Tom Peters on Excellence

No discussion of Excellence can ignore the profound influence of Tom Peters.  In Search of Excellence, A Passion for Excellence and Thriving on Chaos are fascinating, detailed examinations of what works.  In chapter 1 of A Passion for Excellence, Tom Peters describes the four principles he believes are at the core of Excellence. They are:

• Care of Customers
• Constant Innovation
• People 
• Leadership through Managing by Wandering Around.

His key theme is that Excellence is simple, not easy, but simple. The paradox is that you have to do all of these things with a single minded dedication to doing well.  This quote struck home with me again as I reread it:

"I turns out that neither superior customer service nor constant innovation - the two sustaining edges of excellence - is built upon genius in the executive suite, sleight-of-hand techniques or mystical strategic moves on a game board that allow one to gain a five or ten year advantage over one's competitors.  Both are built, instead, on a bedrock of listening, trust and respect for the dignity and creative potential of each person in the organization."  (Page 579, Tom Peters Two Complete Books, Wings Books, (c) 1995)

As Tom Peters so eloquently points out, Excellence is about people, creating communities of excellence through listening, respect and giving people the space to be innovative and creative.  I don't think the world has changed all that much.  I think we have forgotten the basics of Excellence. We have to get back to the fact that business is about people; looking after our customers, our suppliers, our team.  Leadership is about listening, trusting and building respect.  Imagine that. Leading by listening - really listening, not just to the words, but to the meaning, and the intention of the conversation.  The problem I see in organizations every day is that everyone is so busy talking, (through emails, text messages, and meetings) that no one has the time to listen. 

The New Key Success Factors to Create An Excellence Advantage

When I attended business school, several generations ago, one of the key teachings was the ability to identify the key success factors (KSFs) of a business.  By understanding the key success factors and focussing attention on them you could, the theory went, make the business more successful.  In those days the key success factors were such things as low cost of production, proprietary technology or knowledge, distribution or pricing.  If your business or organization could master the key success factors you could dominate your industry.

We live in a different time now.  In an era of instant access to knowledge through the Internet, Google and Social Networks; information and knowledge is ubiquitous.  A competitor can have the same information and can learn as fast as we can.  In an age where finance is global, the ability to move manufacturing to lower cost markets has significantly reduced North American production capacity.  The competitive advantages of old no longer work.

I believe there are five new Key Success Factors.  I believe by mastering these five KSFs each of us as individuals and in communities of excellence can succeed in a new manner. What makes them different, is that they are personal KSFs that anybody can adopt and be successful.  More importantly, these can be scaled to the organizational level as well.  An Excellence Advantage is built with these five New KSFs in mind.

The five are:

1. Creativity,
2. The Experience,
3. Relationships,
4. Personal Leadership, and
5. Sustainability.

Creativity:  Creativity, and it's half brother Innovation are critical to success in today's economic environment.  With ubiquitous information, it is the ability to manipulate, interpret, analyse and reuse in creative and innovative ways that contribute to an excellence advantage.  Don't compete - create!  Find new ways of interacting with clients, customers and stakeholders.  Creativity is the ability to see something in your imagination and bring it to reality.  Creativity is an extraordinary and wonderful gift, and as human beings we all have it. 

The Experience:  We now live in the Experience Economy.  Our clients and customers no longer want to buy goods and services, they want to be involved in an experience that enriches them. So often we do not examine the experience we are giving.  Experience is more than just customer service, it is all the design elements and details in how we interact, interface and communicate.  In the experience economy we create opportunities for conversations. The Experience is the product. Entrepreneurs and organizations that truly understand this are unique and generate raving fans and tribes of supporters. 

Relationships: If Experience is the product, then Relationship is the distribution system. This KSF is built on the ability to create unique one on one, one to many relationships.  The Internet, social media and other technologies gives us the ability to have incredible one on one conversations with a multitude of people.  Building relationships builds the trust we need to have to conclude a transaction.  

Personal Leadership:  Seth Godin, in his book Tribes, tells us of the world's need for all of us to be leaders.  To move from a management role to a leadership position.  The tribe can be small, or it can be large, but we need to take personal care to lead in areas of our passion.  Personal leadership means taking responsibility for what goes on in our lives and with those around us.  Anyone can be a leader.  You don't have to be the boss to be the leader, in fact in most cases the boss is not the leader in many organizations. One of the greatest books on leadership was written around 540 AD by St. Benedict, called The Rule. Reading the Rule of St Benedict opens one up to the real meaning of listening, being responsible, being reasonable and also being humble.  Personal leadership demands humility. 

Sustainability:  The last KSF is sustainability.  The world needs each of us to find ways to lower our ecological footprint while maintaining our financial, emotional and spiritual sustainability.  Sustainability is not just a good thing to do for the environment, it is a great way to do business and reflects your personal leadership commitment. 

At the core of An Excellence Agenda are Communities of Excellence, practising the New KSFs to develop and create an Excellence Advantage.  In future posts we'll link all the elements together into a management framework.

Excellence Agenda Interview

This past Monday morning I had a call from a colleague, David Cohen  inviting me to guest on a one hour teleclass scheduled for Wednesday evening.  It seems his planned guest had been in a bicycle accident and was unavailable and he needed a replacement in a hurry!  David really liked the Excellence Agenda concept and thought it would be great for the class.  This teleclass is offered by Alterna Credit Union  as a way of reaching out to their small business and entrepreneur clients.  The class offers an opportunity to connect with peers, get some one on one coaching on a topic that can help their business.  So Wednesday night we did the one hour teleclass.

It was really great.  Firstly, David, is a great host.  He makes his guests, me included, feel comfortable and his questions let you explore ideas and get into a conversation.  Alterna makes it easy for their clients to connect using a toll free teleconferencing system.  The participants asked great questions and we really got into the discussion. I was sorry to see the hour come to an end. One of the great lessons that I got from the discussion is that An Excellence Agenda works for all sizes of businesses, from one person self employed entrepreneurs, to mature organizations.  It was wonderful to hear people take the concept and run with it. 

Congratulations to both Alterna and David for making this happen.  Check out David's site for his weekly radio show Small Business, Big Ideas.  I will be interviewed on the show in January on the Excellence Agenda concept and will post the link here.  Check out Alterna for their unique focus on building and promoting small business and entrepreneurship. 

The Artistic Director

Deep in my past I was a classically trained musician. I played oboe, the instrument that Samuel Pepys called, " an ill wind that nobody blows good". I played in both orchestras and chamber ensembles. I much preferred chamber music because each player is one to a part, yet you are part of a whole. I moved on into arts management and worked with symphony orchestras and ballet training school.

One of the unique aspects of arts organizations is that they are structured differently from other businesses.  They have an artistic director. The role of the artistic director is to cultivate the Excellence Agenda for the company. They are intimately involved with both the Vision/Change Agenda and the Mission/Sustaining Agenda of the organization. The Artistic Director is, in fact, the Champion of the Excellence Agenda. The company is only as good at its ability to perform to the level of the Excellence Agenda. Every performance is unique, some are better than others, all of them may be excellent!

The role of management, in this structure, is to create the environment in which the Excellence Agenda can be deployed.

There is a similar structure in film production. The Director is the keeper of the vision or whole concept of what the film will be.  The actors and the production team work to support that vision.

In sharing the concept of the Excellence Agenda with colleagues, it has occurred to me that we need to look at our organization with an Artistic Director lens. Who in your organization is the keeper of the Vision and the Mission? How well is that Vision/Mission articulated or shared? How well understood is it by the rest of the production team? Look around this week and identify the Champion of the Excellence Agenda in your organization. If you can't find one, maybe you have a gap that needs addressing.

Update on An Excellence Agenda

Today's post is on the progress of the Excellence Agenda Project launched in mid-September. 

I am pleased to report that the web site and the weblog are both getting excellent traffic.  The blog now has readers from Canada, Russia, Germany, the UK and the US.  It gets regular hits and the momentum is building nicely. 

Recent posts include conceptual models of an Excellence Agenda, posts on personal Excellence Agendas, and Managing the Gap.  The most popular posts are Meagan's Story and Caelan's Story, which tells me the blog needs more stories! Megan's Story was passed on to Metro Customer Service office and was referenced in their management newsletter.  If you have any examples of an Excellence Agenda that you think might make a good story for the blog feel free to contact me through the website: an-excellence-agenda.com

I am currently working with one client on an Excellence Agenda project and in negotiations with  three potential clients to do an Excellence Agenda project with them.

Upcoming topics for posts will include comments on Leadership and Management, the New Key Success Factors, Mediocrity and some case studies of excellence.  Other coming attractions: A Managers Guide to An Excellence Agenda and a Kindle Book.

I was one of the presenters at the ALI conference on Performance Measurement and Management in Government on October 18th.  The presentation was very well received.  The Conference was very impressive.  Great organization and terrific speakers.  Based on the response to the presentation in October, I have been invited back to present at the ALI conference on social media in government to be held in March.  I will post the link as I get more information.  The presentation from the 18th is posted on the website: an-excellence-agenda.com/Clients.html

I will be presenting a keynote on the New Key Success Factors at the Brockville Chamber of Commerce Breakfast on Thursday, November 24th at the Brockville Golf and Country Club.  Registration starts at 7:30 am, breakfast at 8:00 am and you are out by 9:00!  For more information contact the Brockville Chamber of Commerce here: Brockville Chamber of Commerce.

I am looking for additional potential sites for an Excellence Agenda demonstration project.  As well, I would be pleased to present An Excellence Agenda to any workgroup, team or management.  Feel free to contact me with any ideas or suggestions.

An Artful Life

One day I was thinking about my own life and how could I benchmark excellence in what I do day to day.  Every day I, like everyone else, faces challenges and obstacles that impact the outcomes for the day.  I realized that there was no "magic" number or metric that I could use that would say; today was successful!

I decided there had to be a some kind of way of intuitively recognizing if the day had been excellent or not.  After some thought, over some weeks, I came up with the Artful Life.  Every night as I review the day I ask myself one question:

If today was a painting, would I sign it?


This one question puts the whole day into perspective for me.  I realized through this exercise that my life is a canvas.  What I do every day is part of the mural of my life.  If at the end of the day, I feel good enough about the day that I can sign it, I can go to sleep knowing I have done my best.  If not, then I recognize the areas where I did not meet my standards and resolve to do better next time.

This exercise then led to additional thoughts about how I live my life.  Is my life an artful expression.  When I am looking to buy something, I now look at it from an Artful Life perspective.  Will this object add to the quality of my life, or is it just stuff?  I look around and my life is filled with stuff that does nothing to add to an Artful Life for me.  As I think about it more, I realize that stuff contributes to mediocrity, to feeling overwhelmed with the maintenance and the storage of it all.

I also began to see that the handmade pottery from a local potter was something that made my life and world better.  I now use a fountain pen instead of a ballpoint because of the way it makes everything I write more special.  I am looking to renew my wardrobe with fewer, better made clothes that will last longer with classical good looks.

Last Christmas I bought a game system.  I thought this was a great purchase because I could watch Bluray discs and play the up to the minute games.  Other than play bluray discs, I do not have the time to play video games.  Moreover, I can't figure out how to play the games I do have!  In short, this purchase did little to add to an Artful Life.  I would have been better to buy a bluray disc player and be done with it!

In evaluating what we have around us, what we need and what we desire;  what will add to the quality of our life?  What do we really need to paint a fabulous picture that at the end of every day we are willing to sign it?