I read this interview with Tom Peters and have made an attempt to highlight a few vital points that is to be considered by leaders of this century. I have also given links in some places for a better understanding. Read on.......
The
discussion with Tom Peter started off with the following query by the
interviewers from Mckinsey:
“what would you say is missing from
today’s discussion about management?”
Tom
Peters replied:
“I don’t know.” My real bottom-line
hypothesis is that nobody has a sweet clue what they’re doing.”
Quoting
Peter Druker on the trait of effective leader, that they do one thing at a
time, Tom Peter claimed that he is a fanatic on the topic of time management.
With technology he claims that he sees managers with attention deficit
disorder, constantly barraged with information and chasing the next shiny
thing. Stressing that big company CEOs do not read enough he recalled two messages
from Dov Frohmans’ book “Leadership the Hard Way’:
·
50 percent of your time should be
unscheduled; and
· the secret of success is daydreaming.
He pointed out that big companies never outperform
the market over the long haul; he mentioned Albert Allen Bartlett words, “the greatest shortcoming of the human race
is our inability to understand the exponential function.”
Commenting on the short executive tenures Tom Peter
remarked: “The question is how you
survive? One way to deal with the insane pace of change is by living to get
smarter and to learn new things. Another way is by going up the value-added
chain beyond the kinds of tasks and roles that can be automated.”
He continues, ““Design
mindfulness” has got to be in everything you do—down to the littlest thing.
Even the language you use in your e-mails. There’s a character to
communications. There’s a character to business. It’s how you live in the
world.”
Expressing his distaste on the organization charts
lines and boxes, he remarks that such organization has not thought of
organization culture yet, which is the key. He substantiated this thought on
charts and boxes as follows:
“LouGerstner has this wonderful passage in his book that says something to the
effect of, “When I came to IBM I was a guy who believed in strategy and
analysis. What I learned was that corporate culture is not part of the game: It
is
the game.”
Tom Peters continued:
“You know, I was a San Francisco 49ers fan, and their great coach Bill Walsh
said the same thing. In 1979, he inherited a team that had won 2 games and lost
14 the previous season. His entire first year was teaching football players how
to wear coats and ties on buses. And he said, “The key is to become a
professional organization.” On the one hand, coats and ties may be a formality,
but Walsh said, “You’ve got to do the corporate culture first.” Two years
later, he won the Super Bowl.”
Tom Peter wondered why work cannot be made a joyful
experience or an energetic or vivid experience. He stressed that the role of a
leader is to develop people and make the work energetic and exciting with
growth opportunity. As you grow old it is how many people you develop that are
very important not fame or wealth he points out.
To the query why is it difficult to get the culture
point across, Tom Peter quotes Rich Karlgaard, who states that companies end up
as vicious rather than virtuous circle. He was concerned by the truth that companies
are “less engaged with the people side,
culture side, the values side of things.”
On change he remarks, “There’s nothing stupider than saying change is about overcoming
resistance.”
He says, “You
don’t bring about change in real big meetings or virtual meetings. You bring it
about one person at a time, face to face…….It is a subversive act, and being co-conspirators is a subversive act requires trust and intimacy.” His belief is
“we’re still safe believing in the importance of face to face contact……I don’t
thing I can do it all screen to screen.”
He emphasized on the aspect of women in management
and said: “put more women in management,
they know how to do a work around. Men do not know how to do work-around,
because the only thing they understand is hierarchy.”
His concluding words in the interview are:
“There is no difference between leading now and leading
then. What I certainly believe is that anybody who is leading a sizable
institution who doesn’t do what I did and take a year off and read or what have
you, and who doesn’t embrace the new technology with youthful joy and glee, is
out of business.”
Source: This
interview was conducted by Suzanne
Heywood, a director in McKinsey’s London office; Aaron De Smet, a principal in the Houston office; and Allen Webb, the editor in chief of McKinsey
Quarterly, who is based in the Seattle office.
Copyright
© 2014 McKinsey & Company. All rights reserved.
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