The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 252: Tom Peters - In Search Of Excellence

Episode Date: April 8, 2018

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #252: Tom Peters - In Search Of Excellence Tom Peters is co-author of In Search of Excellence—the book that changed the way the world does business, and often tagged as the best business book ever. Sixteen books and almost thirty years later, he's still at the forefront of the "management guru industry" he single-handedly invented. What's new? A lot. As CNN said, "While most business gurus milk the same mantra for all its worth, the one-man brand called Tom Peters is still reinventing himself."  Tom's bedrock belief: "Execution is strategy—it's all about the people and the doing, not the talking and the theory." (Keep up with Tom at tompeters.com, ranked #9 among "The Top 150 Management and Leadership Blogs.") His most recent effort, released in April, 2018 is titled, The Excellence Dividend. "Excellence is the next 5 minutes... Or not." Show Notes: Commonalities of those who sustain excellence: They are "thoroughly decent human beings" They help other people grow They really care about the people they work with and help them get better everyday Quotes from Tom Peters: "Arguably the eight most important words a leader can utter: "THANK YOU." "I'M SORRY." "WHAT DO YOU THINK?" "Priority #1, #2, #3: Culture. Culture. Culture. "It IS the game," Lou Gerstner on IBM turnaround. "My 20-year-old "agile": WTTMSASTMSUTFW/Whoever Tries The Most Stuff And Screws The Most Stuff Up The Fastest Wins. "Every meeting that does not stir the imagination and curiosity of its attendees is what I like to call a PLO: a Permanently Lost Opportunity. I am all in favor of eliminating unnecessary meetings!" The big corporations/large law firms "punished creative thinking" "You must create space for people to be better than they ever have." "Excellence is the next 5 minutes... Or not." The key to being a great manager? "MBWA" -- "The minute those words came out of his mouth, my life changed (Managing By Wandering Around) The importance of being intentional and thoughtful My Dad is a huge fan of Tom's work and told me to read his work "Your culture is managed every minute of every day" The process to prepare for your week as the leader (Sunday night work) Start your meetings with "Good morning" "Find a smile, find the energy" --> Your team will follow your attitude and behavior. "It's your duty to be in a good mood." How to run a world class meeting? A meeting can and should be excellent" --> It sets the stage for the next 5 days. Think about it and prepare. Will it be an upper or a downer? Should have civility and thoughtfulness --> "No smartassery" The definition of a great teacher is "someone who is desperate to help their students succeed." How to choose better people to promote? "First line leadership is of supreme importance" "We always hire for character." --> Theo Epstein: Look at the analytics and combine them with culture and character to decide Training -- "Practice should be harder than the games" Neighbors with Bill Walsh -- "The Score Takes Care of Itself" He spent the first 18 months as the coach of the 49ers developing a new culture John Wooden -- Similar story about culture building Jerry Seinfeld spends six months at very "out of the way" clubs in order to add a new 2 minutes to his stand up routine -- Be that deliberate Tom's training and preparation for a speech (even after doing 3,000+ of them!) Read on the company and the industry in depth Read what's going on in the world - stay up to date Read about the specific city where the speech is being delivered, read the local paper, pick up little vignettes Awake at 2:00 am rearranging the PowerPoint slides -- "I make about 700 changes" How do you feel 30 seconds before you go on stage? "Pure fear, there is enormous pressure for me to deliver for them" Why you should always write thank you notes Campbell's Soup CEO wrote 30,000 thank you notes Home Depot CEO wrote them every Sunday Social Media: Follow Robert on Twitter: @tom_peters Read: The Excellence Dividend Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12  

The minute those words came out of his mouth, my life changed. MBWA literally, symbolically and metaphorically, have basically become the centerpiece for everything I've done since then. This episode is brought to by Bricksey and Meyer. Bricksey and Meyer is an unconventional team of business experts who love to help companies grow. Brick St. Myers got experience in what you need, whether it's tax consulting, accounting, business strategy, or leadership advisory. Brick St. and Myers grounded in the industries that matter to you.

No matter the size of your company, Brickstein-Meyer is scaled to give your business the strategic attention it deserves. Brick-Sy-Mire also has something the other firms don't. A unique way of working with you that won't leave you fly. You'll be inspired, invigorated, and engaged in what's next. To learn more, go to brixie and mire.com. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thanks so much for being here.

It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 44222. In order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world, text learners to 44222. Now, on tonight's featured leader, It's with the legendary Tom Peters, the godfather of leadership excellence. Over the past 40 years, he's given 3,000 speeches in 67 countries. He's written 18 books, sold over 10 million copies, including in search of excellence,

which for 17 years was the most widely held library book in the United States. It's probably the greatest management book written. of all time. A few of the topics that Tom and I got into. Why the letters M-B-W-A are the key to great leadership, then how to run excellent meetings, how to make promotion decisions, what it was like being neighbors with Bill Walsh, his prep process for giving keynote speeches, including what it's like the 30 seconds before he walks on stage. That answer blew me away. And then the most important action, a leader should always take so good. An immense amount of wisdom shared by Tom. I cherished this very surreal conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, it's the legend,

Tom Peters. All right, Tom, thank you so much for joining me on The Learning Leader Show. Welcome. Thanks, Ryan. It is a pleasure to be here. So you were introduced to me years ago from my dad when I got my first management job. I was 26 years old. And he said, listen, this guy, Tom Peters, is the godfather of leadership excellence. And read everything he writes, listen to what he says. And I started doing that. And then, since then, you've joined Twitter and done other things that I follow pretty much everything that you've written and said. So this is obviously one of those joy moments for me to get to learn directly from you and then share it with my audience. So thanks so much for being here, man.

Well, thank you. And I hope he is still among the living. My thanks to your dad as well. Yeah, he is. He's a huge fan of yours as well. And we talk about you. Tell him I specifically said, thank you very much. I will.

His name's Keith Hawk. He'll be thrilled to hear that. So he's a great leader in his own right and it helps me on a daily basis. So anyway. So listen, when we finish this conversation, my colleague, Shelley Dolly, who you've worked with, we'll send your dad a book. Sweet. That's really cool.

By the way, Tom, I just have to say why. here. I wasn't planning on starting this way, but Shelley is fantastic, which you already know, which she's so great to work with. We had, I think, a little bit more than an hour-long phone call as I wanted to really get prepared since, you know, I have the Godfather here. I wanted to make sure I was super prepared, and she was great in helping do that. So obviously you've done a good job because you talk about you are the people that you surround yourself with and you've figured it out when it comes to your support staff and your team that you're surrounded by. Well, and Shelley, I invented remote working.

Really? I won't say when we invented it because that would embarrass her and irritator, but we basically did at some level. And I know exactly what you're talking about. When I explain who Shelley is to people, I never exactly know what to say. Is she our C-O-O? Is she our whatever? Is she our partner, which she is?

And she also has a good liberal education. So between the two of us, she's the only one who really understands the world of Shakespeare, Joyce, and all the other intelligent people who I never studied in engineering school. I love it. Well, this is great. She's here for intellect and also does all the rest of the stuff. That's really good. So, Tom, it's interesting, especially the topics that you covered because one of the, there's only really one question that I asked to everybody on this show. And then the rest of it's a free flow and conversation like two people.

going out for a nice lunch. But the one question I do ask is, when you think about the people that you've spent time around your life for you helping people you've written about, people that you've spent time around consulting for, I love the phrase sustaining excellence. So people who are able to achieve high levels over an extended period of time, they're sustaining excellence. What have you found? And I know this could last actually, this answer could be an hour. But, and so take as long as you want, though. But what have you found to be the commonalities between those people who sustain excellence?

We can reduce it to almost three words. Okay. No more than that. Thoroughly, four. Thoroughly decent human beings. Tell me more. Yeah. Okay.

I will tell you more. But I mean, I literally, I think that people who sustain excellence in any things, do so through their ability to help other people grow. And they do that in turn because for some reason, genetic parenting, bolt out of the blue, whatever it was, they really care about having the people they work with get better every day. You know, I was, I don't know you saw it or not, but

there was a Twitter exchange that I was involved in last week, and some guy was going, Gaga, over Elon Musk being contributing more than anybody else in the world or something like that. And I said, well, I think

Mr. Musk is an extraordinary person. He's almost as good as a lifelong committed, second grade teacher or a medical doctor who spends 20 hours a week at a free clinic. And so it's that human dimension. And just there's a line in the book from the movie director Robert Altman, and I'm not sure I will get it right, but I'll get it more or less right. the role of the director is to create a space where people can be better than they have ever been before,

better than they have ever dreamed of being. And I think if that's your attitude, as a Boy Scout leader, Girl Scout leader, second grade teacher, CEO of a 232,000 person company, you're a long way down the path towards sustained, to use your word, excellence. I remember years ago I worked with his speakers bureau and they represent Colin Powell among others and there was some big affair

celebration and General Powell was there and somebody like you or me grabbed him on the way out and said I'm writing a book and I want to get people management advice and he said there are only two things care about your people and focus on today's job

not tomorrow's promotion. And I thought that was pretty incredible. But it really is, Ryan. It's that it's my mother was a, we didn't have two pennies to spare. And I went to a private high school, not one of those famous New England ones. This was close to Annapolis and so on.

But we didn't have the money for the tuition. And so she had never taught school, but she became a fifth grade teacher. in, oh gosh, it must have been about 1956 or something like that. And the degree of which she cared about those kids and their success was insane, almost literally. And she died at 95 in 2005. And we had a memorial service. And it was all the people you'd expect that she'd done something for and so on.

The whole service to me, and I wept as I met each one of them, were former fifth grade students. who said my one year with your mother may have been the most important year of my life. I mean, that's sustaining excellence to pull that off. And I think it's the, as I said, I think it applies to a second grade teacher. I think it applies to a principal who helps her teachers develop.

And it goes all the way up the line to, you know, to the people who run big things. Man, this is awesome. So based on your work, it influenced me as that young first manager. I worked as a in sales,

and I was a telephonic sales rep at a great company called LexisNexis, and then I got promoted. Like it's, you know, it typically happens if things go well that you get to apply and you have the chance to get promoted. And I did. And I got to- Was this when they went private? Lexus Nexus was part of IBM and was their first the acquisition, right?

Lexus is now part of a bigger company called Reed-Elsphere or relics. So yeah. So anyway, that's that's where I was working and I got the got the promotion of a young young manager and your work influenced me in this way. And I'll tell you because I think some people question what I was doing. So here's what is. And I took it from you. Um, 1978, I believe it was. Actually, you know what? It might be better if you tell the story about John Young. And you could probably guess when I say the phrase M-B-W-A. Talk to me about what M-B-W-A means. Have you got a couple hours? Tom, I have as long as you want, man.

Well, my subsequent co-author of In Search of Excellence, Bob Waterman and I were working on this project where the The Americans ruled the ruse. People in Ohio know this better than most places. Americans ruled the ruse. The automobile industry ruled the ruse after World War II. And then suddenly in the 1970s, the Japanese appeared out of nowhere. And they had this incredible strategic secret. They made cars that actually worked. We were good at marketing cars, but we were, I'm not going to say we were marketing junk. We were marketing cars and quality wasn't our first focus. And so as a result of all that, with many steps in between, Bob Waterman and I started a project, and we said you don't have to learn how to speak Japanese. There are some American companies who are doing things incredibly well. One of them, thinking of where you are speaking from, which was a neighbor from Toledo, Ohio, was an auto partsmaker by the name of the Dana Corporation, incidentally. another one was a then youthful and not small but not giant company.

I worked at McKinsey in San Francisco and down the road 30 miles was Palo Alto, now the epicenter of Silicon Valley. And the company in question was Hewlett-Packard. And I'm going to take you through more of this story than you want to hear because there's a first chapter that is related to the second chapter. So I worked at McKinsey & Company, and we worked with giant banks and people like that. And if I wanted to get a phone conversation with the CEO, I would call and I would get the executive assistant to the executive assistant's executive assistant. And you would go through four levels of that.

And three weeks later, you might get a 10-minute appointment with the person in charge. So we want to go down and talk to Hewlett Packard 30 miles south of San Francisco. And Bob Waterman was the senior guy and I was a junior guy. And he said, well, why don't you set the thing up? So some of your audience is old enough to remember these things called phone books. I went to a phone book and I looked up Hewlett Packard in Palo Alto and I got a phone number out of the phone book. And I called the phone number. and we wanted to talk to John Young, who was the president.

So somebody answers the phone in the reception area of Hewlett-Backard, and I said, my name is Tom Peters. I may have said I was from McKinsey or not, and I'd really like to talk to John Young. Assuming I had at least three weeks to prepare as I went through the various levels of executive assistance. So about 15 or 30 seconds later, there's a gruff voice online, says,

John Young, who's this? You know, that was a learning experience. Yeah, I mean, Hewlett-Packard was not the trillion-dollar company today, but for heaven's sakes, it was a billion-dollar company, which was a lot of bucks in 1978. So when you learn that the president effectively answers his own phone still, that's a lesson. So, you know, a few days, Bob and I going down to Palo Alto, meet John Young, and John Young introduced us to the so-called HP way. And the center of the HP way, as you alluded to in introducing this question, was MBWA or managing by wandering around.

And it has, I mean, what I sometimes say, Ryan, which is, of course, an exaggeration, but it really isn't, is the minute those words came out of his mouth, my life changed. MBWA literally, symbolically and metaphorically, have basically become the centerpiece for everything I've done since then. Our companies weren't making cars that worked, and our executives lived on the 87th floor, separated from humanity by those three levels of executive assistance. and nobody of importance went to talk to the people who made the cars. And here was Hewlett Packard, where from Bill Hewlett, who was a classic practitioner on down, the leadership of the company spent half their time on the shop floor, talking to the 22-year-old engineers in product development who had just graduated from next door Stanford or something or talking to the people in the finance department or what have you.

But in touch, face-to-face leadership, the tools are different in 2018. I would be the first to acknowledge. But the idea of being in touch with what's going on, listening to the people who are doing the work, making friends among the people who do the work. I had this fascinating, and I know I'm running at the mountain, here. This fascinating MBWA experience last year, my wife and I are lucky enough to spend the cold winter east coast months in New Zealand. And I'm loath to admit that I walk the beaches of New Zealand thinking about MBWA, but those things can happen. I was on this gorgeous beach

near where we live, and I did get to thinking about MBWA, probably because I was in the middle of writing my book. And I thought, well, why do you do MBWA? And you do MBWA to learn what's going on on the shop floor, right? You do MBWA so you can figure out the difference between the truth and the falsehoods that appear in the reports you hear. And then I had something that was almost an epiphany. And the epiphany was, I said, why do you do MBWA?

Because it's fun. because it's great to go talk to those people. And I wrote a very snarky tweet after that. And I said, look, if you don't really get off on hanging out with the distribution center crew at 1 a.m., do the world a favor and quit your leadership job. You do it because it's fun. It's just nice to talk to those people about what's going on and to ask them what's screwed up that you can help with. and that's the whole story of this stuff.

You know, strategists with MBAs are a dime a dozen, leaders who really love hanging out with the people who do the work are worth their weight in gold times 100. Man, Tom, I was hoping you get excited. Well, it does excite me. And the reason it excites me, Ryan, and you were talking about your early experience is what I just described could not be described as rocket science.

Right. And so, you know, I was in the Navy for four years, and I can swear like a sailor, but I'm not going to do it, given that I'm talking to your many friends around the world. But it just irritates the living bejesus out of me that people who are otherwise intelligent do not understand that the work is done,

use the old-fashioned phrase, at the coal face, where the people who get the job done work, whether that job happens to be writing code or whether that job is in the distribution center with or without Mr. Bezos's robots or what have you. Why don't they do it? Everybody has me. You've been around for a thousand years, Tom. Tell me why people don't do this.

And I have an answer. And this is an answer when I'm giving a speech for a large sum of money. And somebody says, why don't they do it? And here's what I respond with. Five words. I don't have a clue. Why wouldn't you? But I think my answer was in that, you know, my answer, which was rude, was in that last little, little riff that I did.

Because they don't look at it as fun. the fun part for them is reviewing spreadsheets. And the, you know, well, I know, I got, you know,

I know where I'm going. I know. I'll, I'll tell you why, why I brought it up is because I, I was influenced by your work. And again, I go back to my dad,

who's, who's the number one mentor for me in my life. And he said, you become a manager now. And he's, he went through the same thing I did. And he said, you're going to have a lot of pressure to get prepared for,

you know, the managing up. part of the job and you know the worst thing you can do those get stuck in that office and and so I was reading your work and mbWA and so my my process was to have regular moments that I would block out that I would literally wander around in the cube by the cubes of the people and the people who've worked on my team or probably some of them I know are listening right now they're saying oh yeah I remember that and it might have looked from the external like I didn't have a purpose or it wasn't well thought out it was just this young guy who doesn't know what he's doing and he just kind of wandering around

And there was a distinct purpose. I think those moments wondering of listening to calls, of having informal conversations, of having informal one-on-ones where they might have like a one-off question that it creates a good dialogue. And then three or four people gather around. And before you know it, we learned something together. Somebody brought something up. I offered something. Somebody else offered something.

And we all learned together. And that built the team camaraderie. That built trust. I tried to be vulnerable in those moments and share my true beliefs. and feelings and mistakes. And I think that's how the culture was built to where we ultimately had a lot of long-term sustained excellence for the course of having it. And that team, which I'm very proud of that I led, and this was been years ago now,

is still great to this day. And I'm most proud of that, the fact that they're still have a similar culture because we set up in place that they're still great today. And I'm very, that means a lot to me. But that's how I think it started was from MBWA, of walking around of talking to them, not always about work, right? We're trying to get to know them, truly care.

And we built a true, we're friends. I am close friends with a number of those people to this day, and we haven't worked together in years. And I think that's why York had so much impact on me where I remember being questioned by people above me in some of these quarterly business reviews that we all do. And they say, it looks like sometimes you're just kind of walking around. And I'd say, yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing.

You have it. That's exactly what I'm doing. And so that's that. But now I think, I hope that that's become. normal. I think it has for good reason because I, the two things, too, Tom, that I think leaders I found over the course of more than 250 these conversations, the two things that they seem to share is that they're very intentional and they're very thoughtful. And that's what I hope I could portray because that's what I try to be when I'm looking to lead a team. No, I think that. I think that is

an absolutely beautiful description. And number one, I applaud you. And I'm not surprised that the results, I mean, the only part of it I would say that you're not that you're lucky on is it is also very easy to destroy cultures. And, you know, relative to the current job holder, my one liner is culture is something that has to be managed 60, 60, 24-7. You know, basically every minute of every day. It's always fragile at some level, and particularly when there are changes in the leadership or what have you. But no, I think what you said is down to the dotting of the eyes and the crossing of the T's. You surely said it as well as I ever have. What about the planning for your week?

You always pushed me. I was following you on Twitter, and it would be Sunday night, I remember, and I'm getting ready for hopefully a great week with my team. And you would push me to say, how are you scripting your Monday? How are you scripting your next? Like, what are you going to say? What are the first, you know, excellence is the next five minutes? You know, that type of thing. So what was your prep process or what do you teach people from a preparation process on Sunday night getting ready for the week?

Yeah. I, there was something that was wandering around my part of Twitter yesterday. And it was, the title of it was Good Morning. Yeah. Those two words. And the whole point was a place where the standard way of doing business was meetings where everybody was bored at the beginning of the day. Roodness and let's get out of work. And whoever it was who was doing the advising or sharing their experience said you should start the day with good morning.

And it's, first of all, with the scripting thing, you know, just trying to. come up with an analogy for people. In football, certainly professional, probably collegiate these days, coaches tend to script the first 10 plays. They want to know what they're going to do.

It never goes according to plan, but nonetheless they were thinking, our thinking, about how they want to look when they come on the field. And my real point, is that all those things that you were talking about in your own experience have to do with the feel and flavor of the workplace. And you just had a down and out struggle with your 13-year-old son or you and your spouse are arguing about something.

And you are a normal human being. You're running a finance organizational group of 20 people or something. And, you know, you can't quite get it out of your mind. And so you walk into work on Monday morning sour. Well, it won't do. Don't be authentic. Be inauthentic. Find a smile.

Find the energy. You know, I remember one time, I think Tony Robbins had something about stand in front of them here and practice your smile. But, and I'm not talking about silly smiling. I'm not talking about giggling. It's just find some way to. do a feel good in yourself and get the week off to a start. And I really believe that many people have said it.

Research says it. Beginings and endings are everything. But the flavor, which you introduce into that 20-person department, just by, I mean, they say that body language is something like five times more important than the actual words you speak. Just the way you walk in on Monday morning sets the tone for the week. and I'm not asking you to script every play for any every minute for the subsequent five days, but get things off to a start emotionally.

And it can make all the difference. And as I said, I'm being very clear. I'm not asking a script the morning even. I'm not asking a script for the week. I'm just saying think through how we can give the day a positive flavor, which then in turn gives the week a positive flavor. And speaking of Monday morning, it's usually a. time for meetings and you have a great video on this, but I'll let you share more about that.

But when you think about meetings, because some people say, we'll just get rid of them and you'd say, well, meetings are part of being a leader, part of managing. That's part of the deal is that you're going to have meetings. So if you're going to have them, really think about them and let's think about how we make them great. So what is your philosophy on having great meetings? I'm thinking before I talk. That is sometimes a good thing.

I guess the first part, which you kind of hinted at in a way in the question, is to try to come to the realization that a meeting can be excellent, all right? That even though you have a thousand other things on your agenda, you are going to start the week with your 10 key people in a meeting room. and that is your literal, other than that smile when you walked in the office, that is your literal stage setter for the next five days. And so the question is, is that meeting going to be an upper? Is it going to be positive? Is it going to be supportive? Or is it going to, and the worst, I mean, the definition of a boss is almost always 732 items on your to-do list. If you walk into that meeting and you look distracted and you look like you're already working on the next action item, which is on your desk, you are dead in the water from the start.

You've got to find a way in yourself to make it clear that you want to be in that room. You are delighted to see those 10 people. It's not that you're soft. and we're going to talk through the issues. And I would also say, which is a huge thing for me, the most important thing my mother gave me, other than presumably motherly love, she grew up in the South and she gave me good manners.

And I really believe that civility and human thoughtfulness is the best step toward efficiency that can possibly be the case. And so make sure that meeting doesn't have snarky remarks. Crack down on people who do make smarky remarks. No smart assery. I mean, you can laugh at each other about this. Well, you know, I know you're a Giants fan and I'm a 49ers fan. You must have had a hell.

Well, maybe even that. It needs, it doesn't, I'm just really working hard on this, Ryan. It's not soft and it's not frivolous, but it is a tone of thoughtfulness. You know, we're doing something of importance, and we care about each other as human beings, and I as the boss. I mean, let's go back, which I said earlier, let's go back to that second grade teacher. The definition of an effective second grade teacher is someone who is desperate to see each of those 16 kids in her classroom or his classroom improve in the course of the day or the week of the month. and leading is precisely the same thing. You're a young man on my team.

Somehow or other, and I shouldn't have been selected for the job if it's not the case, I've got to make it clear that I want Ryan Hawk to grow and be successful and that I will give every last ounce of my being as a human being and a boss to help Ryan be more successful at the end of the day or the week or the month of the years. the case may be. And I think people can feel that. And again, which doesn't, which isn't a helpful comment, I think if you can't feel that, you really shouldn't be in a leadership job. And part of the excellence. You should not have been promoted. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think we pay enough attention to promotions. Yeah. I think we take them seriously, but I don't think we take them.

Peter Drucker said it a million years ago. He said, all promotion decisions are life or death. issues. And he's really on the money in that, as he is on so, was on so many things. So how would you do it? Or how would you advise a company? Because a lot of times for me, like I came up in sales, like a lot of people who aren't sure what they're going to do after they get done with college. And I played football in college. And that's all I really thought about Tom was playing the NFL. And, you know, when that did not work out, it was like, hey, you should try sales. And I did. And it went okay. And I got promoted primarily based on a couple of things. One, I think it was my performance, you know, near or at the top of the stack

rankings for my time as a sales professional. And then also my background, I played quarterback. So they thought, well, you probably have leadership skills. And I shared that in the interview process. And I think it helped some as well. But how do we do a better job at promoting the right people for a leadership role to manage others? Because a lot of times it's based on being good at what they're currently doing not necessarily good at what the job is, but how do we get better at that? Well, I would, first of all, support what you just said, albeit with you is the exception. You know, the one liner in that is, for God's sakes, don't promote the best salesperson to be sales manager. It's not an automatic by a long time. That's how happens most of the time, though, you know?

Yeah. Well, let me take a half a step back and say something, which is completely consistent with what you're saying. But I want to attack it. a slightly different position. One of the things I say in the book, to the point that I do an entire chapter on it, is that your complete collection of first line leaders are the number one asset

in the corporation. Period. All stop. And part of that I take from the military. The old one-liner is true. The sergeants run the army and the chief petty officers run the Navy. It's not the lieutenants and the majors and the captains who count. It is those chief petty officers who work with the 15 people underneath them.

So first line leadership is of supreme importance. I'm not an expert on selection. But per what you said, well, I can give you an answer. and we'll stick with sports for a minute. Okay. Theo, is it Epstein or Epstein? Epstein, I think. Yeah.

Theo Epstein, who, you know, won the Boston Red Sox first world series in about 70 or 80 years, and then the Cubs first World Series in something like 318 years. He did his thing, and he did all his analytics, and it worked like a charm for the Red Sox. and during his last year, the Red Sox fell apart. And they fell apart because the team chemistry stunk. So off Theo goes to the Chicago Cubs. And he had an epiphany, apparently, when he made the transition. And he is in no way shape or form opposed to those analytics,

but he introduced into his lexicon the C word or character. Years ago, do you remember, well, of course you do, your football guy, the very famous Michigan coach, Bo Schembeckler. Yep. There's a wonderful quote I use in my book. You may have tripped over it. And in it, he said, we always hire for character. He said, my guys were not the famous high school athletes.

We recruited for character. and my little guys filled with character routinely beat the heck out of the guys with the big name players. So Theo did that. And he started recruiting on character. And what character meant, you know, because Theo is a pretty darn thorough guy, was if I'm thinking about, you know, bringing you in on a trade from the Dodgers or bringing you up from the minors before he does it, he talks to their teachers, he talks to their preachers, he talks to their preachers, he talks to their sisters. He talks to their brothers. He talks to their high school baseball teammates. He makes his

scouts do that. And the whole deal is to figure out what kind of a human being you are. And at least at this point, it's working like a charm. Now, the reason for that large digression is I think you do the same thing among the candidates for that first line job. I don't know whether you talk to preachers or people whose stores they shop in. I don't even know what part of that is legal or illegal in terms of engagement in somebody's private life. But I've got to work like heck trying to find out what sort of human being you are, which is the best predictor of the way that you will work with your fellow human beings once you become a leader. Agree, the thoroughness of understanding him as a whole person from leadership.

Well, you know what, Harvey McKay, it was funny. Harvey McKay wrote a book, Swim with the Sharks or something. something very business owner, an envelope company in Minneapolis. And one one liner, I remember of Harvey's, which had to do with senior managers, he said, my last test of a senior managerial prospect is to take him to a twins game. And when I watch the way they behave in a normal setting, I will learn a heck of a lot more than I learned through nine hours of technical interviewing. I like that one of the one of the I sometimes Tom help companies one define what they're looking for in the hiring process and to actually go through the hiring process with them and I added some steps typically which is and this is depends on the company I hope the company would allow this that you're working at but the ones that I've worked with have is that you asked to take the person out to dinner with their spouse so and I would bring my spouse with me as well and we go out to dinner and just I I'm not I don't want to say I'm just I'm just I'm not I don't want to say I'm just

But in a way I am, I'm looking to see how they treat their spouse, how their spouse treats them, and also obviously how they just treat people around the restaurant. You know, it's not not rocket science, how they treat the server. Like we all, like most people already realize that. But I found it to be really enlightening, whether it's me going for a job or me looking to hire someone else for a job. That's when you can really see because it's more informal and you title that, hey, it's not an interview, it's just an informal dinner. or go have fun, whatever, and see how they respond in that environment and you truly get to know them. Because, too, I do think it's important. You were talking about the most important decision you make in your life on Twitter yesterday.

And I responded to you the fact that I think for me it's who you decide to marry. And for me, that's lifted me up more than anything that I've ever done. And I like to see that too in somebody that they have respect and love for their partner. that tells me a lot. I found over time that people who have lives like that tend to have a greater chance of sustaining excellence than those who don't. There's not a single sentence,

semicolon, or comma that you said that I would disagree with. I think that's absolutely right. And, well, I think it's absolutely right. I would not even add a paragraph or a sentence to what you said. I think it's exactly on the money. And I think that's a good way to do it. I think Harvey's take them to a baseball game is a good way to do it. But somehow see how they are as human beings when they're around other people.

No, right on the money. Let's talk about training. So I have been very fortunate to have incredible coaches. And the coaches I've had growing up, especially playing football in high school, they're the people who really taught me how to work and built the foundation for me. and they made practice so insanely tough on us that there are many games that were far easier than the practices were. And I've tried to take that same mentality and then obviously marry it with the great work of

you and what you've written about by saying that the phrase we use is that we want practice to be harder than the games. And you've talked about like training, you know, ask a general or an admiral or a football coach or a police chief or a symphony conductor, training is investment number one. The average business boss sees training as an expense rather than an investment, and that is dumb.

Train him and the leave is dumber. And I love that tweet, but I think it's so true when it comes to the importance of training and preparing your people. Well, I totally agree. I think my favorite book title, I live outside of Boston by about 80 miles now, but I lived for about 30 or 35 years in northern California in the Bay Area.

And for part of that time, I had a really nice next-door neighbor whose name was Bill Walsh, who was coaching a little football team that was otherwise known as the San Francisco 49ers. Yeah, it was great. It's fabulous. Good neighbor. But at any rate, my favorite book title in your world and mine was, was the title of Bill's last book before he passed away. And the title was, you just said it.

The title was, the score takes care of itself. And it's practical. The other thing he said, which was slightly different than what you said, but it's completely consistent with it. So Walsh comes into the 49ers, and the 49ers had an awful season of 2 and 14.

And so Bill gets hired and he's really supposed to be a great, do a great job. And what was his record, the first year's head coach? Two and 14. And then the next year it was six and ten and the next year he won a Super Bowl. But the point is, Walsh in the book said, I spent the first 18 months with the 49ers developing a new culture. And he said, I did things. And I think this is very consistent with what you're saying. He said, I did things like teach players that they were professionals now.

He said, I taught them to wear ties on the team bus and just a whole different feeling as they approach the game. And, you know, I really believe that. I mean, I love the fact that Walsh was talking about exactly what I talk with and about and using the same thing in the context of pro football. Johnny Wooden also had my other favorite quote in that section Wooden who is arguably the greatest collegiate coach or maybe coach of anything ever

and Wooden's comment was I wasn't that much of a game coach but I was a pretty good practice coach yeah love that and you know and I you know I think it's the same thing and just to stick on this topic a T bit maybe go off a little bit and you know I've got this little list

in the book somewhere. When Jerry Seinfeld wants to change his routine, he spends six months in out-of-the-way clubs

in order to add two minutes to his repertoire. And so training and preparation to me are the beginning of the story, the middle of the story, the end of the story. I am now 75 years of age.

I spend more time preparing for a speech now than I ever did before. I don't know whether I give the, it's a little bit like, you know, John Wooden or Bill Walsh or what you were talking about. I don't know whether I'm the best player, but I damn well know I'm the best prepared player. You really spend more time now on a speech? Absolutely. Wow.

Absolutely. What is it hours and out? Listen, it's my life. Yeah. What is your prep process? Like, how does it walk me through if you're okay with it? What's it like? What do you do to prepare for a speech? Well, first of all, I try to make sure I'm in touch with the world. Okay. Well, for a whole, real quick, you've given over 3,000 speeches in your life. Right. Okay. Okay, good. Or certainly somewhere around that number. I haven't counted. Sometimes I say 2,500. Sometimes I say 3,000.

I think actually 3,000 is closer to the number. I mean, a lot of my preparation is reading and making sure I am up to speed on the company, on the industry, on what's going on in the world of business in general, on what's going on in the world as a whole, on what's, you know, if I'm giving the speech in Minneapolis, I spend an incredible amount of time reading Minneapolis newspapers so I can just get the first. feel of what is going on in Minneapolis in general and picking up little vignettes. Then I, you know, at some stage of the game, I, you know, my speeches are are illustrated with

PowerPoint slides. I start working on my presentations and I was saying this to somebody earlier. I would guess whenever the day of the speech comes, whether it's morning or afternoon, I'm usually awake, not by choice, by two o'clock in the morning.

And I would guess between 2 o'clock and 6 o'clock in the morning, even though I've been killing myself for the last four weeks, that I will make 700 or 800 final changes to my slides. Just a little increase of this typeface. Just a little slightly different color to emphasize this, because I realize I'm talking to a bunch of people who were in the home care industry and my last speech was to people who were in semiconductors. But there's no such thing as an insignificant detail. And it's just, you said it about practice about 20 minutes ago. It is sheer brute force. It's inspiring to hear someone who's the one of, maybe the most in demand leadership speaker in the world is that,

productively paranoid about it. I love it. I don't know. It's always productive. Well, at least paranoid. I do know. I do know. I definitely would. Tom, it makes me feel a little better, I guess, if nothing else. You know, and I'm getting ready to do it. But what is it like those first, like that 30 seconds to one minute before you're walking on stage in front of thousands of people to give it speech? What's going through your mind at that moment? Pure, total, unmitigated terror. It is absolutely no better than it was 3,000 speeches ago. Really?

Do you? Well, I know, but look, here's the point, and it's relevant to everything we've talked about. Let's make the group not 1,000. Let's make it 400. And it's the management of a company who's asked me to come in and talk to all their managers at all levels. They have put an inordinate amount of time and energy into preparing this event. They have worked their backside off. make it as best they can.

400 human beings have given me one hour of their adult life. I got to live up to that. You know, there is just this enormous pressure to deliver something. You know, I'm not a maniac. I'm not Billy, the late Billy Graham, and I'm not Tony Robbins. If I walk into a group of 400, I have no belief that I can be helpful to more than a half a dozen. I'm not going to change 400 lives. But

I've got to find a way to get into their heads, to get them to think about the three or four ideas that I care about. I've got to go after them essentially one person as a time, at a time. I've got a, you know, my, and I really don't quite mean this,

but you will really get this as a football player. I said, my acid test of a speech is when you walk off the stage at the end of a speech, if you don't barf, because of your level of exhaustion, you didn't give it all on the field. And I don't barf with any degree of regularity,

but I do regularly weep. It's just because of nothing left. There shouldn't be anything left. You weep? Well, I don't sit copiously, you know, whatever. What is it? I really will tear up because I'm so frigging exhausting. And when I get on a plane afterwards,

I've had any number of times where flight attendants thought I had had a heart attack and died. You know, when the, when the, again, from your sports, you know this, when the adrenaline runs out of the system, they're in the whole lot left. Yeah. I know it's, that's, I think that's why I have leaned into keynote speaking, Tom, is because it does feel a little bit similar to when I was getting ready to run out of the tunnel onto the field, like getting ready. That's why I asked you what you're feeling as you're getting ready to get interviews when you're walking up, because that's such a, such a, such a. such a moment that reminds me of those getting ready to play in front of a hundred thousand people under the lights on national TV. But at least I have like 10 teammates with me in the huddle that

we're going to do it together. When you're speaking, it's just you. And like you said, those people are investing their lives, their time, thinking, trusting that you're going to help them. It is quite a feeling. And then when you're done, it's, it's amazing. I remember just feeling so unbelievably drained more so than I think playing a long football game because mentally you've given everything you've got everything and it's done and it's like okay huh yeah there's no and there's no relief you know you you are you are the full back who who runs the ball every play yeah exactly one more thing I want to get to before we have to go because I think this is so important and you know I watched like 500 videos of years leading up to this in addition to your books and you

I'd shoot myself if I had to do that, but I appreciate it. Well, you had a great one that I've tried to really implement years ago, but I just watched it again this morning. And because I also was listening to a talk from the former CEO of Home Depot, Frank Blake, and Frank would spend every Sunday writing thank you notes to his associates, as he'd call them, their employees of Home Depot, front line leaders or frontline workers from the stores. God bless him. The importance of writing, literally not just saying it, but certainly you should say it too, but writing thank you notes to people you work with. I don't know how you'd do it in an oral conversation as opposed to Twitter, but if I had the ability, relative to what you just said to do 1,000 exclamation marks, I would do it.

The equivalent in my new book, which I found somewhere, obviously, is Doug Conant, who was the CEO of Campbell's Soup for 10 years, wrote 30,000 handwritten thank you notes in the course of those 10 years. You know, I've said, just to add one twist to it, that the foremost important words in the English language or the boss's language are, thank you, and I'm sorry. Also, the ability to apologize after a screw-up is incredibly important. But, yeah, the thank you, it cannot be overstated. And the hand, there's something about it, even, you know, maybe particularly in the age of messaging and email and so on, at least, and I'm not talking about my generation at age 75. I'm talking about, you know, probably people under 40. I have no idea what the hell is going to go on with today's six-year-olds. But for the foreseeable future, the power of that handwritten note is almost literally infinite.

I completely agree. Again, it's not rocket science, but it does take effort to do it and thought. Well, it takes effort. And going back to the very first comment and thinking of it, some of our discussion about selection is you really have to care about people. You know, you're not going to write 30,000 notes unless, you know, you're not going to write it because it was an assignment. It's really, you know, it's cool that I heard from somebody that Ryan went out of his way

to be helpful to somebody else. And, you know, it's really cool that that happened, and I just can't wait to say thank you. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, Tom, thank you for this. A couple of things before. saying thank you. And thank you. Thank you. No, I mean, this is just a dream. But in search of excellence, if there's anyone listening who has not read that, read in search of excellence by Tom Peters and then read. And there's a million other books by you you can read too. But most recently, and kind of the reason that you came here to, that we were joining to get today is because of your newest book called The Excellence Divided meeting the tech tied with work that wows and jobs at last. I'm really appreciative of your team. team and Shelley, you send it my way. And it's just, it's a joy to be able to talk about some of the topics in there as well as just what you believe in general and the effect and impact you've had on my life. Nobody outside of my dad who's probably had more of an impact than you, I read your stuff first when I became a manager. And it means the world to me to be able to learn

directly from you and then share it with my audience. So they get to learn directly from you. It's the coolest thing in the world, man. So thank you so much, Tom. My pleasure, and once again, you and Shelley will get together now or later because I really want to get a book to your dad. For sure. What I will do is I will send him a copy of the new book, and I've also got a box somewhere at home with In Search of Excellence is, and I'll send him in search of excellence, too. Oh, man. You're the best. You're the best.

Thank you so much. By the way, where would you, because you put everything online for free, too. So where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? Tom peters.com or excellence now.com. At excellencetow.com, we put together everything we knew in the world in a 17-chapter 4,096 slide presentation with 100,000 words of annotation. So, and at tom peters.com, we literally have my speech slides for every speech in the last, I think, 15 years. It's awesome. And it's really cool that I know, I think it took you a year or longer to develop it.

but your team developed your logo and it's an exclamation point. I think that's right red exclamation point. That's fitting. That's fitting. We're really happy with that. I love it. And I'll do my advertisement for my graphic designer, Ken Sylvia. We drove him out of his mind.

But he was his insistent we were. We were going to, you know, and people have asked me about that a lot. And I said, look, your exclamation mark is your signature. You want to get it right. You don't turn it over to a marketing company because it has to. to reflect you in a very personal way, as well as a professional way. Anyway, thank you for your time, and I've enjoyed it very much. Thanks, Tom.

And say hello to your dad for me. I will. I will. I really appreciate it, man. And I look forward to the next one. I love to meet you in person as well. That'd be great. Hopefully we can catch up.

That would be nice if that happened. I agree. Thanks, Tom. Thanks. All right. Wow. Thank you so much to Tom for joining me. And thank you for listening.

If this is the first time you've heard of Tom, I, again, would encourage you to get in search of excellence as well as the excellence dividend. It's most recent work. That was just a pure joy for me to have that conversation with somebody I've looked up to for many years and has helped me because of their work. So if you enjoyed it, I love it if you would write a review, subscribe and rate the show in iTunes, Apple Podcasts. That's write a review, subscribe and rate the show. Hopefully, five stars, iTunes, Apple Podcasts. It really helps spread the message to others.

Thanks again for being here. This means the world to me that you support it. I love doing it more than anything else outside of being with my family. So thank you so much. And I cannot wait for the next one. See you next week.