Tom Peters: Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age

Tom Peters bases his strategy for surviving in the new era in which we find ourselves on 11 truths about leadership, explained during ExpoManagement 2004 in his conference: Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age.

(I wrote this article in May 2004 for Noticias.com and I had lost it… I am publishing it again because I think that what Tom Peters told us in 2004 is still valid today, for our companies)

It's been 4 days since Expomanagement ended. I'm now starting to digest everything that was said at the conference, because the truth is that after attending the 11 conferences of the main management "gurus" I was completely overwhelmed with information and new ideas. I needed to be able to sit down and write and draw, to start structuring the chaos that reigns in my mind.

Of the 11 conferences, the one that impacted me the most was the one by Tom Peters. I was struck not by the fact that she told 3,000 people (mostly men) that they should give their power to women managers, or by the fact that she was yelling and “scolding” us for a couple of hours, but by the shock that attending one of her conferences gives you. You end up rethinking everything and you come away determined to act to change conventional structures.

The phrase that sums it all up:

“If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less.”

Let's get started:

The 11 truths of leadership:

1. Talent Management:

In the era of “added value” through imagination, creativity and intellectual capital, the most important thing for a company is the recruitment, development and retention of people with extraordinary talent.

Great leaders trust in the talent of their team. A leader's mission should be to develop and manage the talent of their team.

Quote from David Ogilvy: “Our business needs a massive transfusion of talent, and talent, I believe, is usually found among the nonconformists, the dissidents and the rebels..”

For Tom Peters, companies should not “manage the career” of their employees. They should be offered opportunities to develop their own personality, so that they can take charge of their own careers. Life should be seen as a project; for each person, their time in a company should be part of a personal project. The company should help them to carry out this project.

2. Management of a company's metabolism:

The interaction between entrepreneurship, competition and invention is moving ever faster. A leader's mission is to increase and manage the ratio of this interaction in his or her organization.

Tom Peters suggests that to improve this ratio, strategic meetings in companies should be held several times a week instead of several times a year.

Quote from Mario Andreotti: “If things seem under control, you're not going fast enough.”.

3. Technology Management:

The Internet and other technologies associated with the network are changing everything. The leader of a company must be directly responsible for the implementation of new technologies in his company (however boring it may be).

4. Barrier Management:

Quote from Frank Lekanne Deprez & René Tissen: “The organizations we have created have become tyrants. They have taken over, keeping us chained, creating barriers that hold us back rather than help us in our business. The lines we draw on our precious organizational charts have become walls that no one can climb over, penetrate, or even see beyond..”

With this quote, Tom Peters illustrates what he considers to be one of the main problems facing today's companies: bureaucracy and processes.

In his opinion, the only solution to survive in the new era in which we find ourselves is to break down these barriers and completely redesign the structure and business processes. To this end, he suggests that implementing eBusiness at all levels of our organizations can greatly help to achieve this goal.

5. Managing Forgetfulness:

The new competitive reality requires us to turn our backs on those and everything that brought us here. Every leader needs a formal strategy to unlearn what they have learned.

Dee Hock Quote: “The problem is not how to get new lines of thought into your mind, but how to get rid of old ones..”

6. Metaphysical Management:

New values are emerging. We are increasingly moving into a world where products and services are ethereal. A leader must be aware of these changes.

Tom Peters suggests that the leader of a company should also be the MIC of the company (“Metaphysician-in-Chief”).

Quote from Kjell Nordstrom and Jonas Ridderstrale (Funky Business): “The 'excess society' has an excess of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar education, with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and with similar quality..”

Tom Peters argues that companies have defined so many “best practices” that they all now act in the same way.

For Peters, the secret is to focus on the experiences our customers get by purchasing our product. In my opinion, this is the most important part of the conference. The “philosopher’s stone” of the new era: Focus on Experiences, not Products.

In the Harley Davinson case (lecture given by Richard Teerlink, President of Harley Davinson) it was already clear to us that the strategy for Harley's reconversion had been based on selling experiences, not products: “We focus on giving the client reasons to ride a motorcycle“…and by the way we sell him a motorcycle, but the important thing is to convey to him everything he emotionally achieves when he rides a Harley.

Experience that Harley transmits: “Rebel lifestyle”

“What we sell is the ability of a 43-year-old accountant to dress in black leather, drive through small towns and get teenagers to be afraid of him..”

Peters illustrates this with other examples:

1. Toy sales: Focus on conveying childcare. Sportswear sales: Focus on attendance at sporting events. Plates and cutlery sales: Focus on the experience of eating out.
2. Garden tools for sale: focus on gardening services. Car sales: focus on car repair and maintenance.
   The secret is to connect emotionally with the customer and focus on differentiation focused on customer experiences. Obviously you have to have a good product, but what Metaphysical Management aims for is for you to focus on the experience, not the product.

7. Opportunity Management

There are two large groups that are forgotten by any marketing or product strategy: women and people between 45 and 65 years old. These two segments offer great opportunities for the leader who knows how to reach them.

Opportunity 1: Women

According to data from Peters, women make 94% of the purchasing decisions for household items, 92% for holiday destinations, 66% for personal computers, and 68% for cars. Overall, women make 83% of all purchasing decisions. But they are the great forgotten by marketing directors. According to data from Martha Barletta, from Marketing to Women, 91% of women think advertisers don't understand them and 58% are also upset by the ads they see.

For Tom Peters, the key to marketing to women is to be aware that a woman does not buy a brand, she joins a brand, she becomes part of it. The most important thing for a woman is the connection with other women, and this can be achieved through a brand.

Peters' advice is: "First connect women to each other and then connect them to the brand«. (When you ask a girl “How was school??”, the most normal thing is that he tells you in detail how his day has gone and talks to you about all his friends. When you ask a child this, he simply answers “I've been doing well.”)

My personal opinion on this, as a woman and as a marketer, is that we are certainly a forgotten target. Forgotten even by ourselves. Because I confess that Noticias.com's marketing plan does not include special actions to attract women, we simply think globally and act. And that is precisely the mistake that Peters believes the vast majority of planners make. And therefore, it is a great opportunity for those who know how to see it.I take good note and promise to correct it.).

Opportunity 2: between 45 and 65 years of age

The numbers Peters offers to illustrate this opportunity say it all:

Between 2000 and 2010, the segment of people aged 18 to 44 will decrease by 11%3T. The segment of people over 55 years of age will grow by 21%3T. More specifically, the segment of people aged 55 to 64 will increase by 47%3T.

Paradoxically, despite the fact that those over 45 will be a majority segment with a large purchasing power (all their mortgages are paid), there are almost no products (apart from pension plans) that are specifically aimed at them.

Peters sees a huge opportunity here for those leaders who know how to seize it. His advice for doing so is to focus on innovations and delivery systems.

8. Portfolio Management:

We need to think of each of the parts discussed in the previous points (our talented employees, customers, suppliers, leaders, projects, initiatives, etc.) in terms of a portfolio. The key question is: “Do we have a portfolio?”Is our portfolio as strange as these strange times demand??”. The leader of a company must think like a venture capital firm: strategically creating and managing diverse portfolios, not creating an overall strategy for all parties involved.

Mark Twain quote that illustrates this point: “The best swordsman in the world should not fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, he should fear an ignorant antagonist who has never held a sword in his hand; he does not act as he should, so the expert is not prepared to fight him; he does things he should not do and ends up surprising the expert and beating him..”

If we transpose this quote to the business world, it would be telling us that in order to make a company grow, it is necessary to break with vicious circles of competition and imitation. Tom Peters suggests that we ask ourselves if we have employees who are strange enough to represent today's strange society. He also suggests that we establish a coefficient of strangeness in our company on a scale of 1 to 10.

9. Error Management:

Making mistakes is more important than ever in the times we live in. The error rate is the best indicator of how quickly a company adapts to its times. A good leader must “manage"the error processes (he said it literally).

Quote from C. Northcote Parkinson: “Perfection is only achieved in companies that are about to collapse.”

In other words, in times where innovation is one of the pillars of the company, people should be encouraged to take risks and therefore make mistakes. Knowledge will emerge from these mistakes and by encouraging creativity at all levels we will end up finding what really makes the difference and will catapult us towards success.

10. Cause Management:

A good leader creates a “cause,” not a business. The business will work when all employees, suppliers and customers work for a common cause.

Quote from Richard Brandson: “I have never thought of myself as a businessman. What has always mattered to me is creating things that I am proud of..”

Quote from Howard Gardner (Leading Minds: An anatomy of Leadership): “The key (perhaps 'The Key') to leadership is the effective communication of a story.”

11. Passion Management:

Passion moves mountains. This was clear to us in Peters' presentation and also in the presentations of the other speakers at ExpoManagement. If there is one thing that is important in business, it is the passion of its leaders and its employees.

Napoleon Quote: “A leader is a seller of hope.”

Enthusiasm is contagious, there's no doubt about that. And Tom Peters exuded passion throughout the nearly two hours of his talk.
And finally, I include this small diagram that belongs to one of the slides in Peters' presentation:

The 12 truths of success in business

1. Talent is the Lack of respect for tradition Passion to the point of irrationality.
2. Believing in “What we are doing here.”
3. Don’t believe in “business as usual.”
4. Obsession with “Action”… and contempt for those who “don’t get it.”
5. Devilishly fast speed.
6. Go up and out.
7. I hate bureaucracy (hate bureaucracy with a passion).
8. Total customer orientation.
9. Reward mistakes.
10. Punish mediocre success.
11. Courage to fight alone against the forces of “popular/conventional wisdom.”
12. Clear understanding of the power of the Brand.

I hope you find this article as beneficial as I found the conference.

A hug.