Tom Peters’ Manifestos2002

The Solutions Imperative:

From “Customer Satisfaction” to

“Customer Success”

Oracle/03.06.2002

1. A Pitiful Showing …

Forbes100 from 1917 to 1987: 39 members of the Class of ’17 were alive

in ’87; 18 in ’87 F100; 18 F100 “survivors” underperformed the market

by 20%; just 2 (2%), GE & Kodak, outperformed the market 1917 to 1987.

S&P 500 from 1957 to 1997: 74 members of the Class of ’57 were

alive in ’97; 12 (2.4%) of 500 outperformed the market from 1957 to 1997.

Source: Dick Foster & Sarah Kaplan, Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market

“Good management was the most powerful reason [leading firms] failed to stay atop their industries. Precisely because these firms

listened to their customers, invested aggressively in technologies that would provide their customers more

and better products of the sort they wanted, and because they carefully studied market trends and

systematically allocated investment capital to innovations that promised the best returns, they lost

their positions of leadership.”

Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma

2. Base Case …

“While everything may

be better, it is also increasingly the same.”

Paul Goldberger on retail, “The Sameness of Things,” The New York Times

“The ‘surplus society’ has a surplus of

similar companies, employing

similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, working in

similar jobs, coming up with similar

ideas, producing similar things, with

similar prices and similar quality.”

Kjell Nordstrom and Jonas Ridderstrale, Funky Business

“Companies have defined so much

‘best practice’ that they are now more or

less identical.”Jesper Kunde, A Unique Moment

“Customers will try ‘low cost

providers’ … because the Majors have not

given them any clear reason not to.”

Leading Insurance Industry Analyst

SWA > American +

Continental + Delta + Northwest + United + USAirways.

Source: Boston Globe (12.22.2001)

Getting Beyond Lip Service!

“No longer are we only an insurance provider. Today, we also offer our customers the products and services that help them achieve their dreams, whether it’s financial

security, buying a car, paying for home repairs, or even taking a dream

vacation.”—Martin Feinstein, CEO, Farmers Group

2002: Same-Same-Same …

Farmers = GE = Oracle = MCAA = Biotech &

Pharmaceutical Trainers = Omnicom =

Oracle (?????)

GE/IS: “We don’t sell circuit breakers.”

Farmers: “We don’t sell insurance.”

Oracle: “We don’t sell apps-in-boxes.”

MCAA: “We don’t sell ‘a job.’”

B&T Trainers: “We don’t sell pills.”

Omnicom: “We don’t sell ads.”

(Seagate: “We sell the sexiest boxes … and we’re proud of it.”)

3. Searching for New Bases for Value Added …

The Big Day!

09.11.2000: HP bids

$18,000,000,000for

PricewaterhouseCoopersconsulting business!

“These days, building the best server isn’t enough. That’s the

price of entry.”

Ann Livermore, Hewlett-Packard

“We make over three new product announcements a

day. Can you remember them?

Our customers can’t!”Carly Fiorina

HP … Sun … GE … IBM … UPS … UTC …

General Mills … Springs … Anheuser-Busch …

Carpet One … Delphi … Etc. … Etc.

“We want to be the air traffic

controllers of electrons.”

Bob Nardelli, GE Power Systems

“Customer Satisfaction” to “Customer Success”

“We’re getting better at [Six Sigma] every day. But we really

need to think about the customer’s profitability. Are customers’

bottom lines really benefiting from what we provide them?”

Bob Nardelli, GE Power Systems

HP … Sun … GE … IBM … UPS … UTC …

General Mills … Springs … Anheuser-Busch …

Carpet One … Delphi … Etc. … Etc.

Gerstner’s IBM: Systems Integrator of choice. (BW/12.01).

Global Services: $35B. Pledge/’99: Business Partner Charter. 72 strategic partners,

aim for 200. Drop many in-house programs/products.

HP … Sun … GE … IBM

… UPS … UTC … General Mills … Springs … Anheuser-Busch …

Carpet One … Delphi … Etc. … Etc.

“UPS wants to take over the sweet spot in the endless loop

of goods, information and capital that all the packages

[it moves] represent.”ecompany.com/06.01 (E.g., UPS Logistics

manages the logistics of 4.5M Ford vehicles, from 21 mfg. sites to 6,000 NA dealers)

HP … Sun … GE … IBM

… UPS … UTC …

General Mills … Springs … Anheuser-Busch …

Carpet One … Delphi … Etc. … Etc.

New Springs = Turnkey

Collections.Flexible sourcing.

Packaging.Merchandising.

Promotion.Systems & Site mgt.

Omnicom: 57% (of

$6B) from marketing services

Who was the number one employer of

architecture school grads in the U.S.

last year?

The Pursuit of … Whatever:

Accenture to “do” AT&T’s sales & customer service … for

$2.6B/5 years … savings to

AT&T of 50%. Accenture to “do” Avaya’s corporate

learning & training. Source: BW (02.04.2002)

“VISIONS OF A BRAND-NAME OFFICE EMPIRE. Sam Zell is not a man plagued by self doubt. Mr. Zell controls public

companies that own nearly 700 office buildings in the United States. … Now Mr. Zell says he will

transform the real estate market by turning those REITs into national brands. … Mr. Zell

believes [clients] will start to view those offices as something more than a commodity chosen

chiefly by price and location.” –New York Times (12.16.2001)

Problem: Everybody is going after the same space!

4. Cut The [Internal] Crap …

100 square feet

Dell’s OptiPlex Facility

Big Job: 6 to 8 hours.(80,000 per day)

Parts Inventory: 100 square feet.

The Real “New Economy”

“Only a few times in history have interaction costs

radically changed—one was the railroads, then the telegraph

and telephone. We’re going through another one right now.”

Jeff Skilling, Enron

“In an era when terrorists use satellite phones and encrypted email, US gatekeepers stand

armed against them with pencils and paperwork, and archaic computer systems that don’t

talk to each other.”Boston Globe (09.30.2001)

“Once devised in Riyadh, the tasking order took hours to get to the Navy’s six aircraft carriers—because the

Navy had failed years earlier to procure the proper communications gear that would have connected the

Navy with its Air Force counterparts. … To compensate for the lack of communications capability, the Navy was forced to fly a daily cargo mission from

the Persian Gulf and Red Sea to Riyadh in order to pick up a computer printout of the air mission tasking

order, then fly back to the carriers, run photocopy machines at full tilt, and distribute the documents to the air wing squadrons that were planning the next

strike.” –Bill Owens, Lifting the Fog of War

“CRM has, almost universally, failed

to live up to expectations.”

Butler Group (UK)

CGE&Y (Paul Cole): “Pleasant

Transaction” vs. “Systemic Opportunity.” “Better job

of what we do today” vs. “Re-think overall

enterprise strategy.”

Read It Closely: “We don’t sell

insurance anymore. We sell speed.”

Peter Lewis, Progressive

WebWorld = Everything

Web as a way to run your business’s innardsWeb as connector for your entire supply-demand chain Web as “spider’s web” which re-conceives the industry

Web/B2B as ultimate wake-up call to “commodity producers”

Web as the scourge of slack, inefficiency, sloth, bureaucracy, poor customer data

Web as an Encompassing Way of LifeWeb = Everything (P.D. to after-sales)

Web forces you to focus on what you do bestWeb as entrée, at any size, to World’s Best at Everything

as next door neighbor

Message: eCommerce is not a technology play! It is a

relationship, partnership, organizational and

communications play, made possible by new

technologies.

Message: There is no such thing as an effective B2B or

Internet-supply chain strategy in a low-trust,

bottlenecked-communication, six-layer

organization.

“Ebusiness is about rebuilding the organization from the

ground up. Most companies today are not built to exploit the Internet.

Their business processes, their approvals, their hierarchies, the

number of people they employ … all of that is wrong for running an

ebusiness.”

Ray Lane, Kleiner Perkins

“Suppose – just suppose – that the Web is a new world we’re just beginning to inhabit. We’re like the earlier European settlers in the United States, living on the

edge of the forest. We don’t know what’s there and we don’t know exactly what we need to do to find out: Do we pack mountain climbing gear, desert wear, canoes, or all three? Of course while the settlers may not have

known what the geography of the New World was going to be, they at least knew that there was a geography. The Web, on the other hand, has no

geography, no landscape. It has no distance. It has nothing natural in it. It has few rules of behavior and fewer lines of authority. Common sense doesn’t hold

here, and uncommon sense hasn’t yet emerged.” David Weinberger, Small Pieces Loosely Joined

5. The V.A./Solutions

Imperative = The Talent

Imperative …

Model 25/8/53: Sports Franchise GM

From “1, 2 or you’re out” [JW] to …

“Best Talent in each industry segment to build

best proprietary intangibles” [EM]

Source: Ed Michaels, War for Talent (05.17.00)

The Cracked Ones Let in the Light

“Our business needs a massive transfusion of talent, and talent, I believe, is most likely to be found

among non-conformists, dissenters and rebels.”

David Ogilvy

“Are there enough weird people in

the lab these days?”V. Chmn., pharmaceutical house, to a lab director (06.01)

6. V.A. = “Freakiness” …

Saviors-in-Waiting

Disgruntled CustomersOff-the-Scope Competitors

Rogue EmployeesFringe Suppliers

Wayne Burkan, Wide Angle Vision: Beat the Competition by Focusing on Fringe Competitors, Lost Customers, and Rogue Employees

CUSTOMERS: “Future-defining customers may

account for only 2% to 3% of your total, but they represent a crucial

window on the future.”Adrian Slywotzky, Mercer Consultants

!

COMPETITORS: “The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear

the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a

sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn’t

prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do and often it catches the expert out and

ends him on the spot.”

Mark Twain

Employees: “Are there enough weird

people in the lab these days?”

V. Chmn., pharmaceutical house, to a lab director (06.01)

Suppliers: There is an ominous downside to strategic supplier

relationships. An SSR supplier is not likely to function as any more than a mirror to your organization. Fringe suppliers that offer innovative business practices need

not apply.”

Wayne Burkan, Wide Angle Vision: Beat the Competition by Focusing on Fringe Competitors, Lost Customers, and Rogue Employees

WEIRD IDEAS THAT WORK: (1) Hire slow learners (of the organizational code). (1.5) Hire people who make you

uncomfortable, even those you dislike. (2) Hire people you (probably) don’t need. (3) Use job interviews to get ideas, not

to screen candidates. (4) Encourage people to ignore and defy superiors and peers. (5) Find some happy people and get them to fight. (6) Reward success and failure, punish inaction.

(7) Decide to do something that will probably fail, then convince yourself and everyone else that success is certain. (8) Think of

some ridiculous, impractical things to do, then do them. (9) Avoid, distract, and bore customers, critics, and anyone who just wants to talk about money. (10) Don’t try to learn anything from people who seem to have solved the problems you face.

(11) Forget the past, particularly your company’s success.

Bob Sutton, Weird Ideas that Work: 11½ Ideas for Promoting, Managing and Sustaining Innovation

“Organize” for … performance & customer satisfaction.

“Disorganize” for … renewal & innovation.

7. “Solutions

Imperative” = 100% Work That Matters [WOW Flavor] …

“Reward excellent failures. Punish

mediocre successes.”

Phil Daniels, Sydney exec

Language matters! Wow! BHAG! “Takes

your breath away!”

The greatest dangerfor most of us

is not that our aim istoo high

and we miss it,but that it is

too lowand we reach it.

Michelangelo

Sales2001

The Sales25: Great Salespeople …

1. Know the product. (Find cool mentors, and use them.)

2. Know the company.3. Know the customer. (Including the customer’s consultants.) (And especially the “corporate culture.”)4. Love internal politics at home and abroad.5. Religiously respect competitors. (No badmouthing, no matter how provoked.)6. Wire the customer’s org. (Relationships at all levels & functions.)7. Wire the home team’s org. and vendors’ orgs. (INVEST Big Time time in relationships at all levels & functions.) (Take junior people in all functions to client meetings.)

Great Salespeople …

8. Never overpromise. (Even if it costs you your job.) 9. Sell only by solving problems-creating profitable opportunities. (“Our product solves these problems, creates these unimagined INCREDIBLE opportunities, and will make you a ton of money—here’s exactly how.”) (IS THIS A “PRODUCT SALE” OR A WOW-ORIGINAL SOLUTION YOU’LL BE DINING OFF 5 YEARS FROM NOW? THAT WILL BE WRITTEN UP IN THE TRADE PRESS?)10. Will involve anybody—including mortal enemies—if it enhances the scope of the problem we can solve and increases the scope of the opportunity we can encompass.11. Know the Brand Story cold; live the Brand Story. (If not, leave.)

Great Salespeople …

12. Think “Turnkey.” (It’s always your problem!)

13. Act as “orchestra conductor”: You are responsible for making the whole-damn-network respond. (PERIOD.)

14. Help the customer get to know the vendor’s organization & build up their Rolodex.15. Walk away from bad business. (Even if it gets you fired.)

16. Understand the idea of a “good loss.” (A bold effort that’s sometimes better than a lousy win.)17. Think those who regularly say “It’s all a price issue” suffer from rampant immaturity & shrunken imagination.18. Will not give away the store to get a foot in the door. 19. Are wary & respectful of upstarts—the real enemy.20. Seek several “cool customers”—who’ll drag you into Tomorrowland.

Great Salespeople …

21. Use the word “partnership” obsessively, even though it is way overused. (“Partnership” includes folks at all levels throughout the supply chain.)22. Send thank you notes by the truckload. (NOT E-NOTES.) (Most are for “little things.”) (50% of those notes are sent to those in our company!) Remember birthdays. Use the word “we.” 23. When you look across the table at the customer, think religiously to yourself: “HOW CAN I MAKE THIS DUDE RICH & FAMOUS & GET HIM-HER PROMOTED?” 24. Great salespeople can affirmatively respond to the query in an HP banner ad: HAVE YOU CHANGED CIVILIZATION TODAY?25. Keep your bloody PowerPoint slides simple!

8. The Solutions Imperative:

From “Customer Satisfaction” to

“Customer Success.”

The …

Solutions25

1. It’s the (OUR!) organization, stupid!2. Friction free! 3. No STOVEPIPES!4. “Stovepiping” is a F.O.—Firing Offense.5. ALL on the Web! (ALL = ALL.)6. Open access!7. Project Managers rule! (E.g.: Control the purse strings and evals.)8. VALUE-ADDED RULES! (Services Rule.) (Experiences Rule.) (Brand Rules.)9. SOLUTIONS RULE! (We sell SOLUTIONS. Period. We sell PRODUCTIVITY & PROFITABILITY. Period.)10. Solutions = “Our ‘culture.’ ”11. Partner with B.I.C. (Best-In-Class). Period.

12. All functions contribute equally—IS, HR, Finance, Purchasing, Engineering, Logistics, Sales, Etc.13. Project Management can come from any function.14. WE ARE ALL IN SALES. PERIOD.15. We all invest in “wiring” the customer organization.16. WE ALL “LIVE THE BRAND.” (Brand = Solutions. That MAKE MONEY FOR OUR CUSTOMER- PARTNER.)17. We use the word “PARTNER” until we all want to barf!18. We NEVER BLAME other parts of our organization for screwups.19. WE AIM TO REINVENT THIS INDUSTRY!20. We hate the word-idea “COMMODITY.”

21. We believe in “High tech, High touch.”22. We are DREAMERS.23. We deliver . (PROFITS.) (CUSTOMER SUCCESS.)24. If we play the “SOLUTIONS GAME” brilliantly, no one can touch us!25. Our TEAM needs 100% I.C.s (Imaginative Contributors). This is the ULTIMATE “All Hands” affair!

Q: Is that all there is?

A: Quite possibly.

“Roche’s New Scientific Method”—

Fast Company. And? X-Functional Teams (NO STOVEPIPES!). “Fail fast.” “The only way to embrace a technological revolution, Roche has discovered, is to unleash an organizational revolution.”

Thank You!