~ Preface ~

Tom Peters is an American who has researched the secrets of successful

“A Passion for
American companies. His philosophies of the Quality Improvement Process
have evolved mainly as a result of these experiences combined with, it seems,
his sales-orientated viewpoint. Peters was a principal at McKinsey and Co
when he began researching his book In Search of Excellence. He left in 1981
to find his own companies, now known as the Tom Peters Group. The book,
published in 1982, painted a broad brush picture of the facts behind excellent
performance within 43 large American Companies.

Excellence
”
His second book “A Passion for Excellence” was published in 1985 with co-
author Nancy Austin. In this, Tom Peters identified leadership as being central
to the Quality Improvement Process. He considered that the word
'management' should be discarded in favor of 'leadership'. The new role
should be that of a cheerleader, and facilitator. He sees Managing by
Book written by: Review by:
Wandering About (MBWA) as the basis of leadership and excellence because it
enables the leader to keep in touch with Customers, Innovation, and People,
the three major areas in the pursuit of 'excellence'. He labels MBWA the
Tom Peter Kumar Amit
'Technology of the Obvious' and believes that as the effective leader wanders,
at least three major activities are going on:

Listening - suggests
caring.
Teaching - values must be transmitted when
face to face.
Facilitating - able to give on-the-
spot help.
However in this book, he no longer appears to portray leadership, or MBWA in
particular, as the central issue. Instead, he devotes equal discussion to the
four familiar areas of customers, innovation, people and leadership. The
customer aspect is discussed first, perhaps reflecting his evolving views.

Each area is discussed in terms of 'prescriptions', since Peters views the 'nice-
to-do' approach of the late 1970s as a 'must-do' in the late 1980s. He
considers that each prescription urgently calls for a radical reform. They
evolved out of the perceived desire by managers to move beyond the case
studies.

By the late 1980s he was using the term 'management obsession' and
considered that leaders must learn to love change in order to be proactive in
a world of chaos.
~ MBWA – The Technology of the
Obvious ~
Managing By Wandering Around. To “wander,” with customers and vendors
and own people, is to be in touch with the first vibrations of the new. The topic
of MBWA is at once about common sense, leadership, customers, innovation
and people. Simple wandering – listening, empathizing, staying in touch – is
an ideal starting point.

The greatest problem business faces is getting the boss back to work
watching his customer and his product. Too many bosses are involved with
long-range planning meetings. They are too busy playing golf, often to the
point that they no longer know what the customer is saying, how he is being
treated. They are not on the production floor enough to know how the product
is being manufactured or how the buyers are stocking the stores. As a result,
we have set ourselves up for a terrific pratfall.

The number one managerial productivity problem is, quite simply, managers
who’re out of touch with their people and out of touch with their customers.
And the alternative, “being in touch,” doesn’t come via computer printouts or
the endless stream of overhead transparencies viewed in ten thousand
darkened meeting rooms. Being in touch means tangible ways of being
informed.

MBWA: With Customers

Some Questions—and Things to Do

Now
 Do visitations
you regularly
– yours’
call your
to customers,
own company
customers’
and competitors
to you – go
with
all the
a single
way
request
down to (e.g.,
the hourly
on product
level? And
information)?
are they regular?
What are the differences in
response, in detail – days to answer, completeness of answer,
courtesy, etc.? Have five people do this with different requests and
compare notes.

MBWA: Innovation
Do you
To innovate is have
to paya attention
toll-free call-in number (even
to innovation. if you are a small
At Hewlett-Packard, each
company)? If not, why not?
engineer leaves the project he or she is working with out on “the bench.”
Other engineers take a look at it, play with it, and comment on it. More
significant, even, is the tone set. Everybody leaves a device out. Everybody
Must
gets into the do: Call plays
act and a minimum of three else’s
with everybody customers
toys. per week from a list of
fifty or so good, bad and indifferent customers. And get a list of
major sales made and lost in the last three weeks. Call one recently
gained and one recently lost customer. Ask why it happened.

PepsiCoCall
wasthe heads of
a sleepy stores, achosen
company dozen randomly,
years ago.andNowask
it’show the day had
aggressive. But
gone. Likewise, every week, call three of you operations
while it spend extravagantly on Michael Jackson on the tube as an advertiser that deal
directly
for Pepsi-Cola withceaseless
in the customersbattle
and ask how the
against day’s
Coke, business
it places its has
realgone.
bets on
development of the likes of La Petite Boulangerie, a bakery chain with six
stores in the San Francisco area that is expected to run to three thousand
stores. Growing new or small businesses is the PepsiCo technique.
Do you bring customers to life (via video, visits, etc.) for the off-line
departments – MIS, accounting, personnel? Do you have members of
the off-line functions make occasional (but regular) customer visits,
work on the retail floor, etc.?

Do magic
What’s the you conduct occasional
of the PepsiCo intensive customer
transformation? Much of it debriefings
stems from a where
form
customers are “called in” (invited in) for multiday “How
of MBWA. In particular, the unique form practiced by PepsiCo’s former CEO, are we
doing for you?” sessions?
Andy Pearson. He was on the road a lot – probably 40 percent of his time.
Much of that time was spent visiting subsidiaries. When he did so, the routine
Do youHe
was standard. have set routines
ignored and visit
the executive suitepatterns which
at first, and are aimed
headed for theat the
office
“naïve”
of the most parthired
recently of listening
members of the brand management staff. “What’s
up? What’ve you got going in the test market? How are they reacting to the
new umpty-ump flavor?” And so on. Implicit was the message that something
Do senior managers (and all managers) work in selected customer
had better be going on.
operations on a quarterly basis? Do “technical experts”(R&D people,
brand managers, designers) regularly visit and work in selected
customer operations?

Are customers regularly invited to visit virtually all facilities? Are people
from all customer functions (e.g., manufacturers) invited to visit? Are
there regular routines for debriefing customers on these visits?
Customers and
Innovation:
Some Questions—and Things to Do
Now
Given that concrete experiments are essential to innovation, how –
specifically – does your daily routine reflect your desire to constantly
test and try new things? Are you constantly, like Pearson or the HP
people, out on the floor asking “What’s gone on in the last twenty-
four hours?”

Select two projects that are badly delayed, two that are on ahead of
schedule. Analyze the information swapping and getting-the-people-
together-for-problem-solving routines.

Look at your last ten new products/services. What were the sources of
the ideas? Look at key competitors’ last ten new products/services.
What were the sources of the ideas? Have the customer-generated
ideas lead to faster (and more profitable) product development.

Is there a specific and regular mechanism for salespersons to solicit

customers’ ideas? If so, is there a specific mechanism aimed at making
sure that design/marketing/engineering/manufacturing pay attention
to these ideas. Do nonsales functions (marketing, manufacturing or
operations, accounting) specifically solicit customer ideas?

Consider giving an award for “best idea garnered from a customer this
month.” Consider sales contests focused on unearthing new ideas
from customers. Consider adding manufacturers/operations people
to this crusade.

Do you treat your designer/buyer types as well-rounded business

people? Are they brought into the loop – the store, the factory, the
customer’s premises – in a way that makes them team members
rather than the oddball “creative type”? If the answer is yes, then be
specific: List 10 ways you’ve made the designers et al. part of the
team.

Are the “idea” people (engineers, brand managers, marketers, buyers)

forced to visit customers or sales-floor operations regularly?
Monthly? How about weekly?
MBWA: People

Some Questions—and Things to Do

Now
How much time do you devote to walking the floor? Be specific: Collect
some data for about twenty-five managers – all functions, all levels.
How big is the variation? What’s the low end: 5 percent? 10 percent?
Are you surprised by the pattern?

Wandering is a habit that starts close to home. Are the doors open or
closed? Or, better yet, do you even have doors? Two examples: An
officer in a mid-sized company has a special routine. Whenever he
takes charge of a new area, he always begins by personally
removing his door from his office. The message is clear. Another
colleague one-ups him: he always moves his desk – again, personally
– out into the secretarial area. More generally, do physical spaces
enhance or thwart wandering?

What is the frequency of “all hands” meetings? Why? Could you do

more? “Seeing is believing” is probably applicable to this one.
MBWA pervades every level of the effective organization of every sort - which
is to say that leaders exist at every level.

Quality is…

I was brought up by a father who was difficult to satisfy because he always

felt something could me made or done better. He was never content with
success…He does take eyeball. I’m afraid as great as computers are, they
cannot tell you about the quality of the product. The profitability, yes, but not
the quality. The human eye, the human experience, is the one thing that can
make quality better – or poorer.

- Stanley Marcus, former chairman,

Neiman-Marcus

MBWA: The Technology of

Leadership
MBWA: the technology of the obvious. It is being in touch, with customers,
suppliers, your people. It facilitates innovation, and makes possible the
teaching of values to every member of an organization. Listening, facilitating,
and teaching and reinforcing values. What is this except leadership? Thus
MBWA is the technology of leadership. We will subsequently argue that
leading is primarily paying attention, and that the masters of the use of
attention are also not only master users of symbols, of drama, but master
storytellers and myth builders. All this can be accomplished only through
means that are visible, tangible.
involves living the message of the possibility of perfection and infinite
improvement, living it day in and day out, decade by decade.

Ray Croc once visited a McDonald’s franchise in Winnepeg. It’s reported that
he found a single fly. The franchisee lost his McDonald’s franchise two weeks
later.

Frank Perdue invested a quarter of million dollars in “the world’s biggest blow
dryer, powered by a 727 engine.” The reason? Frank thinks the most
obnoxious thing in the world is the eight hairs that stick up on a typical
chicken wing when it is barbecued. With his new blow dryer, he’s able to fluff
up the hairs and burn most of them off before the chicken is delivered to the
stores. But he is not finished. The new technique on average reduces the
eight hairs to two. Frank doesn’t think it is enough.

Story after story – from IBM, Hewlett Packard, the Marriott Corporation, Disney
Milliken & Co., Delta Airlines, et al.- has the same theme as that of McDonald’s
and Perdue Farms: senior and middle managers alike who live the quality
message with passion, persistence and, above all, consistency. Attention to
quality can become the organization’s mind-set only if all of its managers –
indeed, all of its people – live it.
This entire book is about quality. Because quality, above all, is all about care,
people, passion, consistency, eyeball contact and gut reaction. Quality is not a
technique, no matter how good.

Any device
Living to maintain
it means just that.quality can be
You can’t payof attention
value. Buttoallitdevices are valuable
80 percent of the time
only
or of managers
even 95 percent – at
ofall
thelevels
time–and
are let
living the quality
it lapse now and message, paying
then. The only thing
attention
that toisquality,
will do and spending time on it. Quality comes from the belief
obsession.
that anything can be made better, that beauty is universally achievable – in
the collection of garbage, in the services provided by Federal Express or UPS,
in the raising of chickens and the making of potato chips, pizzas or French
fries, in the design of a retail store or a piece of software or the bypass air
intake mechanism of a jet engine. Quality
…not a Technique

W. Edwards Deming taught quality, as it’s known today, to the Japanese. He’s
also thought as the father of statistical quality control (SQC). The principal
reason he believes it’s not important is that the techniques of SQC lead to
hugely increased self-inspection (control) by the people on the line. Deming
believes, after all is said and done, that quality is primarily a function of
human commitment. In a 1983 lecture to college-level business students at
Utah State University, he said:

“Some of you are students of finance. You learn how to figure and how to run
a company on figures. If you run a company on figures alone you will go
under. How long will it take the company to go under, get drowned? I don’t
know, but it is sure to fail. Why? Because the most important figures are not
there. Did you learn that in the school of finance? You will, 10 or 15 years from
now, learn that the most important figures are those that are unknown or
unknowable.

What about the multiplying effects of a happy customer, in either

manufacturing or in service? Is he in your figures? What about the multiplying
effects of an unhappy customer? Is that in your figures? Did you learn that in
your school of finance? What about the multiplying effect of getting better
material to use in production? What about the multiplying effect that you get
all along the production line? Do you know that figure? You don’t! If you run
your company without it, you won’t have a company. What about the
multiplying effect of doing a better job along the line?

People all over the world think that it is the factory worker that causes
problems. He’s not your problem. Ever since there’s been anything such as
industry, the factory worker has known that
quality is what will protect his job. He knows that poor quality in the hands of
the customer will lose the market and cost him his job. He knows it and lives
with that fear everyday. Yet he cannot do a good job. He’s not allowed to do it
because the management wants figures, more products, and never minds the
quality. They measure only in figures. The factory worker is forced to make
defective products. The worker can’t do anything about it. He’s totally
helpless. If he tries to do something about it, he might as well talk to the wall.
Nobody listens.”

Quality is, thus, and all-hands-on proposition. So, measure it, by all means.
Reward it. Celebrate it. That love will be readily transmitted. So, sadly, will its
absence – even more readily. There is no other route.

~ Doing MBWA ~

We began with the technology of the obvious – MBWA; we explored MBWA

with customers, suppliers, MBWA and innovation, MBWA and listening, MBWA
and leadership. That was introduction. Now we come full circle – to the
process of doing MBWA.

First, it seems fair, honest, appropriate – and obvious to the many wounded
among readers – to begin by saying that MBWA isn’t as easy as it may sound!
Doing it well is an art. However, it is an art that can probably be learned – and
it is clearly unrelated to having an “outgoing” personality. In fact, arguably,
the best wanderers are the introverts who start with the ability to listen,
because listening, and not tap dancing or pronouncing, is at the heart of
effective MBWA.
There is certain inappropriateness to the use of the term “MBWA.” In a way it
makes the physical act of the wandering seem the most significant point. That
is vital – but MBWA is much more. It is a code word for all the aspects of
leadership. That’s why it turns out to be so tough.

To begin with, as the effective leader wanders/coaches/develops/engenders

small wins, a lot is going on – at least three major activities, usually all at
once, they are (1) listening, (2) teaching and (3) facilitating. Listening is the
“being in touch” part, getting it firsthand and undistorted – from suppliers,
customers and your own people. The very act of listening suggests a form of
caring. MBWA is also a “teaching” act. Values simply must be transmitted
face-to-face. The questioning routines, order of visits and a host of other
variables add up willy-nilly to the teaching of values. Finally, the wanderer can
also be of direct help! The role of the leader as servant, facilitator, protector
from bureaucracy (and bureaucrats) is the third prime MBWA objective.

Listening, Teaching,
Facilitating:
Some Suggestions

Listening is best done on somebody else’s turf. That is why we urge

wandering. There are, however, many ways to do it, even on the other
person’s turf. One is to gather people together in formal question-and-answer
sessions. That’s not bad. It’s useful, because the group as a whole takes the
measure of the “boss” in this kind of a setting. Is he or she trying to pull the
wool over our eyes? Is he or she being straight with us? What is he or she
hiding? Why?

Listening is the number one objective of MBWA. Teaching is almost as

important, however, and it emphatically does
no what to do. It does mean telling people in a direct, no-
mean telling people
nonsense fashiont what it is you think is important about the world – their
world and yours. It
can as readily be accomplished by the regular pattern of your questioning
routine as by a formal speech, but is a big part of the MBWA process.

Wandering activity is, in this regard, a golden opportunity. The pattern of your
questioning will be noticed and interpreted. Everything about what you are up
to – your dress, the order in which you talk to people, the things you focus on
in your questions, the things you fail to focus on – will be, even if you are a
regular wanderer, the subject of endless speculation.

MBWA is not easy, and it shouldn’t be easy. Estimating conservatively, a

thousand variables are at play! MBWA exposes you. Your ability to listen is
exposed. Your honesty and integrity (or lack of it) are exposed. Your
consistence is exposed to the scrutiny of the toughest watchers of all – hourly
people. You can bullshit a vice president with ease. But it’s almost impossible
to BS somebody on the loading dock. They have been there and back. Your
vision (or lack of it) is exposed. Your statements have coherence (or not)
relative to the basics of that vision.

Putting major effort and energy into learning MBWA and practicing it is worth
the candle, but it won’t be easy. In fact, it will be hard. If you haven’t done
much of it, it is guaranteed that the first few days, weeks, months, and
perhaps years, will be just plain awful. Few will trust you: “What’s he up to?”
“How long will it take for this ‘wander phase’ to pass?”
~ Coaching ~

There is no magic: only people who find and nurture champions, dramatize
company goals and direction, build skills and teams, spread irresistible
enthusiasm. They are cheerleaders, coaches, storytellers, and wanderers.
They encourage, excite, teach, listen, facilitate. Their actions are consistent.
Only brute consistency breeds believability: they say people are special and
they treat them that way – always.

The trick is demonstrating to people, every day, where you want to take your
organization. It begins with shared understanding of purpose, made real and
tangible through consistent “mundane” actions. It’s being amazingly
consistent that counts, ignoring the charge that you are a broken record. The
only thing that convinces people that you really care, that you take personally
your commitment to them, is unflagging consistency. And it is a commitment.

Fine performance comes from people at all levels who pay close attention to
the environment, communicate unshakeable core values, and patiently
develop the skills that will enable them to make sustained contribution to their
organizations. In a word, it recasts the detached, analytical manager as the
dedicated, enthusiastic coach.

Coaching is face-to-face leadership that pulls together people with diverse

backgrounds, talents, experiences and interests, encourages them to step up
to responsibility and continued achievement, and treats them as full-scale
partners and contributors. Coaching is not about memorizing techniques or
devising the perfect game plan. It is about really paying attention to people –
really believing them, really caring about them, really involving them.
“The main thing is getting people to play. When you think it’s your system
that’s winning, you’re in for a big surprise. It’s those players’ efforts.”

To coach is largely to facilitate, which literally means “to make easy” – not
less demanding, less interesting or less intense, but less discouraging, less
bound up with excessive controls and complications. A coach/facilitator works
tirelessly to free the team from needless restrictions on performance, even
when they are self-imposed.

Coaching at its heart involves caring enough about people to take the time to
build a personal relationship with them. Easy to say, tough to do.
Relationships depend on contact. No contact, no relationship. The best
coaches know this: they lavish time and attention – time and attention that
others never quite get around to spending on a consistent basis – on people.
They also make sure people see enough of one another to impart a vital sense
of continuity, momentum and urgency, and to focus attention on the long
term. They find reasons everyday to get the whole team together – hundreds
at times – and to underscore the point that “we’re all in this together for the
long run, so we damn well better do what we can to help each other out.”

Coaching is tough-minded. It’s nurturing and bringing out the best; it’s
demanding that the team plays as a team. And should it finally become clear
that there’re prima donnas who won’t forgo the “I” in favor of “we,” you have
to handle that one, too – by letting them go.

Five Coaching Rules

How do you know what approach to take in coaching? What to emphasize?
What to leave alone for the time being? Where do you start?

An HP marketing manager observes “to coach well, you have to be flexible.

What works with one person doesn’t with someone else. It depends on
knowing the person and understanding the situation.” In short, sometimes
coaching is not coaching but counseling, or sponsoring, or confronting, or
educating.

It turns out that successful coaches instinctively vary their approaches to meet
the needs of this person at this time, or that group at that time. They perform
five distinctly different roles: they educate, sponsor, coach, counsel and
confront. Each approach is executed with intensity toward the same goal: to
facilitate learning and elicit creative contributions from all hands to the
organization’s overarching purpose. Let’s take a closer look at the five roles.

EDUCATE
TIMING
When goals, roles or business conditions
To orient a newcomerchange~ When you new to a
When new group
skills are needed
TONE
Positive, supportive
Emphasis on learning and applying specific new
CONSEQUENCES
knowledge
New skills acquired ~ Confidence
Perspective on theincreases
company or organization is
KEY SKILLS
broadened
Ability to articulate performance
An eye forexpectations
recognizing real-life
clearly “learning
Ability andlaboratories”
willingness to reinforce
learning
 SPONSOR
TIMING
When an individual can make a special
To let an outstanding
contribution skill speak for
ONE
itself
Positive, enthusiastic
Emphasis on long-term development and
company
contribution to the
Future focus ~ Polishing, fine-
CONSEQUENCES
tuning
Showcase for outstanding skill,
Greater experience ~
contribution
KEY SKILLS
Promotion
Debureaucratizing ~ Dismantling barriers to
Ability performance
to develop collegial
Willingness to let go off
relationship
Willingness to provide access to information and
control
people

COACH
TIMING
For special encouragement before or
(e.g., first customer visit, first board
after a “first”
To make simple, brief
meeting)
TONE
corrections
Encouraging, enthusiastic ~ Preparatory,
CONSEQUENCES
explanatory
Enhanced confidence, skills, better
performance
 COUNSEL

TIMING
When problems damage performance ~ After
coaching
educating and
To respond to setbacks and disappointments and
speed TONE
recovery
Emphasis on problem solving ~ Positive, supportive,
Structured ~ Two-way
encouraging
CONSEQUENCES
discussion
Turnaround ~ Enhanced sense of ownership and
KEY SKILLS
accountability
Willingness to listen ~ Ability to give clear, useful
feedback
 CONFRONT
TIMING
Persistent performance problems are not resolvedAn
individual seems unable to meet expectations despite
educating and
An individual is failing in his or her
counseling
TONErole
current
Positive, supportive ~
Clear focus on needFirm to make a decision and
decision willwhich
time at be made
Calm
CONSEQUENCES
Reassignment ~ A chance to succeed in
Current job isanother
restructured, responsibilities
position
KEY ~
curtailed SKILLS
Dismissal
Listening ~ Ability to give direct, useful
Ability to discuss sensitive issues without
feedback
them
overemotionalizing

~ The Blood Oaths

~
How do we change – faster? The prescriptions are called The Promises or “the
blood oaths.” They cover the four areas, which are sections of Passion.

Customers

First, ten customer promises:

C-1 Build unique value-added features into every product or service that you
offer. Remember, there need be no such thing as a commodity. Add ten
“differentiators” every ninety days to every substantive product or service that
you offer. Consider shifting your entire portfolio – radically - in the direction of
higher value-added products and services; to support this, you must reduce
product development times substantially – now.

C-2 Develop and use hard-nosed, quantitative, systematic customer

satisfaction measures, focusing on relative perceived product or service
quality. Tie the measures directly to performance evaluation and
compensation, preferably for all functions. Consider making customer
satisfaction the primary basis for evaluation of most people in the
organization.

C-3 Live quality in every action. Report on quality at the outset of every
meeting. Involve everyone – all functions – in a well-planed, systematic, team-
based quality improvement program.

C-4 Listen to your customers – in all elements of primary distribution channels –

regularly, face-to-face, and using multiple techniques. Insist that members of all
functions listen to customers directly and regularly. Develop direct, nonattenuated
mechanisms to inject ideas collected in the field rapidly into the
design/buying/engineering/manufacturing/operation functions.
C-5 Tailor every product or service offering that u sell internationally.
Relationships are more important than “substance” in most international
markets. Be patient. Learn the language, literally and figuratively.

C-6 Provide rigorous, ongoing, “overkill” customer service training for all the
marketing heroes – start with the receptionists, mailroom clerks, and accounts
receivable team.

C-7 Consider radical “overinvestment” in your direct sales and service force or
in your sales and service force in support of distributors/the trade/franchisees.

C-8 Mount joint company/outsider problem-solving teams – in pursuit of

enhanced quality, service responsiveness, and new market-creation
opportunities.

C-9 Make manufacturing a primary market tool. Manufacturing managers

should spend a minimum of 15 percent of their time out of the plant, with
customers. Flexibility, joint-product quality and service improvement teams
with customers and suppliers, on-schedule delivery, and superior quality are
all manufacturing “weapons” for market dominance.

C-10 Get to the point where you – and everyone else in the organization – can
state your strategic distinction, your uniqueness, in fifteen to twenty-five
words or less. Test the level of agreement randomly and regularly with new
and old employees alike.

Innovation

Ten promises deal with innovation:

I-1 Establish, for every profit center, a tough quantitative target for percent of
revenue stemming from new products and services introduced in the last
twenty-four months.
I-2 Invest in a sizable enough portfolio of small beginnings to ensure a
constant flow of new products and services, remembering that the odds for
any one project being successful are low. Big ends come from small
beginnings.

I-3 “Turn it to tin (reality).” Speed up production for the first sample, first
prototype, first subassembly, and first store within a store.

I-4 Staff your new development teams – almost from the beginning – with full-
time people from all primary functions (sales, marketing, operations,
accounting, and design/engineering).

I-5 Become an executive champion: Seek out, facilitate for, and promote
champions and skunks throughout the organization. Develop a tolerance for
their skunk like behavior. Love them even if it kills you!

I-6 Actively reward defiance of your own inhibiting regulations. Also, find and
batter down directly irritating obstacles – usually small – that champions
cannot clear from their own paths or that unnecessarily delay them.

I-7 Actively and publicly reward mistakes/failures – good tries, well thought
out, executed with alacrity, quickly adjusted, and unfailingly learned from.

I-8 “Model” innovation. Consciously seek – each day – two or three

opportunities to specifically identify with innovation and change, at all levels
and in all functions. Be “caught” – daily – applauding the new and yawning at
even good performance that includes no bold moves or fast- paced
experiments.

I-9 Create an Innovators Hall of Fame. Be sure to include members from all
functions; creators of small innovations as well as large; supporters of
champions and skunks – for instance, a remote store operations team that
helped out at a critical early juncture by providing a friendly home for a pilot
project.

I-10 Organize new product and service marketing efforts around explicit,
systematic, extensive “word of mouth” campaigns.
People

The next nine promises are about

people:

P-1 Regularly celebrate small wins that are indicative of the superior day-to-
day performance of 90 percent of your work force. Hold at least ten
celebratory events each month.

P-2 Include all your people in some substantial profit-sharing program.

Seriously consider an employee share ownership plan (ESOP).

P-3 Organize as much as possible – in all functions and facilities – around ten
to thirty person teams; the semiautonomous, task-oriented team should be
the basic organization building block.

P-4 Involve all people – all functions – in quality improvement programs, 100
percent self inspections, productivity improvement programs, budget
development and monitoring, plant/area layout and design, etc. remember,
there are no limits to the capabilities of well-trained, committed people.

P-5 Institute measurement systems that are clear, simple, credible, and
succinct; post key measures, developed collectively with the first-line people
involved, very visibly.

P-6 Reduce layers of management to no more than five – no more than three
layers for any facility.

P-7 Assign your support staff people – in accounting, personnel, etc. – to work
for site managers in the field rather than for a corporate staff.

P-8 Debureaucratize by radically reducing and simplifying paperwork and

unnecessary procedures. Remember, this task cannot be delegated!

P-9 Dehumiliate. Eliminate policies and practices, almost always tiny, of the
organization that demean and belittle human dignity.
Leadership

Finally, there are ten promises that concern leadership. The first five
constitute a category called “leadership at all times.” The last five are a
special set labeled “leadership in times of change.”

L-1 At all times: review and modify your calendar so that your daily schedule
quantitatively reflects attention to your very small number of top priorities.
Evaluate your progress – quantitatively – on a weekly basis.

L-2 Managing by wandering around (MBWA): Consciously live your visions,

values, and priorities in your scheduled meetings, visits, and in the minutiae of
your daily routine. Become a fanatic of signals and symbols – penned notes on
memos, invitations to staff meetings, agenda item formulation, etc. Miss no
opportunity to signal your abiding concerns.

L-3 More MBWA: provide (and encourage others to provide) weekly forums
where warring functional tribes can come together in a nonthreatening
fashion. Your objective is to (1) listen and (2) act immediately and directly to
clear up “small stuff.”

L-4 Achieve line dominance. Sales, field service, distribution, stores operations,
and manufacturing/purchasing should be “overrepresented” at decision-
making forums.

L-5 Promote people on the basis of their ability to create excitement among their
colleagues.
L-6 In times of change, spend 50 percent of your time, directly or indirectly, on
the new strategic priority you are attempting to instill.

L-7 Unfailingly use promotion – at every level – as a tool to signal the new
strategic direction. Involve yourself, if you are a top manager, in the lower
level promotions. Don’t let any of these golden opportunities to signal “the
new way” slip you by.
L-8 Develop and use a five-minute “stump speech” which clearly describes
the new vision of the new way. Use it daily, no matter how seemingly
inappropriate the setting. Constantly stage events to showcase success
stories and their heroes that support the new way.

L-9 Substitute pilots for proposals. If an idea is at all plausible, vigorously

encourage your new-way champions to seek an eager sponsor in the field – as
far away from division headquarters as possible – and test the idea
immediately, rather than ending churning it through the proposal mill.

L-10 Formal evaluation of leaders – managers at all levels – should focus less
on measures such as budget variance and profitability and more on explicit
questions: “What, exactly, have you changed lately?” Moreover, every
meeting should commence with rapid, explicit reviews of exactly what has
been changed since the last session.

Change is the only constant, as so many have said. Maintaining our standards
of living, let alone increasing it, depends upon a dramatically enhanced pace
of change in our large corporations as well as in our small ones. Our
impatience grows daily. The tools are there. Nothing in the thirty-nine
promises, and nothing in between the covers of this book for that matter,
requires starting with a massive infusion of capital investment. A change of
attitude and a change in the way we spend our time are the essential first
steps. Living some simple themes with near obsession is required. There is
absolutely no excuse imaginable for not getting on with it, right now.

~ Conclusion ~
A conclusion is a place to deal with common misperceptions. One, concerning
this revolution, stands out above all others: it is that we advocate a change
from “tough-mindedness” to “tenderness,” from concern with hard data and
balance sheets to a concern for the “soft stuff” – values, vision, and integrity.
It has been found that when it comes to achieving long-term success, soft is
hard. The pressure to perform in an organization is nothing short of brutal.

The superb business leaders used as models in this book epitomize paradox.
All are tough as nails and uncompromising about their value systems, but at
the same time they care deeply about and respect their people; their very
respect leads them to demand (in the best sense of the word) that each
person be an innovative contributor. The best bosses are neither exclusively
tough nor exclusively tender. They are both – tough on the values, tender in
support of people who would dare to take a risk and try something new in
support of those values. They speak constantly of vision, of values, of
integrity; they harbor the most soaring, lofty and abstract notions. At the
same time they pay obsessive attention to details. No item is too small to
pursue if it serves to make the vision a little bit clearer.

We must confront the paradox, own it, live it, and celebrate it if we are to
make much headway in achieving excellence. We must cultivate passion and
trust, and at virtually the same moment we must delve unmercifully into the
details. How do we do it, or at least make a beginning? That’s what A Passion
for Excellence is all about.