8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
1/92
The Re-imaginationImperative:
A Passion for Passion!
Tom Peters/National Leadership Summit 2004/Minneapolis/26June04
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
2/92
Slides at
tompeters.com
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
3/92
Uncertainty is the onlything to be sure of.Anthony Muh,
head of investment in Asia, Citigroup Asset Management
If you dont like change,youre going to like
irrelevance even less.General EricShinseki, retired Chief of Staff,
U. S. Army
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
4/92
Context:A
Perfect Storm.
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
5/92
A Perfect StormJobs
TechnologyGlobalization
Security
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
6/92
14 MILLIONservice jobs are in
danger of being
shipped overseasUCB study/11.04
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
7/92
When I was growing up, myparents used to say to me:
Finish your dinnerpeople in
China are starving. I, by contrast,find myself wanting to say to mydaughters: Finishyour
homeworkpeopleinChinaandIndiaarestarvingforyourjob. Thomas Friedman/06.24.2004
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
8/92
E.g.
Jeff Immelt: 75% ofadmin, backroom, finance digitalized in
years.
Source: BW (01.28.02)
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
9/92
This is a dangerous world and
it is going to become more dangerous.
We may not be
interested in chaos butchaos is interested
in us.Source: Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations:
Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
10/92
Biases &Purpose.
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
11/92
In Toms world, itsalways better to try a swan
dive and deliver acolossal belly flop than tostep timidly off the
board while holding yournose.Fast Company/October2003
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
12/92
The greatest dangerfor most of us
is not that our aim is
too highand we miss it,but that it is
too lowand we reach it.Michelangelo
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
13/92
It is the foremost taskand responsibility
of our generation tore-imagine ourenterprises, private
and public. from the back cover,Re-imagine!
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
14/92
#1: A Bias
forA
ction.
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
15/92
We have a
strategic plan.Its called doing
things. Herb Kelleher
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
16/92
Fail.
Forward.
Fast.
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
17/92
Sams
Secret #1!
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
18/92
Fail.Forward.Fast. High-tech Exec
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
19/92
Reward
excellentfailures. Punishmediocre successes.
Phil Daniels, Sydney exec (and, de facto, Jack)
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
20/92
Weird Wins!
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
21/92
Huh?
Quiet, workmanlike, stoicleaders bring about the big
transformations. JC
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
22/92
WellingtonNelson
DisraeliChurchill
MontgomeryThatcher
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
23/92
T. Paine/P. Henry/A. Hamilton/T. Jefferson/B. FranklinA. Lincoln/U.S. Grant/W.T. Sherman
TR/FDR/LBJ/RR/JFKPatton/Monty/Halsey
M.L. King/C. de Gaulle/M. Gandhi/W. Churchill
Picasso/Mozart/Copernicus/Newton/Einstein/Djarassi/WatsonH. Clinton/G. Steinem/I. Gandhi/G. Meir/M. Thatcher
E. Shockley/A. Grove/J. Welch/L. Gerstner/L. Ellison/B. Gates/S. Jobs/S. McNealy/T. Turner/R. Murdoch/W. Wriston
A. Carnegie/J.P. Morgan/H. Ford/S. Honda/J.D. Rockefeller/
T.A
. EdisonRummy/Norm/Henry/WolfieElizabeth Cady Stanton/Susan B. Anthony/Martha CaryThomas/Carrie Chapman Catt/Alice Paul/Anna Elizabeth
Dickinson/Arabella Babb Mansfield/Margaret Sanger
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
24/92
FLASH:
Innovation is
easy!
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
25/92
Saviors-in-Waiting
Disgruntled Customers
Off-the-Scope CompetitorsRogue Employees
Fringe
Suppliers
Wayne Burkan, Wide Angle Vision: Beat the Competition byFocusing onFringe Competitors, Lost Customers, and Rogue Employees
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
26/92
To grow, companies needto break out of a vicious
cycle of competitivebenchmarking and
imitation. W. Chan Kim & Ren Mauborgne,Think for YourselfStop Copying a Rival, Financial
Times/08.11.03
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
27/92
This is an essay about what it takes to create and sell something
remarkable. It is a plea for originality, passion, guts and daring. You cant beremarkable by following someone else whos remarkable. One way to figure
out a theory is to look at whats working in the real world and determine what
the successes have in common. But what could the FourSeasons andMotel6 possibly have in common? Or Neiman-Marcus andWal*Mart? Or Nokia
(bringing out new hardware every 30 days or so) and Nintendo (marketing
the same Game Boy14 years in a row)? Its like trying to drive looking in the
rearview mirror. The thing that all these
companies have in common is that they
have nothing in common. They are outliers. Theyre on
the fringes.S
uperfast or superslow. Very exclusive or very cheap. Extremelybig or extremely small. The reason its so hard to follow the leader is this:
The leader is the leader precisely because he did something remarkable.
And that remarkable thing is now takenso its no longer remarkable when
you decide to do it.Seth Godin, Fast Company/02.2003
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
28/92
The Bottleneck is at theTop of the Bottle
Where are you likely to find people with the
least diversity of experience, the largestinvestment in the past, and the greatestreverence for industry dogma?
At the top! Gary Hamel, Strategy or Revolution/
HarvardBusiness Review
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
29/92
I Dont Know!
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
30/92
Ninety percent of what
we call management
consists of making it
difficult for people to get
things done. P.D.
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
31/92
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
32/92
Quests!
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
33/92
Organizing Genius / Warren Bennis and Patricia
Ward Biederman
Groups become great only wheneveryone in them, leaders and
members alike, is free to do his or herabsolute best.
The best thing a leader can do for aGreat Group is to allow its members to
discover their greatness.
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
34/92
Best TalentW
ins!
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
35/92
Brand =Talent.
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
36/92
The leaders ofGreatG
roups love talentand knowwhere to find it. They revel inthe talent of others.
Warren Bennis & Patricia Ward Biederman,Organizing Genius
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
37/92
Les Wexner: Fromsweaters to people!
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
38/92
WomenRule!
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
39/92
AS
LEAD
ERS
,W
OMENRULE: New Studies find
that female managersoutshine their malecounterparts in almost
every measureTitle, Special Report, BusinessWeek, 11.20.00
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
40/92
Womens Strengths Match New Economy
Imperatives: Link [rather than rank] workers;favor interactive-collaborative leadership style[empowerment beats top-down decision making];sustain fruitful collaborations; comfortable with
sharing information; see redistribution of poweras victory, not surrender; favor multi-dimensionalfeedback; value technical & interpersonal skills,individual & group contributions equally; readily
accept ambiguity; honor intuition as well as purerationality; inherently flexible; appreciate
cultural diversity.
Source: Judy B. Rosener, Americas Competitive Secret: Women Managers
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
41/92
Internationally, the United
States ranked 60th
inwomens leadership, behindSierra Leone and tied with
Andorra. Marie Wilson, Closing the Leadership Gap
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
42/92
10.1/28/3.6
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
43/92
Educate for a
Creative
Society!
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
44/92
Age ofAgricultureIndustrial Age
Age of Information IntensificationAge of Creation Intensification
Source: Nomura Research Institute
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
45/92
My wife and I went to a [kindergarten] parent-teacher
conference and were informed that our buddingrefrigerator artist, Christopher, would be receiving a
grade of Unsatisfactory in art. We were shocked. Howcould any childlet alone our childreceive a poor
grade in art at such a young age? His teacherinformed us that he had refused to
color within the lines, which was a
state requirement for demonstratinggrade-level motor skills.
Jordan Ayan, AHA!
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
46/92
Ye gads: Thomas Stanley has not only found no
correlation between success in school and anability to accumulate wealth, hes actually founda negative correlation. It seems that school-
related evaluations are poor predictors of
economic success, Stanley concluded. What didpredict success was a willingness to take risks.
Yet the success-failure standards of mostschools penalized risk takers. Most educational
systems reward those who play it safe. As aresult, those who do well in school find it hard to
take risks later on.Richard Farson & Ralph Keyes, WhoeverMakes the MostMistakes Wins
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
47/92
15Leading Biz Schools
Design/Core: 0Design/Elective: 1
Creativity/Core: 0Creativity/Elective: 4Innovation/Core: 0
Innovation/Elective: 6
Source: DMI/Summer 2002
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
48/92
Make Dreams
Come True!
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
49/92
From Products and
Services toScintillating
Experiences
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
50/92
The surplus society has a surplus of
similarcompanies, employing
similarpeople, with similar
educational backgrounds, coming upwith similarideas, producing
similarthings, with similarprices
and similarquality.
Kjell Nordstrm and Jonas Ridderstrle, FunkyBusiness
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
51/92
TheExperience Ladder
ExperiencesServicesGoods
Raw Materials
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
52/92
Experiences are asdistinct from services
as services are fromgoods.
Joseph Pine & James Gilmore, The Experience Economy:
Work Is Theatre & EveryBusiness a Stage
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
53/92
Club Med is morethan just a resort; its a
means of rediscoveringoneself, of inventing an
entirely new me. Source: Jean-Marie Dru, Disruption
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
54/92
Experience: Rebel Lifestyle!
What we sell is the ability for
a4
3-year-old accountant todress in black leather, ride
through small towns and have
people be afraid of him.Harley exec, quoted in Results-Based Leadership
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
55/92
Duet Whirlpool washing machine tofabric care system white goods: a sea of
undifferentiated boxes $400 to $1,300 the Ferrari of washing machines
consumer: They are our little mechanical
buddies. They have personality.W
hen they arerunning efficiently, our lives are running
efficiently. They are part of my family.machine as aesthetic showpiece laundry
room to family studio/ designer laundryroom (complements Sub-Zero refrigerator andhome-theater center)
Source: New York Times Magazine/01.11.2004
8/7/2019 Better Life - Tom Peters
56/92
1997-2001
>$600: 10% to 18%$400-$600: 49% to 32%