notion he had held ever since he had built model
              The way to make a
   airplanes as a child.

    better aircraft wasn’t to sit
around perfecting a design, it was
to get something up in the air and
 see what happens, then try to fix
      whatever goes wrong.”
—Eric Abrahamson & David Freedman, Chapter 8, “Messy Leadership,”
       from A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder
              “Experiment
               fearlessly”
     Source: BusinessWeek, “Type A Organization Strategies: How to Hit a Moving Target”—   Tactic #1




“relentless trial
   and error”
*C * Source: Wall Street Journal, cornerstone of effective approach to “rebalancing” company
    portfolios in the face of changing and uncertain global economic conditions (11.08.10)
      Culture of Prototyping

“Effective prototyping may
       the most
       be
    valuable core
    competence an
innovative organization can
  hope to have.” —Michael Schrage
  “Fail.
Forward.
  Fast.”
 High Tech CEO, Pennsylvania
      1/45
Whoever
Tries
The
Most
Stuff
Wins
 K.I.S.S.
(Damn It!)
“Design is everything.
Everything is design.”

 The Power of Design: A Force for Transforming
         Everything, Richard Farson
Charles Handy: “One bank is currently claiming to …


 ‘leverage its global footprint
 to provide effective financial
solutions for its customers by
    providing a gateway to
      diverse markets.’”
 “I assume that it is just
saying that it is there to …
“I assume that it is just saying that it

     ‘help its
 is there to …


 customers
wherever they
 are’.”              —Charles Handy
90K in U.S.A. ICUs on any given day;
178 discrete steps/day/patient in ICU.



50%     in “serious complication”
                                      ICU stays result



   Source: Atul Gawande, “The Checklist” (New Yorker, 1210.07)
**Dr. Peter Pronovost, Johns Hopkins

**   Checklist                                   /dealing with
   line infections
**1/3rd lines, at least one procedural error
  when he started checklist program
**Nurses/permission-requirement to stop
  procedure if doc, other not following checklist
  (BIG DEAL)
**In 1 year, ICU’s 10-day line-infection rate:


  11% to …            0%
Source: Atul Gawande, “The Checklist” (New Yorker, 1210.07)
Appropriate systems’ standards:



  Beauty.
   Grace.
  Clarity.
Simplicity.
Architect Rem Koolhaas on his drive for

        “Often
  clarity-simplicity:


  my job is to
 undo things.”
             Source: New Yorker
"I've never seen a job
done by a team of five
hundred that couldn't
 be done better by a
 team of fifty.” —Gordon Bell
   “The art of war does not
     require complicated
 maneuvers; the simplest are
the best and common sense is
fundamental. From which one
    might wonder how it is
                     it
 generals make blunders;
 is because they try to
    be clever.”   —Napoleon