“A Passion for

Excellence”
Book written by: Review by:

Tom Peter Kumar Amit

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~ Preface ~

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

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 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 '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.

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.

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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.

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~ 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

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 Do you regularly call your own company and competitors with a single request (e.g., on

product information)? 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.

Do you have a toll-free call-in number (even if you are a small company)? If not, why

not?

Must do: Call a minimum of three customers 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.

Call the heads of stores, chosen randomly, and ask how the day had gone. Likewise,

every week, call three of you operations that deal directly with customers and ask how

the day’s business has gone.

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 you conduct occasional intensive customer debriefings where customers are “called

in” (invited in) for multiday “How are we doing for you?” sessions?

Do you have set routines and visit patterns which are aimed at the “naïve” part of

listening

Do senior managers (and all managers) work in selected customer 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?

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 Do visitations – yours’ to customers, customers’ to you – go all the way down to the

hourly level? And are they regular?

MBWA: Innovation

To innovate is to pay attention to innovation. At Hewlett-Packard, each 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 gets into the act and plays with everybody else’s toys.

PepsiCo was a sleepy company a dozen years ago. Now it’s aggressive. But while it spend

extravagantly on Michael Jackson on the tube as an advertiser for Pepsi-Cola in the ceaseless

battle against Coke, it places its real 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.

What’s the magic of the PepsiCo transformation? Much of it stems from a form of MBWA. In

particular, the unique form practiced by PepsiCo’s former CEO, 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 was standard. He ignored the executive suite at first, and headed for

the office of the most recently hired 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 had better be going on.

Customers and Innovation:

Some Questions—and Things to Do Now

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 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?

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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: 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.

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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

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 to maintain quality can be of value. But all devices are valuable only of managers – at

all levels – are living the quality message, paying attention to quality, and spending time on it.

Quality comes from the belief 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

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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.

Living it means just that. You can’t pay attention to it 80 percent of the time or even 95 percent of

the time and let it lapse now and then. The only thing that will do is obsession.

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…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

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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.

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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 not mean telling people what to do. It does mean telling people in a direct,

no-nonsense fashion what it is you think is important about the world – their world and yours. It

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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?”

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~ 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.

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“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

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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 change
To orient a newcomer ~ When you new to a group
When new skills are needed
TONE
Positive, supportive
Emphasis on learning and applying specific new knowledge
CONSEQUENCES
New skills acquired ~ Confidence increases
Perspective on the company or organization is broadened
KEY SKILLS
Ability to articulate performance expectations clearly
An eye for recognizing real-life “learning laboratories”
Ability and willingness to reinforce learning

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 SPONSOR
TIMING
When an individual can make a special contribution
To let an outstanding skill speak for itself
ONE
Positive, enthusiastic
Emphasis on long-term development and contribution to the
company
Future focus ~ Polishing, fine-tuning
CONSEQUENCES
Showcase for outstanding skill, contribution
Greater experience ~ Promotion
KEY SKILLS
Debureaucratizing ~ Dismantling barriers to performance
Ability to develop collegial relationship
Willingness to let go off control
Willingness to provide access to information and people

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

TIMING
When problems damage performance ~ After educating and
coaching
To respond to setbacks and disappointments and speed recovery
TONE
Emphasis on problem solving ~ Positive, supportive, encouraging
Structured ~ Two-way discussion
CONSEQUENCES
Turnaround ~ Enhanced sense of ownership and accountability
KEY SKILLS
Willingness to listen ~ Ability to give clear, useful feedback

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 CONFRONT
TIMING
Persistent performance problems are not resolvedAn individual seems unable to
meet expectations despite
educating and counseling
An individual is failing in his or her current role
TONE
Positive, supportive ~ Firm
Clear focus on need to make a decision and time at which
decision will be made
Calm
CONSEQUENCES
Reassignment ~ A chance to succeed in another position
Current job is restructured, responsibilities curtailed ~ Dismissal
KEY SKILLS
Listening ~ Ability to give direct, useful feedback
Ability to discuss sensitive issues without overemotionalizing
them

~ The Blood Oaths ~

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 ~

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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.

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