Risk & Business Magazine JGS Insurance Magazine Spring 2019 | Page 18

EXCELLENCE
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training, which can take the form of online
or in-person courses, professional training
classes, or even just relevant business
reading, Peters says. Unfortunately,
business owners still treat training as an
expense rather than an investment in
their employees—an investment that can
lead to greater job satisfaction, enhanced
productivity, better pay, and increased
loyalty.
“There is a national imperative, whether you
have six employees or 666, to ensure that
an employee who leaves your organization
is not only better at doing his or her job but
also is better prepared to be a citizen of this
topsy-turvy world than they were before
walking in the door,” says Peters. “You have
a moral obligation to help them become
well-equipped for tomorrow.”
Peters describes a recent scenario in which,
in the midst of a “100-year storm” in his
home state of Massachusetts, he was forced
to summon a refrigerator repairman to
fix a broken compressor. Not only did the
repairman come out during severe weather,
but he revealed that he had just completed
a three-week training course on artificial
intelligence to stay on top of fast-changing
compressor technology. “That’s my ideal,”
says Peters. “Regardless of what comes, that
gentleman has a future.”
Peters harkens back to his days as a parent
of young children when, he says, “there
were third-grade teachers you would
walk through gunfire for—that’s how
spectacularly they treated your children—
while others would enter their classroom
as if punching a clock.” A great teacher
probably has a great principal who gives
him or her the tools they need and makes
them feel like they are doing a worthwhile
job, he points out. These are teachers
who don’t just teach to a test but also
understand that if there are 17 kids in
the class, each one is different than the
other 16 and needs to be treated differently.
Leaders who recognize this type of
individuality can nurture employees with
real staying power, he says.
The call for customized treatment of
employees comes hand-in-hand with
the recent shift in thinking that favors
liberal arts majors—with their creative
thinking, writing, and analytical skills—
over pure technology students, Peters
notes. Publications from the Harvard
Business Review to Fast Company to Forbes
have touted the emerging status of these
graduates, with Forbes asserting in a 2015
article by George Anders that the “useless”
liberal arts degree “has become tech’s
hottest ticket.”
Peters is well-known for his bias toward
action in the workplace—a favorite
philosophy he attributes to Fred Malek, his
boss from 1973 to 1974 while working in
the White House Office of Management
and Budget. In his new book, Peters
reasserts the importance of the “Eight
Basics,” which he originally cited in his first
book, In Search of Excellence, as the bedrock
of success:
1. A Bias for Action
2. Close to the Customer
3. Autonomy and Entrepreneurship
4. Productivity through People
5. Hands-On, Value-Driven
6. Stick to the Knitting
7. Simple Form, Lean Staff
8. Simultaneous Loose-Tight Properties
Of these, A Bias for Action deserves
its top billing, even more emphatically
than before, says Peters. He devotes a
good chunk of The Excellence Dividend
to addressing the merits of what he calls
WTTMSW, Peters-speak for Whoever Tries
the Most Stuff Wins. This, he says, is “the
only thing I’ve learned for sure in the last
50 years.”
The best example in the business world
was the early Silicon Valley competition
between software rivals Apple and
Microsoft. While Microsoft was quick to
launch new products at “blazing speed,”
Apple was on a quest for perfection,
slowing the company down considerably
in introducing new technologies. Although
Microsoft’s products—arguably launched
prematurely at times—could contain flaws,
the company would simply correct these
problems in its next release.
The challenge, says Peters, is that
the pursuit of WTTMSW requires a
WTTMSW culture, one in which “you are
ready, willing, and able to seriously play.”
"Serious play’ is not an oxymoron,” he
adds. “It is the essence of innovation.”
Unfortunately, research shows that even
young children are conditioned to shy away
from trying new things after hearing the
word “no” many times more often than
the word “yes.” Peters laments the loss of
the “playfulness” aspect of work, which he
describes as “teammates taking immense
pleasure in the messy process of many
approximations and wrong turns and dead
ends on the way to market.”
Of course, this type of freewheeling
corporate culture must come from the top
down. Many companies get so absorbed
in developing strategies that they get
stalled by numerous roadblocks before any
implementation has even been started, he
notes.
“A detailed strategy is stuff and nonsense,”
says Peters. “You head off in that general
direction, and as you go, the environment
shifts shape again and again. The key is to
be flexible and open to opportunities that
may crop up along the way.”
Another critical roadblock to action
is often the lack of cross-functional
collaboration, Peters says. “I fervently
believe that in most any organization of
more than a dozen people, the number one
issue that causes delays, implementation
failures in general, employee angst, and
customer ire is failure of cross-functional
communication and integration,” says
Peter. Internal barriers can be more of an
Tom Peters is a leading business management guru and founder of the Tom Peters Company. He continues to be in constant demand for lectures
and seminars. Peters is the author of 16 books, including In Search of Excellence (with Robert H. Waterman, Jr.), which is often cited as among the
best business books ever written. He lives in Massachusetts.
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