Video - Tom Peters 'Excellence Now'
VIDEO: 49:25 mins
AUTHOR: Robert Craven and Tom Peters
Our guest on this GYDA Talks needs little introduction. Tom Peters 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.
New for 2020 is the Excellence Now Campaign:
“What you are doing right now will be the hallmark of your entire career.”
That’s what Tom is insisting about the critical nature of leadership in current conditions. These tumultuous times demand deep engagement, human connection, and, yes, EXCELLENCE. In response, Tom has started his Excellence Now Campaign, a trio of tools intended to be his final lessons in Excellence. Lessons which focus on these topics of surpassing importance; topics which are, in fact, more important now than ever. The tools are Excellence Now: The Forty-Three Number Ones eBook, Excellence Now: Extreme Humanism hardback, and Excellence: Now More Than Ever six-part course series. Check it out today!
Robert and Tom discuss ‘Excellence Now’ plus:
Why women are so much better than men in business
Has Covid accelerated the need for Extreme Humanism?
Has Covid emphasised how wrong we seem to have got it?
Why does Tom think that some people don’t ‘get’ his approach (when it is so obvious to so many of us)?
What is your legacy? What will you be remembered for?
Transcription:
Robert Craven 00:07
Hello, welcome to GYDA Talks. And today I'm absolutely delighted to have with me a gentleman who needs no introduction. It's Mr. Tom Peters.
Tom Peters 00:23
You're, you're not going to spend 15 minutes telling everybody the highlight my light so that I can feel like a superstar or something.
Robert Craven 00:32
Well, I know you're a superstar Tom, we know you're a superstar.
Tom Peters 00:38
There's nothing, there's nothing that I hate more in a live speech where I've got 35 minutes to speak and the introducer you know, God bless her or him for heaven's sakes, takes the first 10 minutes, you know, giving my grandmother's maiden name.
Robert Craven 01:00
Although I have to say that, you know, Tom Peters, you know, it's like their, Tom, you know, there aren't many names like Tom, Michael, and a few other names where people actually know who you're talking about. So you are one of those people who's known by their first name, I think.
Tom Peters 01:17
And relative to when I wrote my new book, we are going to have a national holiday when the number of women CEOs of fortune 500 companies surpasses the number of fortune 500 CEOs whose first name is Jim.
Robert Craven 01:40
Well, I think you're right. And in fact, I was talking earlier today about the madness. I mean, the madness in our industry, in every industry, that they're just, you know, although everyone talks a good diversity talk, everyone talks a good women first talk, how, in fact, you know, when you look at when we look at how many people we interview, when we look how many, how many people we bring on stage, you know, at conferences, unless we do it deliberately. It's a white male world.
Tom Peters 02:11
Yes, Shelly and my colleague, Shelly, who, you know, we were doing something, I think it was out of India. And it was a part of a series. And we were given the list of the names of other interviewees. And we just put our foot down. I said, I'm not going to join your party, unless you will increase significantly, in particular the number of women that are part of this set. And you know, that and the worst part, maybe it's better than it was, is the real torque. When people are saying, Okay, I'll add an extra woman to the board. But there are no qualified women. I mean, that's when you want to punch somebody. Non virtually. Okay, oh my God, it worked perfectly. F to F fist to face.
Robert Craven 03:18
Very good, very good. So, let's just get let's get to the to the grip of this. So excellence now excellence now seems to be the culmination of your work. It's almost like a like a dare, dare I say it. And I don't mean a disrespectful, it's almost like a legacy work. It's a, it's a significant piece of work in terms of putting together your thoughts about how we should be doing business.
Tom Peters 03:50
But it's not. You not only didn't do something disrespectful, you hit the nail right on the head. A lot of people suggested that I do a memoir, which I thought was incredibly ego centric, A and B, if you do a memoir, it should be truthful. And there are a bunch of important events that I'm not terribly proud of. And I have a neighbour who's one of the top social psychologists in the world, and she's doing something and she said, Do what I'm doing a memoir of ideas. And that essentially, is the case. And as I say, over and over in the new book, and I'm actually serious. This is my 19th book. And despite my advanced age, I continue to be greedy. And so I would love to have you by all 19 books so that my royalty stream would be improved. But the secret is all 19 books say the same damn thing. And, you know, within some limits, it's you know, it's true, what was what was spectacular about the first one in search of excellence was, you know, we said, business strategy is not everything people are important to in the whole world. Oh my God, that's one of the greatest insights. That's Biblical. You know, who said that first Matthew, or Mark or Luke, or John. Now I've written my 19th book 18 plus 2139 years later. And, you know, my one liner or two liners, and you are not one of them? Is I've done a tonne of podcasts. And the first question is always, Tom, you talk a lot about people, to which my response is not what I really want it to be. I was in the Navy, and I can swear like a sailor. But my, my response relative to our conversation is, what the hell else is there? And what the hell else is there is an I know who our audience is within, you know, to some significant degree, what the hell out else is there is an appropriate response for a high tech firm, a software writing firm, as it is for somebody who is running a hotel. It's it's always all about people, and every aspect is all about people. And, you know, we were talking about the women's thing. I don't remember the author's name, which is horrible. Maybe, maybe, Amy Chen, Emily Chen, wrote a book about Silicon Valley where I lived for 30 years, and it was called Bro topia ending the boys club of Silicon Valley. And it was filled with awful stories, which I'm not interested in relative to this discussion. But one of the things she said, and there's a key word in this sentence is if face book had had a significantly higher share of women writing code, and here's the key word, the sensibility of the software would have been significantly or even dramatically different. You know, a boy a big room of a big boys club room. Yeah, that's the same kind of talk I had when I was 17 year old and but it's really true. I mean, there's no issue in my mind that she had been able directly on the head.
Robert Craven 07:45
So are you saying that there's, I'm we're in the world of sweeping generalisations that, that men are us. Not all but many men are kind of more match show and maybe mercenary and more power driven than than women when they're in positions of power.
Tom Peters 08:09
Unfortunately, you and I have a short period of time, because that's a sensitive issue. And I hate to kind of use one liners. I'm going to not answer and then try to answer as I not answer. The research says that on average keyword, bell shaped curve tails. On average, women are better leaders, salespersons. negotiators and investors, and there's enough research to fill up, you know, freight cars, whatever. And, and there was one study was reported in the Harvard Business Review and the author's said, and women produce better results on what we typically call the hard stuff, meeting, a schedule, etc. It's just there was this wonderful research that I reported maybe in the Little Big Things in 2010. It was research done by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. And it had two groups of people who were assigned a puzzle to solve, not just a little crossword puzzle, I don't know what I mean by puzzle, but something that was complex, and it was a group of women, and a group of men. And the people who were conducting the research were men, and they watch things unfold. And they knew damn well that the men were doing a better job, which turned out to be wrong. The men were doing a worse job over the long haul, but the man had approached the job, like US Army boot camp, they had assigned things they lined people up, they gotten people working on their piece. And the men didn't even know what the hell the women were doing. They were sitting around and they were chatting with each other. And that didn't look formal at all. And out of that popped something fantastic. And out of the men's, I guess there's nothing wrong with the answer. But it took forever and it was whatever. So when you when we talk about those sensibilities, it doesn't mean that on time, good outcome, the hard stuff. But your your point in general was absolutely correct. And particularly when you think about it, and I know, this is true of a lot of our audience. There's nothing in my mind, more hilarious than the notion of a room full of 25 year old making $175,000 a year, and three feet away from each other in the pre pandemic world writing code. I mean, that's just, it's hilarious. To me, the sorts of things because the investor thing is really a lot about that there's a woman at work, who's a senior person at The Motley Fool, and she wrote a book with my favourite book title in the world. And the book title was Warren Buffett invests like a girl, and why you should too. And the beautiful thing is Buffett hadn't heard about the book, and he wrote the first review at Amazon. And the review was wonderful. He said, I know I invested like a girl. But the but the point of the boy thing relative to your question, is you're trading something or other. And I'm sitting at a screen four feet away from you trading the same thing. You have a hell of a good day. And it is now four o'clock in the market is gonna close in 15 minutes, you are not going to have a better day than I did. And so I start doing dumb shit. I take long shots. It's anything in the world, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna come in second place. And that is all boy. I mean, that is called to use the title of a book. That was disgusting. That's called Testosterone Inc.
Robert Craven 12:21
Yeah. Cool. That's, I love that. Let's all keep going. So, extreme humanism. So could you just describe what you mean by extreme humanism?
Tom Peters 12:32
Yeah, but I'm gonna do it in a very odd way. Because I want to do it at a micro level, rather than talking about the big things. And I really hope that the people who are watching us will listen to these two examples. And, you know, not instantly but make their own interpretation. There is a wonderful book. Mine wasn't the only wonderful book written recently. And I don't know you can read the title doesn't matter. Yeah, compassion omics the revolutionary scientific evidence that caring makes a difference. It's a horrible title, which makes it a perfect title. Because all the people running hospitals these days have bloody MBAs and unless you say, you know, we got to go there. They won't. Okay, so here's the deal. And the researchers are MDS with PhDs and statistics. So there's no bullshit about this. And this number was refined over a jillion studies, if you, the doctor are having to tell me something not terribly attractive about why I'm in the hospital bed. If you make 37 seconds of direct eye contact with me, my hospitalisation will go down by 40%, my side effects will go down by 40%. And it was just two people looking intensely with no interruptions, and that doesn't happen in the hospital. But but here's the other one, which I even love more. And particularly again, relative to our audience. I tripped and fell down on I'm 100 years old, and my doctor said just to be safe, I hit my head a little bit, we're going to do a CAT scan. And so I go to the to the local hospital, and a tech does the CAT scan right. Then, probably 20 minutes later if it was dire, or a day later, if not, the radiologist does the interpretation. That's the way we do it. And then there's another experimental treatment and the other experimental treatment when I come in and you're the tech, you basically say to me, Listen, we have to do something for our records. Would you mind if I use my iPhone? I took a picture of you and I say no, of course not. So now doctor A radiologist A is looking at a screen and all sorts of numbers and graphs are flying through from this cat scan completely quant and he gets a result or she gets a result, treatment to same dock, same screen. But in the upper right hand corner of the screen there is about a little two inch by two inch or three inch by three inch photo of me. If the photo is there, and you know there's a heart, a radiologist, for God's sakes, they're not required to smile, they only take mathematics and eye science. If the photo is there, the radiologist spends about 50% more time. And there's a term that I think everybody knows what what the radiologist is looking for is what they call anomalies. Obviously, something wrong that you hadn't expected some sign of internal bleeding or something like that, the radiologist and that's what the hell that the guy or woman is paid for. Radiologists finds 50% more anomalies on that picture on that, in that data coming by, if Tom is in the upper right hand corner, because I'm dealing with a human being now that is extreme humanism. And it's also again, relative to people who were code is a significant part of their life. I mean, you know, I'll give you 100 other examples, but that's the power of this. I mean, you know, I want to just sit here and say, for God, effing sates pay attention to those two examples they apply to every living human being who's watching us.
Robert Craven 17:06
So why, why? Why do you think people don't get that? Why do you think people haven't got that?
Tom Peters 17:16
Well, and again, I will say one thing, if I say something that's not entirely complimentary about people who have computer science degrees or what have you, you are not being lectured to by somebody with a philosophy degree. You are being lectured to, as it were, by me, who has four quantitative degrees from Cornell and Stanford. So you can't mess with me on that dimension. And that's part of the part of the issue. I do. I have an MBA and a PhD from business school and an Anna BCE and MC and civil engineering. From engineering school. We were taught numbers, we were taught charts, graphs standard. Yeah. I said to somebody, because my thesis advisor had to get his statistics degree from the University of Chicago at the age of 22. I said, Whenever I see a page full of data, I immediately do the standard deviation, you know, I can't can't look at it. Yeah, absolutely. And see that curve in front of me. But we may have been, well, part part of its jeans, but let's stick with what I'm saying. And then I'll come back to jeans. But it's just I would have thought, a 798 on my math SATs was a bad day. You know, I was really good at that stuff. And Cornell said, You know, you have to be well rounded. We'll give you a psych course. And we'll give you a history course. Cornell engineers, maybe it's better today. We're the most arrogant living human beings on earth. You know, we weren't Ethica New York. And we thought that MIT in Boston was a cute little store. Cute little school over on the on the East Coast. And we had to take the damn courses to graduate but it was Oh shit. I've got to go to that English literature course. Oh, for God's sakes, I've gotta go. It was a total absolute insult to us to have to spend our time and I said to somebody much later, oh my god. I went to these two incredible universities, Cornell and Stanford. And I never and I'm almost tearing up, walked across the street. From the engineering quad to the liberal arts quad or from the business quad to the liberal arts quad. And they're 200 yards away from me were these amazing, amazing human beings. So it's a first of all, for those of us and probably the majority people, we may have added at birth. But we've talked at this within an hour. It's pounded out of us. And then pretty much across the board, I mean, there's, there's the old line about, never promote the best salesman to sales manager. But can we do it all the time, you're going to promote me in the XYZ company, because I give really sharp presentations, and my PowerPoint slides are better than your PowerPoint slides. You know, I remember the opposite of that was absolutely wonderful. As one of one of my better days, I was giving a seminar in Delhi. And it was a pretty kind of biggest deal. Sitting directly in front of me, was the Chief of Staff, which means, number one, the Chief of Staff of the Indian Army, for God's sakes. And you know, that's scary, particularly if you were in the military. And we're about that size when you were in the military. And we got talking about some of this. And his wonderful answer is he said, I am considering for colonels for a promotion to general.
Tom Peters 21:36
And he said, the number one thing I look at is the degree throughout their career in which they have produced effective officers. It's not that they can read a map better than the next person. But as he said, and now I go interview those officers. It's jet. Colonel time is about to be promoted, perhaps to general. Well, you know, first of all, I check it out. And I say, Well, you know, who are the people, Colonel Tom had the best people. And you know, one of them is major this and one of them is general that and one of them left, and he's running a company, I want to know the number of people who had, it's like a third grade teacher, fourth grade teacher who had dramatically improved lives as human beings and leaders, because they work for me. And that's a very, very, very big deal. You know, and back to this thing that we were talking about before with the picture in the upper right hand corner. I lay down the law. And I want to say two things about empathy is the number one thing we look for in hiring. And so I'm talking to a lot of people with quant degrees. Guy named Peter Miller is the CEO or chairman of a biotech company in the Boston area called up the notes. And his one liner is one of my favourite one liners, he said, we only hire nice people. But he immediately and this is the key part for the people who are watching us. He said, listen, some of the biotech degrees that I need, have names that you can't even understand the degrees are so sophisticated. But he said, Guess what, you take the most narrow degree whatsoever. And guess what in the world, there are a lot of people who have that degree, don't hire the jerks. And so it's not a matter of Oh, my God, you know, whatever. And one of the ways he does it, which I also is, is I'm interviewing you, your record in terms of education is so good, I'm weeping, I am desperate to hire you. But when our interview is over, and this is her his words, not mine, you have to run the gauntlet. And that is seven or eight interviews with me, which might be with a 26 year old and the finance department would might be with a receptionist, which might be with somebody who's in R&D. And every one of those six or seven people has the right to veto your hiring.
Robert Craven 24:14
So do you think that the whole extreme humanism thing is much easier? And, again, we're talking bell curve stuff, but it's much easier in a small business where we know everyone we're family, then you get to 25 or 50 people and you're starting to scale put systems and processes in. So is it is it almost inevitable that we become less human as yet as the business gets bigger?
Tom Peters 24:43
Okay. Two answers. First part is you're absolutely right. Some old McKinsey colleagues of mine and this was seven or eight years ago, did a study of the 1000 largest publicly traded companies in the United States, and they did 40 years worth of data, okay? Over a 40 year period, not a single company, in that 1000 out performed the stock market. When you're looking at that horizon, when I'm giving a speech, I always say, and I've got big company people, Hey, go for it and have fun, your company's getting worse. So you might as well have some fun on the way down the hill. I certainly agree with you with Fortune 500 e sizes. In the American workforce, 7% of us work for the fortune 500 Which using that advanced math 93% of us don't. And so the whole world to me is SMEs and my people, the management guru class act as if there's nothing on earth, except the fortune 500 in the footsie. 100 godsakes. Yeah, it's harder by 10.
Tom Peters 26:10
We had as part of the research, there's a guy named Richard Sheridan. And he runs a system software house and Ann Arbour Michigan, and he wrote a book with the strangest damn title known to humankind. It is called Joy, Inc, JL y comma, I, NC. And he said, the fundamental notion in our workforce is to make it a place where it is a joy to come to work. And I don't know his numbers, but I think it hits your point right on the head, I think maybe 50-75 people some number like that, which is non trivial. And it does get harder. And it is easier to let the processes run the show. Which means you have to work your ass off. I mean, let me tell you. There was one hour that changed my life. I hate words like epiphany. It was an epiphany. Early in the research for In Search of Excellence. My subsequent co author, Bob Waterman, and I we didn't know there was going to be a book. We were doing companies that we thought work while we were doing interviews and so on. We were in San Francisco, and there was this interesting, middle sized company down the road in Palo Alto called Hewlett Packard. It was big, but not by today's standards, it had just hit the $1 billion. Mark is, as I recall, we went down to interview the president, John Young. First of all, we lived in the Bank of America tower. And if you wanted to talk to the President, you went up to the 50th floor and there were seven rows of executive assistants. And while you were waiting, you were handed a cup of coffee, which was China that came directly from Buckingham Palace. So we get down to Palo Alto and go off the reception desk and said, You know, we're here for an interview with John Young 30 seconds later, John comes out and says, Hey, guys, welcome aboard. He then Texas to his palatial office, which is an eight foot by eight foot cubicle with a plastic wall that comes up to my chest. In the interview, he talked about what he called the HP way, which back to the big, big, big QA commentary has gone downhill alas. And within the HP way, he introduced us to the four most important letters in my adult life. And they were MB WA, managing by wandering around. And that has become a metaphor to me. What he proved that day, and I want to come back to this from a wanderer is you can be an intimate touch with the real people doing the real work and a billion dollar company. If you have a job title like President. And, and it is possible. We had this interview with him at one point he said, he said, you're probably thinking about bullshit ours. He actually was a Stanford MBA. So we're Bob whatever. He said, so let's do some MPW. So we go out, and I don't really cross the road or whatever we did, but we go into the engineering spaces. And you know, a bunch of people age probably well, 26 to 46, what have you. I'm not gonna lie to you and say that Jung knew every name. They all knew him. And he acted like he was meeting with second cousins, or first cousins, and he did know a lot of the names and they, it was nothing stilted and they shot the shit. And they talked about things that were important. And then over in a corner somewhere there was this old fart, and he was sitting down with a young engineer and they were all intensely and brothers green and and Yun turns to us and said, Listen, hey guys, I want you to meet this guy who's in the corner. This was not a setup. We go over to the corner where the old fart is meeting with the young engineer. And John turns to Bob and I. And he said, I, I'd like to introduce you to guys to Bill Hewlett. That was one of the great oh shit moments in my life, but there was Hewlett who was probably 60 at that point, and he's talking to a 27 year old engineer about something that's up on a screen that has to do with some software that they're redesigning. I won't say as if it was two college drinking buddies, but they were just two adults having a normal conversation.
Tom Peters 30:48
And so that's the answer to your question about how can we keep it? Can we keep it from deteriorating when we hit 25, 50, 100? Or 150? And how do we do it. And as I said, MPW is a metaphor, for me, it's not a it's not a doesn't mean, particularly in the age of that are the days of the pandemic, you know, we do the knock, but it's a metaphor for the ability to be, and the word is chosen carefully in intimate touch with the real people doing the real work. And intimate is key. It's a it's a, you and I don't know each other very well. But we're doing NB wa here, guys having a chat, you know, it's two guys. And we done it twice. And we kind of get off on each other. Even though it's a very professional reason that the two of us are here.
Robert Craven 31:46
I'm desperately desperately aware that Shelley is probably going timeout timeout, the time is coming to an end so much as.
Tom Peters 31:57
I'm allowed, after 20 odd years, I'm allowed.
Robert Craven 32:03
So my question is this tom, is you have this this, what I call an ology. A way of looking at the world, you've been pushing, pushing this, you know, from the first day when I did my MBA way back in whenever it was nice, the hardest, soft, soft is harder. It's like, Wow, so you've been pushing this stuff for a long time. And yet, I'm still trying to get my head around. Why? Why? And I've asked the question before, so but I'll still ask it again. Why people are so insistent on on still chasing increasing earnings per share, year on year why they're so insistent on thinking if it's an org chart, it's good enough why they don't understand why people don't do stuff, yet they've told them what to do is, I'd be intrigued to know why you think that there aren't more Tom type companies and there are.
Tom Peters 33:04
I mean, the real answers beats the hell out of me. I've been trying for 40 years. That Partially, partially, I'd go back to my point, just a couple of minutes ago. Richard, who is now the EVP should have been hired the way the guy adopting us, you know, way back when when Richard was a new graduate from, you know, the University of Chicago economics department, or whatever it happened to be so and so 100% of hiring decisions from day one. I'm gonna digress again, because I cannot tell story just one little second. Mayo Clinic comes out on the top of best medical facility people Treaters in the United States year after year after a year. You're a great surgeon. You're a neurosurgeon, you're applying for jobs at Mayo, and I'm interviewing you. And we have a half an hour conversation. You don't know my little secret. I don't know exactly how I do it in today's world, but maybe I got a pen and Mickey scratches on my hand. During the interview. I am counting the number of times that you use the word we yeah, my team, we did this. We got that done. And the number of times we use the word I and I don't give a damn if you're the planets best neurosurgeon. If the eyes beat the wheeze, dude, you ain't come into work here now. And I want to make it legit. I mean, a they're the best. But why is this the case? Relative to earlier question. Dr. Mayo in 1914 introduced the notion of collaborative medicine. And God bless him. It's stuck for over 100 years but it's there. So centrepiece and there's one woman that they hired it was quoted. There's a there's A bit of A. There's a wonderful book. It's cited in my book, The management, something of mayo management secrets of Mayo Clinic. But some woman surgeon who is hired by Mayo is quoted as saying, I and you know, obviously, she doesn't really mean it quantitatively, even though she's acquired. She said, I am 100 times 100 times more powerful at Mayo than I was in my last job, because we work together on things, which is not the hospital way of doing business. Why don't people do it? I told you, I don't know. I said to somebody, you know, looking at all those degrees I've got, if you want to understand everything in my book, you have got to show me a signed certificate of successful completion of the fourth grade. Which is what age nine whatever your vocabulary was at age nine.
Robert Craven 36:10
Doubledays me that'll do me.
Tom Peters 36:12
For God's sakes. I mean, this this stuff, I mean, I love these stories, but I Toro is the lawn, Toro, lawn mowers, power, mores, et cetera, et cetera. Toro introduced the notion of apologising when they get noticed that somebody had an accident, okay. I'm sorry, when they started apologising as a routine part of stuff. I mean, they're making equipment that can hurt you. One more, is it said or done? Amateurs are using them. When they started apologising, the number of lawsuits that were filed against them went through the floor. Yeah, by something like 80% or 90%, you know, because I said, you know, we are really sorry that we cut off your left arm, and then you respond and say, Listen, it was really my fault. I wasn't doing it right. You know, I'm obviously exaggerating, for whatever, but that's pretty close to you. And I all know. We hire the wrong people. We train them wrong. We promote them for the wrong reasons. We don't do like that Chief of Staff of the Army army in India, and say, Who are the people you grew during your 25 years moving up the chain of command? Listen, one thing, I have to do this practical, and this triggered it. And it's so important for the people who are watching us listening to us, in those companies of 25 or above. I use this term and it is true. The number one asset in your organisation is the full set of first line managers. Any idiot can be a vice president, a first line manager, I mean, the data are there. You look at the data and it says if you've got a great frontline manager, productivity goes up, quality goes up, reset, retention goes up. Every damn thing. Innovation goes up everything in the world. Those are the people you know, back back to the military and I was in the Navy. The Sergeant's run the army, the chief petty officers run the Navy and officers are incidental. You know, I was in Vietnam, and we was doing combat engineering and we would have these convoys going out to a job site. And you may have sounded like I was trying to be a hero. And you know, it was my detachment. I always wrote in the front sheet front Jeep, and my chief always rode in the back jeep. And my logic was simple. If we hit a mind and I'm blown up does not make excuse my language I hope I can get away with does not make a god damn bit of difference. Another 23 year old Lieutenant bites the dust if the chi is blown up. Yeah. And anybody who's been in the military around the military knows that what I just said it's not an exaggeration.
Robert Craven 39:33
I think we're gonna have to wrap up otherwise surely will come after me. Fine. I mean, just final thoughts from your final final words of wisdom what is what would you like to leave our audience thinking about pondering about or, or doing differently?
Tom Peters 39:56
Two things there's a surprise Urban New York Times columnist by the name of David Brooks. He wrote a column A while back, I think it actually came from a book of his. And the column was about what he called resume virtues and eulogy virtues. And the resume virtue says he went to Stanford, he got two degrees, he went to work for McKinsey, he was promoted to partner two years early. He went on and started his own business, and it made the Inc 500 fastest growing business. That's the CV. The eulogy degrees are, how did he treat people? How did he behave on a day to day basis. And what I'm saying to people and practical knowledge to people who are watching us leaders, or people who've only been working for two weeks, the end of the day, how was your eulogy score today and give you an example of what I mean. And you and I talked about a year ago, and I know that I use this example. But I'm gonna use it again. I'm running a unit during the pandemic, we have 15 people or something like that. And we have meetings because you can't get things done without meetings, there's zoom meetings. And, as should be the case, any leader who does not know the name of every employee's child, and what grade the child is in, is dirt in my book. And we've had, you know, looking back kind of quantitatively at the last 15 minutes, and you've showed up every, every meeting on time. Well, I'm going to use a phone and instead of my computer, we're going to have a little chat, and I'm going to say, Alright, give you a flag mark, and I'm gonna give you a black mark, because you've gotten to every meeting on time, I happen to know that you have two kids, I happen to know that your wife works on the second floor teaching remotely the third grade, I happen to know that you have a mother who has, you know, some early signs of dementia, and you have to deal with that. This is a pandemic, take care of yourself, take care of your family, be like Miss meetings. The ballgame during this pandemic, and in general in life is not about getting the productivity increase to the 7.3% level because it was only 6.9 in the last quarter. And then the suckered play about this and not denigrated. If I've behaved that way toward you, your output is going to be infinitely higher than the output of the stiff who's running a group like that and beats the shit out of people during a pandemic, who show up late for meetings. So that's the kind of behaviour I want to offer in the world. And I you years and years ago, I gave a speech in Dublin. And afterwards, because it's required by Irish law, went out with one of the people who attended and we had our dentists. And he ran a middle sized marketing services company. And we got an I had done this damn thing. 25 leadership traits or something. And he looked at me, and he said, you know, leadership list was pretty good. He said, It's unfortunate. We said, it's unfortunate. Did you miss the most important thing? Well, that's the kind of feedback you have to get when you're exhausted. And he said, The most important thing is people who lead have to love leading. They've got to get off on this stuff, of hanging around getting to know people dealing with the larger puzzle and so on. It has to be it has to be a labour of love. And somebody beat me up a little bit. And I really understand why and I agree with him to a certain degree. They said I always worry when a group calls themselves family, because my family is at home. And I don't have any problem with the spirit of that. But here's the point and I really do hope people who are watching us will listen to this even though the again the math required is not very high. Unless you were born with a silver spoon.
Tom Peters 44:53
And I was born with a dented tin spoon unless you were born with a silver spoon. You are going to spend more hours of your adult waking life at work than you will with your family. Even if you're a great family man or family web woman, and my smart aleck way of responding to myself, is to say, if you piss away your work life, you've pissed away your life because that's the majority of your waking hours. And so maybe it's not family with a capital F, and I understand the problems of nepotism and all those sorts of things, but it is your mates. You know, God bless the Aussies, it's your mates is what it is, are you gonna call them colleagues or what have you makes the perfect word for it, actually, you know, the people who are part of your life and you want hopes wouldn't be at the organisation unless you were Begley proud of what it was that we're trying to accomplish, and so on. So it's eulogy. And then the soccer play if you do this stuff, you make the most money. And there is research that my old pals at McKinsey did a study of 650 companies or something like that. 168 of the 600 focused on the long term. And then we did the other side of the coin was the ones who believed believed in Milton Friedman, and thought that life begins and ends with 90 days earnings, the 168 are invested in people and for the long term, quantitatively beat the shit out of the Friedman knights reminds me about a better quarter. But if we go two years, three years, five years, certainly 10 years, which, incidentally, when Friedman wrote his article saying there's no such thing as corporate responsibility back in 1970 50%, of earnings of the big companies, 50% of earnings went to the shareholders went to the executives, etc. And 50% of the earnings went to people and research 40 years later, listen to the damn number 50% the people and research is now 9% 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 single digit 9%. What? Bullshit, What a travesty. What a sin against humanity. In my opinion. Listen, I'm not speaking as a as a priest or preacher. I was raised as a Presbyterian, but it's lowercase religion. I have I'm sad to say not darkened the door of a church, you know, for a long time. And the things I'm talking about absolutely work absolutely as much for an atheist, as they do for a good Catholic boy who goes to mass five times a week at 7am. That's not quite. It's human decency.
Robert Craven 47:45
And that's a brilliant place to end because if we don't end Stacy will come chasing after me. So, Tom, thank you as ever, for being incredibly generous with your time and incredibly generous with sharing your thoughts about how we do things. It's been a real pleasure, as it always is now to talk with you. I look forward to talking to you again soon.
Tom Peters 48:07
I hope we do that. It's been an absolutely lovely time for me. I really care about this stuff. You really care about this stuff. You can't talk about it enough. And so I await your next invitation.
Robert Craven 48:22
I'll be here really fantastic. Thank you very much indeed. It's been great talking to you.