Tom Peters’

We Are in a Brawl with No

Rules

CORENET GLOBAL/11.18.2002

All slides at …

tompeters.com

1. The Fundamental Premises of

Organizational Life Have Been Shattered.

“We are in a

brawl with no rules.”

Paul Allaire

“IT MAY SOMEDAY BE SAID THAT THE 21ST CENTURY BEGAN ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001. …

“Al-Qaeda represents a new and profoundly dangerous kind of

organization—one that might be called a ‘virtual state.’ On September 11th a virtual

state proved that modern societies are vulnerable as never before.”—Time/09.09.2002

“The deadliest strength of America’s new adversaries is their very fluidity, Defense Secretary Donald

Rumsfeld believes. Terrorist networks, unburdened by fixed borders, headquarters or conventional forces, are

free to study the way this nation responds to threats and adapt themselves to prepare for what Mr. Rumsfeld is certain will be another attack. …

“ ‘Business as usual won’t do it,’ he said. His answer is to develop swifter, more lethal ways

to fight. ‘Big institutions aren’t swift on their feet in adapting but rather ponderous and clumsy

and slow.’ ”—The New York Times/09.04.2002

“Dawn Meyerreicks, CTO of the Defense Intelligence Systems Agency, made one of the most fateful military calls of the 21st century. After 9/11 … her office

quickly leased all the available transponders covering Central Asia. The implications should change everything about U.S. military thinking in the

years ahead.

“The U.S. Air Force had kicked off its fight against the Taliban with an ineffective bombing campaign, and Washington was anguishing over whether to send in a few Army divisions. Donald Rumsfeld told Gen. Tommy Franks to

give the initiative to 250 Special Forces already on the ground. They used satellite phones, Predator surveillance drones, and GPS- and laser-based

targeting systems to make the air strikes brutally effective.

“In effect, they ‘Napsterized’ the battlefield by cutting out the middlemen (much of the military’s command and control) and working directly with the

real players. … The data came in so fast that HQ revised operating procedures to allow intelligence analysts and attack planners to work directly

together. Their favorite tool, incidentally, was instant messaging over a secure network.”—Ned Desmond/“Broadband’s New Killer App”/Business

2.0/ OCT2002

“If you don’t like change, you’re going

to like irrelevance even less.” —General Eric

Shinseki, Chief of Staff, U. S. Army

2. We Live in a World of Virtual Organizations.

“The corporation as we know it, which is now 120 years old, is

not likely to survive the next 25 years. Legally and

financially, yes, but not structurally and economically.”

Peter Drucker, Business 2.0 (08.00)

Eric’s Army

Flat.Fast.Agile.Adaptable.Light … But Lethal.Brand You/ Talent/ “I Am An ARMY Of One.”Info-intense.Network-centric.

“Ebusiness is about rebuilding the organization from the

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

Their business processes, their approvals, their hierarchies, the

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

ebusiness.”

Ray Lane, Kleiner Perkins

Gerstner’s IBM: Systems Integrator of

choice. Global Services:

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

aim for 200. Drop many in-house

programs/products. (BW/12.01).

“We want to be the air traffic

controllers of electrons.”

Bob Nardelli, GE Power Systems

3. Welcome to … Low-rise World.

Wal*Mart vs. Sears

Manhattan/ Chicago vs. Silicon Valley/

Austin/ Seattle/ Bangalore

“The organizations we created have become tyrants. They have taken

control, holding us fettered, creating barriers that hinder rather than help our businesses. The lines that we drew on our neat organizational diagrams have turned into walls

that no one can scale or penetrate or even peer over.” —Frank Lekanne Deprez &

René Tissen, Zero Space: Moving Beyond Organizational Limits.

100 square feet

108 X 5vs.

8 X 1= 540 vs. 8 (-98.5%)

E.g. …

Jeff Immelt: 75% of “admin, back room, finance” “digitalized” in

3 years.

Source: BW (01.28.02)

IBM’s Project

eLiza!** “Self-bootstrapping”/ “Artilects”

“If there is nothing very special about

your work, no matter how hard you apply yourself, you won’t get noticed, and that

increasingly means you won’t get paid much either.”

Michael Goldhaber, Wired

I AM AN ARMY OF

ONE

4. Women Rule!

Stupid: “Amazing, now that I think about it. A bunch of

guys --developers, architects, contractors,

engineers, bankers--sitting around designing shopping centers. And the ‘end users’

will be overwhelmingly women!”

$4.8T > Japan

9M/27.5M/$3.6T > Germany

Business Purchasing Power

Purchasing mgrs. & agents: 51%HR: >>50%

Admin officers: >50%

Source: Martha Barletta, Marketing to Women

Ad from Furniture /Today (04.01):“MEET WITH THE EXPERTS!: How

Retailing’s Most Successful Stay that Way”

Presenting Experts: M = 16;

F = ?? (94% = 272)

0

“Please … just

one couch or

chair where my feet hit the ground!” —Owner,

5 furniture stores, UK

“AS LEADERS, WOMEN RULE: New Studies find that female managers

outshine their male counterparts in almost

every measure”Title, Special Report, Business Week, 11.20.00

Women’s Strengths Match New Economy Imperatives: Link [rather than rank] workers;

favor interactive-collaborative leadership style [empowerment beats top-down decision making]; sustain fruitful collaborations; comfortable with sharing information; see redistribution of power

as victory, not surrender; favor multi-dimensional feedback; value technical & interpersonal skills, individual & group contributions equally; readily accept ambiguity; honor intuition as well as pure

“rationality”; inherently flexible; appreciate cultural diversity

Source: Judy B. Rosener, America’s Competitive Secret:Women Managers

Psssst! Wanna see my “porn” collection?

5. Talent Must Be Served.

From “1, 2 or you’re out” [JW] to …

“Best Talent in each industry segment to build

best proprietary intangibles” [EM]

Source: Ed Michaels, War for Talent (05.17.00)

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

among non-conformists, dissenters and rebels.”

David Ogilvy

6. Design = Seat of the

Soul

“We don’t have a good language to talk about this kind of thing. In most people’s

vocabularies, design means veneer. … But to me, nothing could be further from the

meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul

of a man-made creation.”

Steve Jobs

All Equal Except …

“At Sony we assume that all products of our competitors have basically the same

technology, price, performance and

features. Design is the only thing that differentiates one product from another in the

marketplace.”Norio Ohga

THE BASE CASE: I am a design fanatic. Though not “artistic,” I love “cool stuff.” But it goes [much]

further, far beyond the personal. Design has become a professional obsession. I SIMPLY BELIEVE THAT DESIGN PER SE IS THE PRINCIPAL

REASON FOR EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT [or detachment] RELATIVE TO A PRODUCT OR

SERVICE OR EXPERIENCE. Design, as I see it, is

arguably the #1 DETERMINANT of whether a product-service-experience stands out … or doesn’t.

Furthermore, it’s another “one of those things” that damn few companies put – consistently – on the

front burner.

“The worst epithet you’ll see in this

book is ‘It won an award.’ ” —Don Norman*

*C.f. Jane Jacobs, Chris Alexander (Pattern Language)

7. “Real Estate” = Design+ =

EXPERIENCES!

“Experiences are as distinct from services as services are from

goods.”Joseph Pine & James Gilmore, The Experience Economy:

Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage

“The [Starbucks] Fix” Is on …

“We have identified a ‘third place.’ And I really believe that sets us apart. The third place is

that place that’s not work or home. It’s the place our

customers come for refuge.”Nancy Orsolini, District Manager

“Club Med is more than just a ‘resort’; it’s a means of rediscovering oneself, of inventing an

entirely new ‘me.’ ”

Source: Jean-Marie Dru, Disruption

Experience: “Rebel Lifestyle!”

“What we sell is the ability for a 43-year-old accountant to dress in black leather, ride

through small towns and have people be afraid of him.”

Harley exec, quoted in Results-Based Leadership

Bob Lutz: “I see us as being in the art business. Art,

entertainment and mobile sculpture, which,

coincidentally, also happens to provide transportation.”

Source: NYT 10.19.01

DREAM: “A dream is a complete moment in the life of a client.

Important experiences that tempt the client to commit substantial resources. The essence of the desires of the consumer. The

opportunity to help clients become what they want to be.” —Gian Luigi

Longinotti-Buitoni

The marketing of Dreams (Dreamketing)

Dreamketing: Touching the clients’ dreams.

Dreamketing: The art of telling stories and entertaining.

Dreamketing: Promote the dream, not the product.

Dreamketing: Build the brand around the main dream.

Dreamketing: Build the “buzz,” the “hype,” the “cult.”

Source: Gian Luigi Longinotti-Buitoni

8. Green = Revolution

“The best solutions are not based on tradeoffs or ‘balance’

between objectives but on design integration achieving all

of them together”—Paul Hawken & Amory Lovins/ Natural Capitalism: The Next

Industrial Revolution

“Tunneling through the cost barrier”/ “Forget diminishing

returns”/ “Saving a large amount of energy or resources often costs less than saving a small amount.”/ “Change of design mentality”—Hawken/

Lovins/ Natural Capitalism

“The U.S. buildings and construction materials industries reinvest only

about one percent of their revenue in R&D, compared with ten to twenty

times that for cutting-edge industries like electronics and pharmaceuticals.

No wonder their techniques and materials are so antediluvian.”—Paul Hawken & Amory Lovins, Natural Capitalism

9. Technicolor Times Call For

Technicolor Responses.

Forget>“Learn”

“The problem is never how to get new, innovative

thoughts into your mind,

but how to get the old ones out.”

Dee Hock

“It is generally much easier to kill an

organization than change it

substantially.” Kevin Kelly, Out of Control

“Incrementalism is innovation’s worst enemy.”

Nicholas Negroponte

The greatest dangerfor most of us

is not that our aim istoo high

and we miss it,but that it is

too lowand we reach it.

Michelangelo

“Don’t rebuild. Reimagine.”

The New York Times Magazine on the future of the WTC space in Lower Manhattan/09.08.2002

Thank You!