Video - Robert Craven interviews Tom Peters
In this GYDA Member Hub Talks – Robert interviews the awesome Tom Peters. Tom is one of the world’s most respected Management Gurus. He’s an Author, Business Expert, Thought Leader, Speaker.
Tom is co-author of In Search of Excellence—the book that changed the way the world does business and often tagged as the best business book ever. Seventeen books and thirty-five years later, he is still at the forefront of the “management guru industry” he single-handedly invented.
What’s new? A lot.
As CNN said, “While most business gurus milk the same mantra for all it’s worth, the one-man brand called Tom Peters is still reinventing himself.”
His most recent effort is The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last (Vintage, 2018). Tom’s bedrock belief: “Execution is strategy—it’s all about the people and the doing, not the talking and the theory.”
In November 2017, Tom received the Thinkers50 Lifetime Achievement Award. (Effectively, All of Tom’s written and speech material covering the last 15+ years is available— free to download—at tompeters.com and excellencenow.com.)
Interview Quotes
During the COVID-19 crisis ‘Take care of your people first!’
‘Choose your parents!’
‘At the age of 50, you have 50% of your adult life still ahead of you.’
Robert and Tom discuss:
The COVID-19 crisis: how it will define your career as a digital agency leader and how it will define our lifetime
Being generous in times of struggle
How to be a great leader – hire nice people, technical is over rated
Susan Cain – Quiet
Finance - You don’t need spreadsheets!
You don’t need a fat bank account to survive in these times
Now is the time to grow and evolve – now is the time to create something different – come out of these period with something amazing – wild ass differentiation
You must have a high proportion of female employees – for better business – be diverse
Will the world be different when we come out of the COVID-19 crisis? Working from home and improvements in technology. Business occupancy rates will go through the floor.
Shoshanna Zuboff – the exploitation of data – the control that the big data companies have
Philanthropy, Charity, Environment
The core skills that we need to develop coming out of this – theatre, music, philosophy, art, liberal arts – these skills will develop amazing products that make a difference
Apple – isn’t just about good design – create something that’s remarkable
Business isn’t just about growth or breakthrough – do great things
Tom’s words of wisdom:
>50 staff – dig into your net worth and carry your people
5 person agency – it hurts to let people go
Do the best work you’ve ever done
Write your eulogy – what do you want to be known for?
Transcription:
Robert Craven 00:07
Hello, and welcome. I'm delighted today to have Tom Peters as our guest. Tom needs no introduction whatsoever. However, a couple of words about Tom, just so that we know mind ourselves we as Bo Burlingham, who I think is a fantastic, absolutely fantastic writer says Tom Peters is the Red Bull of management thinkers. And Nancy Austin says a human exclamation point which is actually upside down who, who no longer needs his last name that is Tom, author of in search of excellent, most widely read and widely held library books in the US. The list goes on the top three business books of the century ever, ever, ever. Welcome big, big welcome to Tom Peters. Hello, Tom.
Tom Peters 00:52
How are you. I love fancy thinking about an extra exclamation mark that doesn't need a name that that's, you know, it's like, I know that it's the same thing in the UK. But there's a certain number of people whose last name you don't need. Oprah or when Michael Jordan was playing basketball, Michael. Yeah. And I guess John wouldn't be John Lennon. Plus everybody is paying attention to it. Yeah, what was that wonderful movie, the wonderful movie where there was some big planetary memory lapse, and a guy thought he was the Beatles. Well, what am I thinking of?
Robert Craven 01:33
You remember the name? It wasn't called yesterday. It was on recently?
Tom Peters 01:37
Yeah, it was called yesterday, you now that?
Robert Craven 01:39
It's really, really clever guy. The guy knew or the Beatles songs that nobody else did. So he just write out songs. Everyone thought he was wonderful. Well, it's actually great to talk to you, Tom. And now sort of in the middle of lockdown. And we're in the middle of April. Everything is bonkers. And, you know, I mean, talk about leadership in tough times. I mean, from your point of view, what I mean, where do you start? What should leaders be doing? What what? How do people make sense of the economic, the political, the social turndown was going on at night? Well, I mean, where do you start talking about?
Tom Peters 02:23
Well, there are two different ways I would answer and one, the second of the two has to do with your audience, our audience. And that is there's a huge difference between being in BP even though the price of oil is now under zero. And being a 10 person, agency, or a five person agency, where your business dries up, and the banker won't lend you more money, and so on. So I mean, let's, let's acknowledge that first for the small digital agency for the seventh table restaurant or what have you. It's a different ballgame. And a scary ballgame. If I were doing I'm still gonna say the same thing, if I were doing this conversation. And it was mainly let's say, $20 million companies and up. I would say, and I'm going to say, anyway, the big deal is take care of your people first. And if you go broke, doing so, you know, God will nonetheless smile upon you on your last day. And I will say that to this group. There's an American columnist, New York Times columnist, his name is David Brooks, former Republican now independent. And David wrote this incredible column that was called resume virtues versus eulogy virtues. And he said, the resume virtues talk about where you went to school, what your job was, were you the COO of blankety blank, and all that technical stuff. He said the eulogy virtues are of a totally different kind. We say was he a decent person? How did he treat people? And you know, I really think that one sentence resume virtues versus eulogy virtues is incredibly powerful. Now one of my hopes and I use Twitter a lot. So it's a lot of people. So is and I put this in, in one sense, and then I'll come back in another and I said, my great hope is that after this in MBA courses, the courses on organisation and leadership and managing people and people will move to the top of the agenda and the bloody damn courses on finance. I don't want to kick down but you know, And I think I think your audience would appreciate this. I have obviously talked to a lot of groups and sometimes small and medium sized business. And I always say to him, I took three courses in accounting at Stanford. And so I really know my way around the balance sheet. But I said I am now I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about accounting, and compress it to one sentence, money in must exceed money out. And that's it. You just got your PhD in finance from your side business school or Harvard or what have you. And there's, there's a great note to that. I mean, you know, that, and this really, and I think, obviously, it's, it's planetary. This period, and certainly significant uncertainty will last for another several months, this period, whether it's one of your youngsters in a digital agency, age 27, or an Ulster age 47 or 67, this period will define your career, how you behave. Excuse me, how you behave, excuse my language, how you behave during this shitstorm? Well, define. You know who you are. I mean, it's, uh, you know, I'm talking to you, I'm talking to a Brit. There was a wonderful book that came out. I mean, there were the Spitfire pilots. And there was all the Churchillian stuff about the few who saved this, in the whole book title was wrong. It's the many, not the few. And it was a how the average British citizen coped during the Blitz and so on and said the real heroes were not, I mean, you know, they're great, but they're not the kids flying the Spitfire. There, they are your next door neighbour who pulled your aunt out of a blazing second floor of an apartment when a bomb fell on it. And, you know, that's exactly right. That's what counts. You know, it's how people behave. The bricks, it's how people behave during how many months did the Blitz lasted, it's worse, maybe six months or something like that. But that's the definition of a lifetime. And, and I do want to say, you know, says no big reason. I was raised as a Presbyterian, but I haven't darkened the door of a church in quite a while. So I am not giving this commentary on the basis of capital, our religion. And I've said to many people, I don't give a damn whether you're an atheist, or whether you go to Mass at 5:30am, seven days a week. People First is a seven and a half billion dollar thinking billion person thing. And that's and that's, that's really the case. I don't know it's I mean, it's not fair because obviously, I've been incredibly lucky in my bank account is significantly above zero. But, you know, we're lucky enough to have somebody who cleans the house once every couple of weeks. And since I'm old and had a knee, new knee put in, I did have a I hate the term personal trainer, I had a physio who came and helped me once a week, and we have made damn sure that they get their full feed package. During this entire period. As I said, I have a bank account that's larger than the bank account of the average person who's watching it. So I realised I'm a privilege correct in that regard. But it is still the same. It's, you know, we had somebody who was my wife is a is a fanatic gardener. That's what the hell happens when you have a British mother for Christ's sakes. gardener and, you know, at the end, at the end of the winter, there are a couple of people who come in and they help clean some of the crap out of the garden and so on. And I live in an area where virtually it's near New Bedford, Massachusetts, we're huge Portuguese, huge, disorient population and so on. And the guy who helps with that stuff is just killing himself to keep his guys employed. But, you know, I, at the end of the day, they had been with us and I Dan is the guy owns a little company. I took before $100 out to Dan, and I said, Dan, give 200 to each of your guys, and I know you're paying them. But I said, I also know that they have a lot of poor neighbours. And tell them obviously, this is not the law, tell them the 200 bucks are to give to friends and neighbours, who are having a hard time buying groceries. And you had a lot of people who are watching us most most people who are watching us, including some very successful people, obviously, but most people could give 400 bucks in that sense. And, and that's kind of the deal.
Robert Craven 10:34
So just go back to what you were saying before about about I guess it's about personal leadership, where, where do Where do people learn about leadership? Is the the leadership come from how you're brought up? Or I mean, where do you It's all very well. So you need to be a good leader, you need to make quite a good culture, you need to there needs to be followership, as much as being a follower as much as word word people. How do we find out about the how do we become a good leader? Where does that come from Tom?
Tom Peters 11:10
Well, now now it's my opportunity to really, really be helpful to everybody who's watching us. My answer that question and you hinted at it is choose your parents. Obviously, the right answer, a lot of it a huge amount of it does have to do with upbringing. And one of the topics I want to talk to you about and you want to talk to me about undoubtedly. And I, I think even though we have a broad based international audience, at some level, everybody knows what EQ is emotional quotient as opposed to IQ regardless of how technical your businesses and most of the people who are paying attention to us, as a technical business, hire nice people. There is a guy, my wife, and I spent a couple of months normally in New Zealand and the North American winter. And there's a friend of a friend, who is the big special effects guy for Peter Jackson. And I was talking to my friend about some of this and he said, Oh, he said, George has a role. And I said, What's that? No assholes. And you know, it's a not trivial point. There's the and again, thinking of our technical audience. And I use this in my last book, there was a guy by the name of Peter Miller, and he is the founder and CEO of a midsize biotech company. And you know, with all due respect to our digital marketing friends, to be in the intellectual game at a biotech company requires degrees that I can't even pronounce. And he said, we only hire nice people. He said, named the most obscure degree in the world, some organic chemistry that he said there actually automates people who have that degree. And he has a rule, and he calls it running the gauntlet. And I talked to you and you have this incredibly sexy biotech degree. And I'm Peter Miller. I'm the owner. And I am bowled over by your brilliance and just can't wait to offer you a job. But when you finish the interview with me, you've got to run the gauntlet, which means you have 15-10 minute interviews with the receptionist with the guy who cleans the office with the finance person with the HR department, person and all 15 of those people have blackball power, if any was one of them says, you know, I can't imagine having to work within 20 feet of these guys. And so nice can work in a tech place and the and the other thing and I'm so pissed off because it came out after my last book. Google did a study of its best employees. And its best and its most innovative teams. The seven top characteristics of the best employees were all soft skills, listening, being respectful, cooperating, taking other people's and number eight on the list of the eight top was stamp. You know, the tech stuff made it but it was eight out of eight. And then they did the same thing with teams. And Google is one of those dumb ass sickening nauseating places where people are designated as A players and B players. That is absolutely the most incredible quick demotivating tool known to humankind. But it anyway they have a teams and B teams and the B player teams Totally outperformed the eight player teams, same damn thing. All the traits were soft skills. And nobody, nobody who's watching us would possibly understand what I'm about to say. But on the A teams that weren't worth the shit, one of the principal reasons they had problems as they said, fully intellectual polling, it's one. Listen, I have two Stanford degrees, so I can say any damn thing I want to about Stanford. It is a 24 year old kid who graduated with an incredible coding degree from Stanford, and is making 200,000 Freaking dollars a year at the age of 24. And he knows he is descended directly from God. And, and you know, that's not the guy you want in either the virtual room or the real room. Incidentally, I think we're probably going to do a lot better in this work from home wfh thing, because if you know your literature, which I do, open offices are a disaster. Whoever invented open offices are going to be a special place in hell for them. And protect particularly I will call the manage to book that's not quite right, my favourite management book of the 2000s. The first 20 years of the 2000s is a book written by a woman named Susan Cain. And the book has a one word title quiet and it is about the degree to which and this is even true in tech world that we overlook the person, the person to whom you the boss asks the question, and instead of giving you a really cool answer, and 20 seconds, the introverts do these really work weird things. Like they don't say a damn thing for 30 seconds, while they're actually thinking before they open their mouth. And they've demonstrated that the introverts are better leaders, they are better team players, they're more creative, you know, etc. But and again, you know, it's I was at McKinsey for seven years. And we were desperately in love with Harvard and Stanford MBAs. And before you got your MBA, you had gotten your PhD in science from some obscure school in Germany. And those were the people we love. And somebody said this to me once I said, so how do you get into a leadership role in McKinsey, and he had a big smile. He said, the people that get into leadership are the least awful people people is a wonderful sentence. And I'm afraid to say I think it had a lot of truth. So pick your parents well, and a lot of people who are paying attention to us are founders, no, no assholes, hire nice people, regardless of the technical quality of the job. Technical is overrated. So I want to make one thing clear to the kind of people who are watching. I am talking to you as a person with for quant degrees from two of the best universities on earth, to engineering degrees from Cornell University, to business degrees from Stanford, I am not bragging about my resume. I am saying, don't tell me that I live in a quant world and you wouldn't understand it. I understand it a lot damn better than you do. So off Get off my case.
Robert Craven 18:39
So why
Tom Peters 18:41
Is there a techie thing? Well, you wouldn't understand finance people are that way. You don't dream in spreadsheets, and it's all unmitigated bullshit.
Robert Craven 18:55
But and yet, we're in a world where everyone's got their head over a spreadsheet, because right now the issue is about cash. I mean, it's not about profits, everyone's typically people have lost between 25 and 50% of the revenue, month, year on year. So suddenly, it's we can't have all these people, there isn't work for them. And I've got a client that runs cocktail bars, they won't be open until January 2021. I mean, how do you pay the rent on 11 buildings and pay? Okay, the government's paying some of the wages, but it's just bonkers, or an airline or whatever it is. Right now, the skill set, ironically, that most people don't have. And I kind of like to just just dive into this a little bit. I work in boardrooms and the problem I come across in the boardroom is no one actually knows the numbers. It's like guys, what you need to encounter what you need to do is you need to get a really good accountant to come in to train you. So you understand where you're making money and where you're not making money. So, so totally up with you. I find out and his lovely thing
Tom Peters 20:01
I totally disagree with you tell him when I was working at McKinsey, one of the people who trained me, he said, when you're sitting down across the table, from a guy who runs a $100 million division, he said, hand them an envelope with a blank back and say to him, go through your numbers for me, but keep it to the envelope. You don't need spreadsheets, you do need to know the numbers, but dammit, it doesn't require more than the graduation from the fifth grade. It's when it gets sexy, which is when it's a problem. And I completely agree with every word you said. And, and absolutely, I mean, first of all, we got to have finance people who can actually speak English, or German or French or whatever, it is irrelevant. The people who were talking to us who are sorry, who are watching us.
Robert Craven 21:06
So we have to, we have to have some laughs.
Tom Peters 21:09
It's a giant company, which has all of these obscure ridiculous financial things, he dues the average company with 25 employees or 50 employees or five employees, I'm sorry, the math isn't very complicated. To your point, I want to I want to make sure that I when people are watching this to make sure that I'm listening to you, yes, it is how to be in a situation where you have carefully groomed a group of 20 people, and now you can't afford to pay him. You know, the one thing that helps like choosing parents is choosing the country you're in. And I'm not suggesting the Brits are geniuses and the Americans are idiots. But there are very different approaches in Germany and France in the UK, to the EU versus the United States, where our social safety net social safety net stinks to high heaven. And that makes it you know, even worse, I can't get as you well know, if I if I talk to the people who are who are watching and listening to us and gave a glib answer, you just ought to cut me off. Do the best you can you weep, literally, when you have to lay somebody off. During the Oh, six crash, there's a company I work with. And they had to get rid of 30% of their employees. And the woman who was CEO, I was talking to somebody there, her name is Christine. And somebody said to me, Christine, was so devastated by laying somebody off, that at the end of the interview, the person who had just been laid off was giving Christine a hug and saying it's gonna be okay. And and yet, I hope that a lot of the people who had agencies who are paying attention who are watching us have that kind of a disposition. Do the best you can. If you I will say this, because you've got some high growth agencies that have made a lot of money. And the answer is, you will be judged on how small your goddamn bank account is six months from now, take the money. I don't want you to starve your kids. But I don't want to hear about a whole bunch of people on the street. And when these six months are over, you have still got a net worth of 3 million pounds or 500,000 pounds or $4 million or 750,000 bucks spend it. And as I said, I don't want your family to starve. I'm not saying that. But I don't want to I don't want to see a fat bank account. So again, from an owner who has a hot fat bank account now. You can't go overboard. You can't be insane, but you can be damned helpful with 50% of a wage, and a guarantee that that'll be the case for the next six months. You can do it and a lot of people watching us who had agencies can afford that and screw you if you don't do it. I mean, and I'm really pissed about that.
Robert Craven 24:58
Well, I think that the question that just leads on to me about this about how do you? So there's a couple of things. Is this the same as any other downturn? Or is it different in scale and type and size. But the other thing is, in earlier downturns, there was an argument that said that the wrong thing to do the wrong thing to do is to batten down the hatches and wait, and that the right thing to do if you've got the whatsit size of what's it to do it is to be out there and be bold and take the opportunities to the trendy word pivot and become the thing that you want to become as opposed to just closing down and what I mean, do you do you buy into battening down the hatches and waiting? Or do you buy into getting out there, and if you're gonna go down, go down,
Tom Peters 25:48
I am totally on the other side of that. No, statistically speaking, and everybody's now going to turn us off. And my apologies to you. A lot of the people who are watching us who have agencies have a pretty good product. But it ain't better than pretty good. And in terms of the antithesis of battening down the hatches, now is the time to create a product or a service that is so bloody awesome that it makes you weep at how brilliant you are. You know that now now is your video. Now is your iPhone moment, you know, in a way meaning this is the time to create something that is totally different. And if you are running a restaurant, now is the time to create a menu that is so awesome and so incredible. That people who can't even afford it when we take the full stay at home away. So no, it is not sit on your ass time it is this. I said to somebody the other day. This for me is a magical moment. I am now working on some projects that I know I damn well should have worked on. But I was too busy to do it. And they are the cool projects. And so now I don't want you to come in, I don't want you to come out of this with an average product. And you know, I do know my way around statistically and I did read a lot about the agencies that you're representing, and an awful lot of them score pretty damn good. I want wild ass differentiation. And while they ask differentiation is possible. One thing I'm gonna digress, and then you can call me back to reality. One thing that you can answer for me. And I'm thinking of the world of coding in general, as opposed to necessarily the digital agencies. Any buddy who is watching us, who has a payroll of over of 20 people who does not have at least 10 of those people being women is a stupid jerk. And I am not talking only make it very, very clear. I am not talking about social justice. I am talking about the quality of the work and one of the reasons and I mean also look at me, I'm an old guy, do you know that me, my people do more internet purchasing than the bloody millennials who didn't have any money before the crash and now have none at all. I mean, God Almighty, I mean, it's and my people, particularly when they're females in the United States, in the next and this will be a little lower. In the next five years $22 trillion of wealth will transfer to women. And here are the statistics. And these are American statistics, but they aren't different on some dimensions in a lot of places. Women buy 85% of consumer goods, women make about 75% of household finance decisions 95% of healthcare decisions. And in the USA, which may not be true in the UK or maybe true or not true in other places. People are places where people are from in the US a over 50% of professional purchasing officers are women. They may not be heading the department. But the point being is she is as likely to put out a proposal of $4 billion. Is it contrary and women have a different sensibility. There's a horrible but I live in Silicon Valley for 25 years so I can criticise Silicon Valley too. There's a wonderful book that came out. That's the worst book I've ever read in my life. It's called bro topia, br OTOPIA, and it's about the broke culture in Silicon Valley that is truly disgusting. But relative to the problems that Facebook is having one thing that this woman said, is face books approach. And I love this word would have had a radically different and here's the word sensibility if they had had 50% women, quote, writing code, and I think I think that's true. So as I said, I'm huge on the women's thing, but I'm huge on the women's thing for economic and business growth and profitability reasons. And I do believe in social justice, blah, blah, blah, a lot. And I've spent a lot of time on that issue. But that's not the point. I'm talking better business.
Robert Craven 30:56
Yeah, I mean, I'm 100% with you. And we look at, we look at this particular industry, and I would say one in one in 10. agency owners, one in 10, agency directors of a female. And so we have this, you know, grey, white, on the whole, appropriate people.
Tom Peters 31:19
Like grey white.
Robert Craven 31:22
Yeah. Which is, yeah, it's kind of predictable. And yeah, I'm also on the board of a, of an agency that one wards for its diversity. And it's extraordinary. I mean, it's an entirely different workplace, I think, I think of the 70-80 people there, only three of them are male, white, and everyone else is from various diverse cultures and predominantly female, not particularly deliberately, the culture kind of emerged that way from where it was, and, and how the two men who run the agency develop, but it's an entirely different place, the way arguments take place, the way things are created the way conflict is, is managed entirely entirely differently. And, and it drives me mad, we run conferences, and our problem is finding diversity and speakers, you know, and it's not like as you said, it's not because you're, you're trying to be correct and equal leave and do the full thing. But you, we need to recognise that there are other ways of, of more effective ways and this, this assumed way of making things happen. Yeah, putting you in,
Tom Peters 32:44
that there's not a single word you said that I disagree with. And my goal in life would not would be to say not one more word during this entire discussion, and to have the rest of the discussion, you talking about that agency? No, I'm really serious. No, no, no, I mean, that. That is, that is the golden norm that I pray for? And, you know, I know, I know, it's, it's, well, it's not anecdotal, but it's a small and a small sample. I think it's not trivial that the countries that have reacted best to CB 19 are all have women. The N is low, and for the people who are for this for the pitiful statisticians who are watching us and I was also trained as a political statistician. You know, the, the n is eight or 10, or something like that. So it's, I haven't got hard proof, but I think it's not. You know, we, as I said, we spent a lot of time in New Zealand, and, you know, God is the pm in New Zealand, just send the H 37. is doing an awful lot, right? I mean, Kiwis are nicer people than we are. But what did I say?
Robert Craven 34:02
If we if we just go back to to the economies? I mean, clearly, clearly, we're bottoming out. Do you think that the world is going to be different when we come out of this? I mean, I mean, do you think that it's, do you think it's like you're driving down the highway, you see an accident, everyone slows down and says I must drive carefully. Wait 10 minutes, everyone speeds up? Or do you think that things will change because there's a number of things going on, people have discovered at last that working from home is doable. People have discovered at last that you don't need to be in the office five days a week, people have discovered that maybe a four day week will be profitable, and just as effective as a five day a week. People there's the people are learning it. It's actually quite nice being with my family and my kids, you know, people are learning it's actually quite nice reading a book and people are learning. Television isn't bottomless. It comes a point where you actually stop turning the television on. So we're learning lot, but do you think that when we come out of this, that things will be different? Or do you think that we'll just just go back to as we were?
Tom Peters 35:11
I like to answer, which is a preliminary to what you just asked. You were talking about how bad is the downturn. This is bad. The American version is nothing like this has happened since the Great Depression. Back in 29. So this is not a downturn, this is a, this is a crash. And you know, as we are speaking, which is on the 24th of April, maybe stay at home does, and in mainly in 60 or 90 days, and the comeback could be reasonably rapid. But there's a good chance that, you know, there's a lot more hell to break loose. Yeah, I'm doing the same hand wave you are i i think a lot is going to be different. And one of the big reasons is, we are, as you said, learning to work from home. And it is coming at exactly the same time as massive improvements in technology. So it's, you know, it'll get more and more and more magical, we'll be doing work, or work from home with virtual reality glasses, et cetera. But but the, it is incredible coincidence, because we are, we are really on the exponential growth curve, part of software based tools that will support this stuff. So we're learning all the things you're saying, and we're going to have the tools to do it. You know, I have this, this, you know, which wouldn't upset me relative to the president, United States, I have this imagination that all the skyscrapers of London and New York are going to be empty, because all the mid level bureaucrats who used to work there are now working from home. And that's an exaggeration, but I can't imagine occupancy rates that go through the floor. And you know, then you've got the triple, triple deal. If you look out 10 or 12 years, and young professionals 10 years from now, will be the first generation to have grown up with the iPhone. And so they will have a different disposition to social intercourse, then incredibly old people like some of the 35 year olds who are watching us, you know, they always talk about this bullshit of 70 is the new 5060 is the new 40 I was lecturing to a group and I said 35 is the new 65. And you know, there's, there's some, there's some truth to that relative to this huge social change. And I will say that, but then I'll put my asterisk up, and I will remind our watchers of what I said a long time ago, like 10 minutes. And that is, there are a lot of 55 year olds who ain't gonna die for a while and they're the ones who are basically buying your services. You know, it's a wonderful you know, how one liners sometimes can really you doing Oh, my God, well, the oh my god that I had for relative this topic and has nothing to do with me age came three or four years ago, when a guy wrote the following. At the age of 50, you have 50% of your adult life still ahead of you. And you're just it's not the frigging millennials, your money. Look at me. And I don't mean me, Tom Peters, but my demographic. And I hope not all of us, including myself, don't keel over in the midst of this, but percentage wise, not an enormous group. Well, I mean, the stat I saw and again, a lot of our viewers know this better than I but the one I saw was after 55 - 50% of consumer purchases 10% of marketing directed at those people over 50. And you know, just that, you know, it's always nice to have a case that's a real illustration. So I said 50/50 in the United States in this includes a lot of pieces of junk when you were a youngster in the United States, the average American will buy 13 automobile meals during her or his lifetime, seven of the 13 will be bought after the age of 50. And you know, that's a nice simple, you might not be able to remember seven digit numbers, but you can damn well remember a fraction called seven over 13.
Robert Craven 40:19
So I'd be interested in what do you see as the response ability, I suppose, of the platforms as I'm looking at the floor, because it looks down on Charlaine zubowski? You know, the age of surveillance capitalism is,
Tom Peters 40:36
I love that. Have you had her?
Robert Craven 40:39
Yeah, I've not yet. But I'll I mean, it's, it's a hell of a book, it's hell of a read. It's not. It's not all down there, it kind of goes around the place that I've been, she puts an argument together.
Tom Peters 40:54
That there's a
Robert Craven 40:58
Quite not not quite sure how to put it a group of dominant companies who are who are taking data to become the new capital, and they are exploiting our data, and we've allowed them to do that. And it is not, in the long run for the benefit, the argument be, be that people have done a deal with the devil. And the economic times that we're in now is that there's an argument in last week's economist, this gives these very agencies the golden opportunity to come even more dominant and become and to actually run our life for us because the government are dependent on them in order to do communication, and so on and so forth. That'd be really, so you've got you've got Google, you've got Facebook, you've got Twitter, you've got Microsoft. Most of them are bigger, bigger incomes and a decent sized country. I'd be interested in what your what your take on on those organisations? Are they?
Tom Peters 42:04
Well, p art of my answer, and I know this is not going to be popular with everybody who's watching as part of my answer, which I've said in public many times, is there are 320 million Americans. On my list, there are two people at the bottom of the list of 320 million who are tied for last. One of them is Donald Trump. And the other one is Mark Zuckerberg. And, you know, I really do by the act. I mean, I know that. And by the way, since I'm being crude, if you're exploiting half the damn population, the fact that you give $4 billion away for libraries or philanthropy doesn't cut it with me. You know, as somebody once said, half the libraries in America are named after Andrew Carnegie, the steel Baron wouldn't have been nice if he had paid his way workers more than starvation wages. You know, I, I ran into that I have a friend is a big fundraiser at Stanford. He said, we're trying to go more virtual, we don't want more buildings, but these guys won't give us money unless they can have their name on a physical space. And you know, but I mean, let me calm down but I don't want to calm down. That's say the US with the current administration, and this is not a Trump comment. This is more of a generic comment. And this will require the people do know US history. We don't have our Teddy Roosevelt, who was to use the American term, the trust Buster, who really went after the Rockefellers and went after the Carnegie's. I think we need radical restraint of either the Big Four, the Big Six, depending on how you use your numbers. The exploitation of data nauseates me, it really does. And, you know, then, on top of everything else, and people don't talk about this much my wife was incredibly heavily involved in the celebration of the 50th birthday, which was the 22nd of April two days ago and she is such a fanatic environmentalist that you want to talk to her you better be in the same league. But on top half of everything else. And Zubov hasn't talked about it, I don't think but a lot of other people have on top of everything else. One of the principal outcomes of the astonishingly effective marketing that Google like data and Facebook, like data allow, is we are buying more shit than we don't need that has ever happened before. And that's non trivial, because, you know, this is a smart group who's watching us. So I don't think we have very many climate change deniers who are watching us, but anybody who doesn't think that, you know, there's a 50 year fuse or a 40 year fuse, or when you look at the extreme storms that we're having, I mean, for God's sakes, Africa is going to be wiped off by climate change. And, you know, maybe as few as 25 years and, you know, consumerism is, has lost its way as well, which, incidentally, relative to an earlier question you asked that, for agencies, this is a magical moment where you can create products and services that are unbelievably fabulous. And those products and services don't all have to be specifically directed at improving the amount of products that somebody can sell by point oh, 1%, when many of the products are working only kindly be called shit products, you know, the whole, if I if I've got an agency, I want to think about who's going to be influenced by the data that I'm helping organisations collect, who, who's going to be the marketing target, and so on. I think you can think you can be a digital marketer and be a wonderful, incredible, amazing citizen, and create services that you can't wait to go home and tell your 14 year old about or your husband or your wife or what have you. And it is magic that way. Yeah. And, but but I'm I do I, Professor Zubov had a famous paper that was maybe 20 years ago, or 15 years ago. And that was the first thing of hers that I read, it was very arcane, academic ish, bought her argument was brilliant. And surveillance capitalism is just a bloody brilliant book, even if it takes a little bit of waiting to make it through the whole thing.
Robert Craven 47:38
But I guess the thing is that, that, you know, Google, in some senses do no evil became became an American advertising Corporation, its intention, you could argue, is to sell advertising. And therefore, and therefore, that is that its purpose is to increase earnings per share, year on year for its shareholders. And that's what the machine does. And, and you can kind of see how that happens with the sheer scale and the sheer numbers, ditto, Facebook, so on and so forth. And I guess zuboff is kind of hinting, or suggesting that they always knew what they were doing, they always knew that if this thing took off, they would have an incredible control. And, and none of them seem to be surprised by by Cambridge Analytica, and what actually happened, they're kind of they kind of knew that that's what data site psychographic, get knowledge gathering is about, it's about finding the buttons that people press, and it's and it's kind of okay to, to massage a button to help them help you buy one of my cars rather than someone else's cars, but maybe it's not okay, when it's actually politically left or right. And that's about how that data is being manipulated. So if we, if we come back to to the sense of the community, and the individuals, what are the what are the core skills we need to develop to the pulpit? Does this straightaway go into politics? Or I'm just trying to figure out what skills we need to develop as we go through and we come out of this.
Tom Peters 49:38
Whether there are bunch of directions I would go in, I don't think the to Stanford Laddies who started Google software, what they were going to do, while they were still Stanford kids, Zuckerberg clearly did. I mean, for God's sakes, how did Facebook start stole then data to rank girls, I mean, Jesus Christ. Now there is a lifelong aim, if ever there was, if there was, you know, stolen data to rank girls created by the most antisocial human being that God has ever put on Earth. With let's let's not give any credit as to what the aim was, there's a Vanity Fair magazine, and I don't want to be sued. So I'm going to try to be a little bit careful. And I'm old and don't have the memory. The Vanity Fair magazine actually had in print, Zuckerberg quote, which basically said, I would never knowingly do anything illegal, but I lead my life in Morrowind. And I pretty well got that one nailed. And, again, I don't want to go to jail. But I'm real sure that I remembered. And so I will say maybe you didn't say, Mr. Lee, but it was, you know, it was it was clear that it was clear that there was no compass. Yes, the tail end of the question, because I got distracted by my skills we
Robert Craven 51:13
need to develop?
Tom Peters 51:14
Yeah. Well, there have been a, there was a spate of books that came out in the course of the last year. That said, don't think that liberal arts degrees or useless liberal arts degrees are worth their weight in gold. And again, it goes back to your earlier question about our colleagues who are who you and I hope will take advantage of this time to create awesome products. If you're doing awesome products, you really do need a bunch of philosophy majors, and theatre majors, and people who look at the world in a very different way than you do. If you're a pathetic soul like me with four quant degrees. I mean, I call myself a recovering engineer. And, well, you know, what, what, what did it oddly enough was the Navy. And when I went into the Navy, I was a civil engineer. And there's a part of the Navy that's called the CDs which nobody's interested in, but their combat engineers. And I came out of Cornell with a civil engineering degree. And as all my fellow Cornell union engineers knew, we were really the smartest human beings God ever put on our there was this damn school in Boston or Cambridge called MIT, but we were the real deal. But I did know my shit. And so the plane with me on it, heading for Vietnam, lands at midnight, one night, and I'll be the senior analyst that people really do the work. But this kid who graduated from Cornell six months before, was technically suddenly responsible for the lives of 15, adult human beings, my sailors. I mean, there were people in between the did the work, but technically, I was responsible for their life and death. And I really don't want to take the language in public too far. But when I got I had to deployments to be nine months over four months back nine months over, when I came back from the first one, I went to Cornell, and I went into the dean's office, and I looked him in the eye, I still can't believe this. And I said, you f to me, and I'm not going to use the F word. But I said you estimate, you sent me out with the most incredible technical degree in the world. And I was no more ready to take the responsibility for the lives of 15 people. And there were good people between me and then so it's a little exaggeration, in terms of literal art, in terms of how a day work, but literally, I was responsible for those lives. So more theatre majors, more music majors. More philosophers, Mark Cuban, you know, has his whatever shark tank or whatever the hell it is. He will he will only give money to philosophy majors who start companies. And I think that's great. It really is. It's a very different sensibility. And I really believe relative to the people who are watching us with with heavy quant crews, that your world would be turned significantly upside down. If you had 50% Women In, and 40% liberal arts degrees, but my point is profit and loss, I think you have the potential to create products and services, that will be awesome. Listen, someday, the people who are watching us are going to be as old as me, God willing. And it's not clear that it's willing, given all the shit we're doing in the world, maybe you will be my ex wife, father, from Northwestern Missoura, was kinda in the tombstone business. So as I like to say to people, I've seen more tombstones than the next guy. I have never seen a tombstone that read Thomas J. Peters, date, to date, net worth at death $7,462,387.14, when the market closed on the day that he died, you're going to remember the products that knock people's socks off for the right reasons. Again, as I said, I'm not a religious person. So I'm not and I'm not a philosopher. So I'm not giving the pitch from that standpoint, I'm giving the pitch as a Stanford MBA, a Stanford PhD and a two degree engineer. It's, it's, I just, you know, I spent, I have this horrible thing about trying to prepare, I spent last night reading about the people who are watching us. And I don't know the technology well enough. I, you know, the last coding I did was Fortran, for Christ's sakes. And but I know, and I am sure about this. And again, Apple is proof, you can really make special things. You know, I've been a design fanatic for 25 years. And when I write about design, and I think I'm right, I always start with 11, August 2010, which I think is the correct number one of my books and give me royalties, and you can find out the number. Actually, you can find it on my website, but let's call it the 10th to the 11th of August 2010. That was the day and the price of oil then was 70 or 80 bucks a barrel. That was the day that the market capitalization of Apple surpassed the market capitalization of Exxon Mobil. And as I said to somebody after that day, nobody could say to anybody that design stuff is cute. You know, no way baby. And, and the other the other thing and this is not really right, given what we said at the beginning and the number of people who are watching us who are hanging on by you know, their their fingernails, and I forgot what I was gonna say because you have an old personnel it was a brilliant point, but we'll come we'll come back to it when it comes back into my mind it was dammit dammit, dammit.
Robert Craven 58:27
Valuation about .
Tom Peters 58:32
Oh, no. Yeah, anyway. No excuse for no great stuff. No excuse for no philosophy majors. No excuse for less than 50% when I know what I was gonna say. I think I know what I was gonna say. Yeah. And this is Apple, two in a way of Yahtzee and apple. Just quit using growth as every other goddamn word that comes out of your mouth. It makes me nauseated. You know, I think this is accurate. Some people were watching it say no. And you can answer this. Did Steve Jobs effort it introduce a significant product that was less than two years late? Really Did you know and I'm willing to say two months, but also remember that Microsoft had to lend apple $100 million, so that Microsoft's market share wouldn't be 100% in the trustbusters come after him again. But I don't think he did introduce a product less than a couple years. You're not willing to go to market until it was something that I remember there's a one liner again that I use with design, and it comes from Laurene Powell Jobs, and Johnny IFE was the design director at Apple and this is I think, when they're making the iPhones, and her one liner is Johnny and Steve would discuss corners for hours on end. And I always love that line because it is a wonderful illustration of trying to do something that's not a little bit better. But something that's really remarkable. And I've got my apple problems, mainly Jobs was a jerk. And I actually worked with him in the 80s. And I can't forgive that. But that's that. That's not neither here nor there. But the products were unbelievable. And people have done that with restaurants and people have done it with dry cleaners. And some of the things you're saying to them is trivial stuff. I love this. There was some little Creamery was you know, one of the main things we see on the web and the creamery in the back, had obviously huge refrigerators, huge commercial refrigerators, they took their biggest commercial refrigerator and put it out on the street loaded with milk and dairy products for free. Anybody that comes along, can you know, open the door and take a quart of milk or what have you. I just I, you know, I'm not that emotional person. But that's, that's pretty close to tears. And the other the other thing, yeah, we're gonna get rid of growth as an obsession. And we're also going to get rid of breakthrough. Here's the fascinating thing. I will I love this love. This is the wrong word. You have to listen to the rest of the sentence. When Steve Jobs died. And I saw this in several places from several people who know their left foot from their right. They said Steve Jobs was never an inventor, Steve Jobs was a tinker. There were new, no fabulous new, incredible ideas. He took ideas that, you know, were underway probably by Motorola, 1000 years before the iPhone and so on. And he tinkered and tinkered and tweaked and tweaked. And as he tweaked the whole damn thing took a different shape. And suddenly you had a miracle. But he didn't sit down and say, How can we have a breakthrough? You know, and so forget breakthrough. Forget this eruption, forget growth, just to break shit.
Robert Craven 1:02:22
Sorry, I think we probably come to the end of our time, which is which is a real a real shame. I'd much rather go on I'd much rather go on out and a bottle of wine. Keep talking. But what are your your final final words, your final words of wisdom, your ideas, your thought bubbles? out going out to? to the audience? I mean, if these guys and gals with five to 105 to 200 staff? What's your What are your your the final words you'd like to leave them with?
Tom Peters 1:02:57
Well, if it's the 50 staff, and above, the three or four people who own the company have a reasonably decent net worth, or they wouldn't have been in business long enough to have 50 people on the payroll. If you have to dig into your net worth take care of your people. It's a heck of a lot harder with a five person agency, there's no and and if you think you're going to trap me into saying something glib about somebody who I know you're not, I don't mean that literally, with a five person agency, my heart goes out to you a, I think you can probably do a little better by your people than you think you can. Do remember that I am accurate. When I said this is the moment which will define your career. And so, you know, instead of another business plan, write your eulogy, you know, what do you what do you want to be known for? What do you want people to think about you? The one that, you know, I was thinking about and had it on my list and you really brought it to a head? What a fantastic time to make incredibly fantastic products that are wildly different relative to my Zuckerberg rant and zuboff rant. Really make great stuff. And that doesn't mean that 100% of it has to be about the exploitation of my data. I mean, you know, you and we don't have much more time. I mean, the thing to me that's so fascinating about today's algorithms, let alone tomorrow's is they make a joke out of the Mad Men era of advertising. They didn't know excuse the language their head from their ass relative to their ability to define and refine and now we've gotten to the scary part. You know, what was what was the line? I read it someplace where I don't know based on a half a pound of data about you and me Zuckerberg people will know more about me than my wife. And you know, it's it's a hot throwaway line, it happens to be true. So no magic, take care of people who do the most incredibly great work that you've ever done. Remember that your reputation, reputation is an awful word, because that's what other people think. You're what you will have done with your life has been shaped right now. And if you are in a five person agency, and you lay somebody off and you don't cry, I don't like you very much.
Robert Craven 1:05:54
Thank you, perfect place to stop, Tom. It's been an honour an absolute pleasure to talk with you to have conversation with you to spend time with you. And we'll thank you very much for that. It's been been really great. And you take care of yourself. Thank you very, very much indeed. Well,
Tom Peters 1:06:16
Thank you very much. And I say the same thing. Take care of your family, take care of yourself, be safe, and one hopes will make it pass this. Thank you very much.