SustainableWork

These posts have consistently tried to advocate for sustainable, repeatable business practices.

This brings me back often to Tom Peters. I am thrilled to see Tom has a new book coming out in early 2010. Tom Peters is at the top of my list of transformative business thinkers.

His new book is called "The Little BIG Things". Sounds like Tom at his best. He is building his current presentations around what he calls "The Eight Courtesies". I'll highlight them below. Buy the book.

Yes, the economy is awful and people are getting hurt badly, but it doesn't mean that we can't explore options for finding a way forward. There are opportunities for 'the rest of us' to start and grow new and emerging enterprises. I have a powerful sense that new kinds of local and regional trade will continue to emerge worldwide for the foreseeable future. It's happening from Australia to the West Bank, to Avoca, WI, and to China (hello Yongchao!).

There are deep and fruitful opportunities here. I am increasingly seeing my immediate contribution to the subject being enterprise creation through local foods.

Individually, these new enterprises may not seem Wall Street worthy, but in aggregate they represent a lot of positive, sustainable, long-term value for economic development on Main Streets and across regions.

So how do you participate? Think you've got to be some kind of uber-trained CEO type to run a new enterprise effectively? Think again.

It's nothing of the sort. You can do it. You DO do it now in other areas of your life. After 35+ years of entrepreneurship I couldn't have described effective entrepreneurship any better than Tom Peters is doing right now.

Here are the eight most important management tools Tom prescribes in The Little BIG Things.

"Epigraph:

Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.—Henry Clay

The 'Eight Courtesies'

1. Stay in touch. (MBWA: Management By Wandering Around)

2. Invest in relationships. (Make friends. Obsess.)

3. Listen. (Respect. Learn. Student. PROFESSIONAL. Sustainable Competitive Advantage #1)

4. Ask. (Engage. Inspire. Consult. React.)

5. Thank. (Appreciate. Acknowledge.)

6. Network......

7. Apologize. (Unequivocal. Rectify. Over-react. Forgive.)

8. Practice thoughtfulness. (Kindness is free. This is ... STRATEGIC.)"


You heard it here: The Renaissance age of entrepreneurship is just beginning. Remember Tom's 'Eight Courtesies' as you journey.

You can do this friend. Start. Engage. Be courteous. Enjoy.


Eight Courtesies: From TP blog 11/24/09

I'm going to buy this book: The Little BIG Things. New book by Tom Peters out February 2010

Labels: boomers, bootstrapping, business partners, business plans, entrepreneurship, new product development, open source economic development, sales tales, slow startups, startups, Tom Peters

The title of this post comes from a Wall Street Journal article this week which I'll link to at the end. I'll also highlight some really important points this article make about sustainable entrepreneurship.

First some news from Iowa County Economic Development. The Driftless Foods project was awarded a $24,400 grant to help organize and launch. The train is leaving the station. Big, serious steps are ahead, but I have high hopes this wonderful project will power through them and emerge as an effective, reproducible model for doing local-foods entrepreneurship.

Speaking of local-foods entrepreneurship, the contractor is moving dirt at the new Innovation Kitchen that our Hodan Center will be opening next year in Mineral Point. Here again, I would like to help create a reproducible model for opening a state certified, community shared-use kitchen. Done right, a platform like this, operating at a regional scale can create literally hundreds of new jobs and help dozens of existing small food enterprises (SFEs) grow and prosper.

It is just a flat-out challenging and wonderful experience to be able help design these economic development experiments.

The Wall Street Journal article about entrepreneurship was written by Sue Shellenbarger. It opens with a great introduction the perils and motivations of entrepreneurship: "By economic yardsticks, Roger the Plumber should be feeling pretty low. Roger Peugeot, owner of the 14-employee Overland Park, Kan., plumbing company that bears his name, is part of a sector hit hard by shrunken credit and slumping sales. He has been forced to reduce staff and is battling new competition from other plumbers fleeing the construction industry."

"So why is Mr. Peugeot so happy? He genuinely likes fixing plumbing messes, for one thing, and despite the worst recession he has seen, "I'm still excited to get up and go to work every day," he says. He relishes running into people at the local hardware store whom he has helped in the past. And in hard times, he says, his fate is in his own hands, rather than those of a manager. "Even when things get tough, I'm still in control," he says."

(me) Whew… what that guy said.

Now, let's bring up your entrepreneurship possibilities under this scenario. I want you to get to that state of mind. Do you have to start with employees like Roger the Plumber? Do you have to quit your day job?

I would posit that starting a small business while you are still working for managers creates hope and an empowering taste of personal independence and control in people's lives.

"The WSJ continues: "As a business owner, Mr. Peugeot says, "even when things are out of your control, as they are with this economy, you're still in control of your relationships" with customers. Corporate managers and executives may "sit and wonder if they're going to be laid off, or get frustrated with the inabilities of management," he says. "If yo're the owner, you may have to say 'I screwed up,' but it's a lot better than saying, 'I didn't deserve that.'"

As an entrepreneur, you control your outcomes.

Entrepreneurship is also a path to more control over your time. The example the WSJ cites below is about a young mother, but there are seriously great life-improvements for people of every age group when you can take some control over your time.

" The freedom business owners have to control their schedules enables them to adhere more closely to their personal priorities, says Amy Neftzger, an organizational psychologist for Healthways. They have the flexibility to "make it to a child's play, or spend time with family," she says."

In Iowa County I'm doing my darndest to design and build some new platforms that will make this kind of entrepreneurship possible. I'm getting more confident in successful outcomes by the day. This is exactly the style of entrepreneur mentorship that the Small Business Center at WCTC let me create and teach.

Yes, entrepreneurship is a (not the) way to more self-control and personal fulfillment. It's also a ton of work (a fact I've been writing about since these posts started) so go in with your eyes wide open or don't go in.

From the WSJ:

"(Business owners) are more likely to work extremely long hours than people in any other occupation group, other Gallup research shows."

So how to deal with that? Start small. Start now. Make as many mistakes as you can as inexpensively as you can. Continue moving forward even in the midst of adversity. Then you can grow your business as your life allows.

What's totally, eccentrically fun about that process is that you can end up working prodigious percents of every day doing enjoyable, challenging, rewarding work, whose time-flow you control.

You can do it.



WSJ article, ' Plumbing for Joy? Be Your Own Boss', by Sue Shellenbarger. Wall St. Journal Sept 16, 2009

WCTC Small Business Center

I located this WSJ article through Tom Peters' great site

Labels: boomers, bootstrapping, business plans, Driftless Foods, entrepreneurship, startups, Tom Peters

I've run C-Corps, S-Corps, LLCs, and sole proprietorships. Right now, I have the opportunity and good fortune to help run a non-profit. In that day job, I'm helping organize Co-ops.

Structure, structure, structure. It defines a lot of what works and what doesn't work once the rubber meets the road.

This is not a piece about legal structures however. Structures don't make organizations work, leaders do.

I've been thinking about what connects leadership across all the kinds of enterprises I've had the opportunity to participate in.

Fortunately I don't have to think too hard. One simple thing stands out. I just came across a wonderful quote from Tom Peters that sums up my own philosophy better than I could:

"The essence of the leader is to induce people to grow." --Tom Peters

Induce: "to lead or move by persuasion or influence, as to some action or state of mind."

Grow: "to increase by natural development."

If you are a person considering a startup or working in an emerging enterprise, you need to be a leader, no matter your specific position. The world needs your solutions and you need to get those solutions deployed. If you are leading a small team or even if you are only leading yourself, you need to create states of mind and actions that help people get better through natural, reproducible (sustainable) solutions.

Short post, thanks (again) to Tom Peters.

My friend, lead by inducing people to grow.

Tom Peters

Labels: entrepreneurship, startups, The slow start up movement, Tom Peters

At year's end, we get to hear many versions of 'the year end roundup'.

Most of the reviews this year are just awful, no matter what perspective the assessment is being done from. Rightly so. I've lived through many recessions and run businesses through recessions since the mid 1970s. This one came on faster and more comprehensively than anything I have ever seen.

When I talk to peers in the small business world, the talk isn't about the usual stuff; it's about how much debt they are carrying. There are bad stories everywhere, but there are also some really cool owners who smile and say, 'We've got no debt'. Their ability to get out of bed in the morning is significantly better than those hauling debt uphill. Debt has its place. A big part of this recession will be to teach our economy (yet again) to define the proper role of debt in business creation and expansion.

Another set of great ideas came across my desk in a short, succinct piece from Tom Peters called 'Advice for tough times….', dated November 17, 2008.

If you've read any of these posts from the past you'll know I'm a huge fan of Tom Peters, the author of 'In Search of Excellence' and many other classics. One of my proudest accomplishments is to have this blog linked from Tom Peters' site.

Tom's 'Advice for tough times.…' included just 6 short points which I'll post below.

"1. Excellence. Get on with doing the business you have and see it through brilliantly. Keep it simple. The devil is always in the details.

2. Opportunism -- there may be a lot of room for it -- will pay off through speed off the mark and excellence in execution.

3. Visibility. March toward the sound of the guns. MBWA (manage by walking around) People have to see who they are working for (with) and who they are dealing with.

4. Transparency. Be absolutely straight with people, especially those at the front line. [My comment: Entrepreneurs - this means being straight with YOURSELF as well. You ARE the front line.]

5. Demeanor. Banish 'gloomy' from your persona, even if it kills you! But remember, 'sunny' is pretty stupid, too. Who do you think you are kidding?

6. Paradox. Have a Positive Mental Attitude AND be ready for the worst."

As a small business person and entrepreneur who has fought through these miserable spells in the past, I can honestly and enthusiastically agree with all of these points.

To run a small business through a recession requires that you act and execute professionally. Entrepreneurship is a profession and you need to treat it accordingly.

Excellence in execution, done with brilliance and passion. March toward the sound of the guns. Bring real solutions to real problems. Truth and transparency with all stakeholders. Keep moving forward but keep your powder dry.

2009 will be a challenge. It will also offer opportunities.

If you have a small business or want to become an entrepreneur, I can't offer any better advice than Tom Peters is sharing.

If you are realistic and honest with yourself and others, you can start your own business in this miserable economy. Not only 'you can' but 'you should'. Recessions typically last 1-2 years. The times between them vary but every 3-7 years is realistic. The right kind of sustainable enterprise can give you more security now (if only in peace of mind) and in the future when this kind of mess boils up again.

Happy New Year, friend! Go get it!


Tom Peters site.

Labels: boomers, bootstrapping, business plans, entrepreneurship, startups, The slow start up movement, Tom Peters

I just received a nice note from the folks at HR World. Their web site is a resource for business people of all kinds, with a focus on HR work.

They have just chosen this Sustainable Work blog for a special honor. They have included us in a new article titled, "Top 100 Management and Leadership Blogs That All Managers Should Bookmark."

Here's what they included in their write up, "Novices can get tips for innovation, startups and emerging enterprises, while established leaders can get know-how on developing sustainable new products and services."

They included some of my favorites, such as Tom Peters, Chris Anderson (The Long Tail), and Seth Godin among many other notables.

Very nice. Thanks HR World!


Link to the HR World article

Labels: entrepreneurship, Long Tail, new product development, Seth Godin, startups, Tom Peters

Commercial social networking has a tawdry history.

Many of us who have been in the game for long enough have memories of walking into a room full of self-certified financial planners and 'business brokers' drinking cheap beer in a stale hotel banquet room all looking for the keys to your money.

The misery that these events brought on was deep. Mostly because of all the time you'd wasted by falling for another come-on for business development socializing.

The Small Business Center at the Technical College (WCTC) I've been teaching through has done a very nice job of bringing these events into the 21st century. If anyone reading this wants some good suggestions for what I think works here, send me a note.

When a new course at the college opened up called 'The Art of Networking' I was asked to teach it. My first inclination is that I didn't want to do it because of the memories from the old days.

But when I watch new - and seasoned - entrepreneurs feeling their way through the newer, better versions of networking events put on by the Small Business Center, I sense a need for some one-on-one, interactive training for the way these things work in the age of Tom Peters and web 2.0

WCTC gave me a blank sheet of paper. I can't wait, the more I think about this. For anyone who has read these posts for a while, you'll know my approach to networking is finding ways to help your network. That's what I'm quickly filling in on those blank sheets of paper.

A good primer on my approach was summarized by Guy Kawasaki who I link to on these posts regularly. Always good stuff. Guy quoted author Darcy Rezac as someone he thought had the best definition of schmoozing: "'Discovering what you can do for someone else.' Herein lies eighty percent of the battle: great schmoozers want to know what they can do for you, not what the you can do for them. If you understand this, the rest is just mechanics."

These courses are the classroom variety and will be taught in Waukesha, WI from Mid November through Mid December, once per week on Wednesday evenings. There will even be a large group networking 'Connections' meeting sponsored by the Small Business Center on one of the class nights that we'll all immerse ourselves in.

If anyone comes looking for short term, easy money strategies we'll have a dunce cap on hand.

For everyone who comes looking for ways to work with a wildly changing and diverse marketplace in an honorable and valued way, I'll have extra gold stars.

The link for information and enrollment is below.

Thanks to the Small Business Center and WCTC for the opportunity and the blank sheets of paper. This will be fun for all involved.


Info about Networking Course at WCTC


Guy Kawasaki's blog on The Art of Schmoozing

Labels: Guy Kawasaki, Tom Peters

Tom Peters has picked up on a really cool blogger/writer/entrepreneurial activist/and a person with many other good attributes, Penelope Trunk, in an interview on his site dated 8_6_07

Ms. Trunk works from my home base of Madison, WI. I've linked to her previously and want to highlight her entrepreneurship writing more in the future.

Penelope writes a great blog. I recommend subscribing. I believe she is an important new writer discussing life from a great perspective. I'm a big fan of her writing especially her emphasis on keeping the important things (family, integrity, life) important. It's reassuring as hell to hear her voice rise out of the noise.

I recommend the Tom Peters interview linked below. Here is a sample I thought you'd like...

Tom P: This is why I like your blog; I enjoy your attitude. Yet it seems there are still massive numbers of folks going to Harvard and such and getting their MBAs. They must be jumping into the corporate ring.

Penelope: Most of them want to pursue entrepreneurship. If you look at the materials from business schools, they fall all over themselves saying how good they are at teaching entrepreneurship. Why do people want entrepreneurship? They want flexibility, control over their time, control over their workload. They want all the things that we know make work good. Whereas Baby Boomers just want some money and a title. We know those things don't make work good.

Tom P: But the reality of being an entrepreneur is that you're going to work more hours than at any other kind of job. Entrepreneurship is beyond the extreme jobs as Sylvia Ann Hewlett describes them, right?

Penelope: Only if you want to be the next Microsoft. For example, most women are solo entrepreneurs. It's a lifestyle thing. We used to say that the majority of new businesses fail. We throw that statistic around all the time. But, in fact, success as an entrepreneur today for Generations X and Y is achieving the lifestyle. Entrepreneurship is a success if you had a good time. I think very few people would want to run Microsoft. I think most people would want to sell it before it got that big. Who wants Bill Gates' life? All he does is work.

Tom P: I agree. But I think a lot of people, for some reason, are really attracted to eighteen gazillion dollars.

Penelope: I don't think that's true. I've read great real estate articles about the current glut of McMansions. Baby Boomers are selling them to retire to New York City and drive up housing prices there. Generation X is moving out to the suburbs to raise their kids, but they don't want to live in those houses. Those houses look ridiculous to us. And if we don't want those houses, we certainly don't need eighteen million dollars to build a bigger house.

Tom P: You say you need only 40 thousand dollars.

Penelope: I do say that.....


The Tom Peters interview with Penelope Trunk

Penelope Trunk's site

Labels: boomers, entrepreneurship, Penelope Trunk, Tom Peters

I've always believed it was wiser to start enterprises that sold their services or products to some kind of organization. It didn't matter what kind: non-profit, for profit, YMCAs, insurance companies, manufacturers, universities, Fortune 500 companies, Moose Lodges or international associations.

The main reason for this is economic survival. You can find organizations easier, faster and cheaper than enough retail sales customers can ever find you. Beyond that, I find it’s much more sustainable, personally and professionally to work with business-to-business type transactions.

I acknowledge that sales to consumers is getting easier (see post 12/22/06, Jimi Hendrix's guitar, Amazon.com, and you). However, I find that doing business on an enterprise-to-enterprise basis is a good way to build a foundation under your organization. Both sides are looking for reproducible results. You deliver value, they are glad to pay.

What’s nice is that everyone involved in this kind of commerce understands the relationship. They’re looking for solutions for their organization and you, hopefully have one. You, in turn, use this same model for developing your own support teams, both in-house and in your supply chain. Everyone works for the good of each other and, surprise, (while that ethic survives) it works!

I was going write a piece about how to choose the types of target market organizations to dance with. That led me to think about the continuous waxing and waning of the all the different kinds of industries and organizations we’ve dealt with over the years.

I came to the conclusion that there wasn’t much of a conclusion to come to, save one. The organizations you need to partner with are searching for smart new ideas and smart new growth. If you want to be sustainable, customers and market partners with this profile will get you there.

Organizations that are stuck in their ways are going to stay stuck in their ways. You don’t have enough time or money to convince them otherwise, trust me.

Organizations that are actively in the hunt and actively looking for smart new growth are by necessity looking for valuable new ideas. If you’ve got a sustainable solution for their organization, prove it. Then round up all similar organizations in that market and make them your target.

I don’t care if it takes a city or a county or a state or a planet to make up enough potential customers. That’s your market.

Your target market does not have to be drawn from the hottest, coolest organizations in today’s headlines. For most start ups and emerging enterprises you can’t afford to play very effectively in that space anyway.

It’s better to look to the under-glamorized stories. In an economy the size of the one that’s operating around this globe, there are a zillion niches, more or less.

Within them are many, many hopeful innovators, just like you, looking for solutions to bring their organizations and their industries into the new century.

I've saved this clip from Tom Peters' 10/19/06 posting on his web site, in support of this idea.

"I also questioned the need to depend on "leading edge" industries. Significant participation in such industries is a plus, no doubt—but once again, it is the excellence of enterprise that matters most. There is, as I see it, almost no such thing as an "old industry"—most every industry is ripe for new approaches."

Note that carefully, “… it is the excellence of enterprise that matters most.”

Dead on, as always, from Mr. Peters.

A good solution is a good solution no matter what realm of enterprise you work in. If you can reproducibly fix to a real problem, you’re launched.

If it’s in an out of the way industry or sector no one is touting, all the better.

Your next task is to find the enterprises of excellence within that field that understand their need to grow and continuously improve.

When you find them, there is nothing more sustainable than joining hands and racing to the top together.


Tom Peters web site

Labels: entrepreneurship, marketing, Tom Peters

After a long summer of business challenges, I'm getting back to my 'Friday night writes'.

I return to the writings of Tom Peters often. I spotted a quote from Tom back in May of this year and saved it. I saved it specifically because these things are rarely said about business and enterprise creation.

"Business: The Ultimate Creative Endeavor.

Business: The Ultimate Personal Development-Growth Experience.

Business: The Ultimate Transcendent Service Opportunity"


Creating new enterprises is an outlet many of us find powerfully awakening. It's striving without a net.

You have the choice as to how you design your enterprise. You can build it around cutting corners and screwing people, or you can build it around service, creativity and doing enterprise that makes a positive difference.

However, I don't want you to think we're just doing warm friendly self enterprise hugs here.

I want you start and build your own enterprises, and I want you to sustain those enterprises. I want you to make the world a better place. Over and over. Sustainable. I want you to keep your enterprise going.

You can't express your creativity and hope it pays.

You need to express your creativity and make it pay.

First, good solutions to problems, good plans, good numbers, and good processes and procedures.

Then you get to creativity, personal growth and best of all, a good night's sleep.


Tom Peters site

Labels: entrepreneurship, Tom Peters

We're the kind of family with stuff taped up all over most available surfaces.

Since our daughters were very young there's been two Eleanor Roosevelt quotes posted on their door, along with zillions of other projects over the years: notes, warnings to parent to stay out, etc.

To see Tom Peters pick one of the quotes out for special notice going into 2006 reminds me of the importance of those words we've walked past for a couple of decades or so.

From Tom Peters blog 12/28/05 Raw Meat for "Resolutions": "But when I sat down, quietly, to think about my stance toward 2006, a quote of Eleanor Roosevelt's drifted before my mind's eye: 'Do one thing every day that scares you'."

Tom will make excellent use of this idea, of course. I'd like to point to it also as a wonderful rallying cry for the world of start ups and emerging enterprises.

As an example, many of the coolest peddlers I know work on straight commission. It can be hard, scary work, and it's also a pretty good metaphor for all of enterprise life at the level we're talking about here. As one of the best just summarized it for me, "I wake up every Monday morning unemployed, and then get to work."

That's what you're telling yourself and the world when you birth your start up or grow your emerging enterprise. That you're intentionally making every Monday a potentially scary challenge and that every day is a call to action.

Does this sound like it may be a bit much? Like you're not feeling up to it?.

A good time for the other Eleanor Roosevelt quote posted upstairs by long yellowed tape; "Most of the good work in the world is done by people who weren't feeling all that well the day they did it."

To enter the world of enterprise or to take scary steps to grow your emerging enterprise, there are no perfect times. There are no greener pastures. There are no certainties.

And yet, no matter how well you feel or how scary each step seems, there are opportunities to improve the world, to fix problems, everywhere you look.

Take the steps this year to launch your startup or grow your emerging enterprise in smart, personally scary new ways.

In the end you, and all the rest of us, will be better off.

Go get 'em.


Time magazine profile of Eleanor Roosevelt as one of their 100 most influential people of the last century


Tom Peters site. Most of us don't work for big Corps or organizations that bring Tom in to speak. However, he puts much of his best stuff on line directly, and comments regularily for free on line. Just go there. This new theme of scaring yourself will be very much worth reading.


Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, also taped up on a stairway wall at home. Great links to source docs here.

Labels: entrepreneurship, Tom Peters

Professional yellers are stinking up the place.

Big mouths, big egos. The obnoxiousness of absolute certainty. True Believers, as Eric Hoffer called them.

The stated purpose of these posts is to encourage two things. The one that gets the most attention here lately is that you should take steps to make your life more economically sustainable by creating enterprises that make the world better. The other is the glory of simplicity in designing products, services, and processes for those enterprises.

This post is about the role of civility in enterprise. And the fact that it's in your self interest.

First the topic, then a nice implementation piece from Tom Peters.

The Providence Journal, over in Rhode Island, published a nice guest column by Eugene G. Bernardo, titled "Rise of Political Incivility Threatens our Democracy."

Mr. Bernardo cites a famous theory from criminology called "broken windows". If a vandal breaks a window or defaces a building, or dumps garbage and that mess isn't fixed, the redshift of decline accelerates. More broken windows, more garbage.

A telling change also occurs in the human behavior of the residents as their perceptions of the decline grow. "They will use the streets less often, and when on the streets will stay apart from their fellows, moving with averted eyes, silent lips, and hurried steps. Don't get involved."

Mr. Bernardo goes on to say that while we all have a constitutional right to speak with incivility, doing so hurts our own self interest significantly.

"By encouraging us to see as equals even those with whom we disagree vehemently, civility lets us hold the respectful dialogs without which democratic decisionmaking is impossible."

Yep. The same goes for your enterprise life, friend.

If we let the bums and professional yellers dominate commercial life, then we all lose. To get good decisions for yourself, make good decisions for everybody (except your competitors).

The "broken windows" theory says you can accept decline, or you can take back the streets. There's a built in success loop when you do things right. However, if you're going to set up your enterprise to cut corners and live in the shade, you put yourself into a neighborhood where the vandals are winning. Guess how your enterprise life will progress? Think gravity.

If you can make it a habit to look up and smile, to fix the broken glass, to say hello, you can sustain yourself and your enterprise and maybe change the world a little bit.

Enterprises of all sorts, for profits and non profits, need excellent discipline in their execution. That execution, done civilly can make your enterprise life worth living.

You know the drill. It's not the destination, it's the journey.

Today, people are learning about enterprise life from bad movies and worse TV. This cutthroat, take no commercial prisoners, sell whatever you can as unethically as possible is BS. It's not sustainable. Do enterprise crooks win? All the time, but that's not a life most people aspire to.

For the rest of us, living decent enterprise lives, sustainability comes from building bridges. Finding common ground. Being a fellow human because it's the right damn thing to do. If you need the bean counter return on investment justification, being civil means better decision making. Better decision making is in your own self interest. Argue with that.

Tom Peters posted a short piece on his site about an interchange he had while traveling. TP is a big shot biz guy who could easily throw his commercial weight around. However, involving people civilly works better.

Tom's post, dated November 21, 2005 revolved around an American Airlines counter agent who was being ripped by customers and her employer. Tom was working through screw ups like everyone else. Bad situations every direction.

Do you contribute to the problem or do you contribute to the solution? Here's TP's approach...

“Operation You-Alone-Can-Help-Me-and-I-Dearly-Pray-You-Will. We joked a little, commiserated about our different but extreme pickles, and I just kept on smilin'. Several things happened. By behaving in a relaxed, empathetic, life-goes-on fashion, I actually started to feel better myself—hey, this wasn't a trip to market in Baghdad. More important (selfishly), my "you're the only one for me" AA(Air) buddy bent over backwards and then some to track the bag, double-confirm its current whereabouts, get unequivocal info on the arriving flight, give me a priority hotel dropoff slot, and so on. And I flatter myself by thinking that she, too, ended up feeling a touch better about life—it really isn't much fun to be ripped, and ripped again, by customers mostly because your employer is in dire straits and understaffed everywhere and has left you on point to take [all] the heat.”

Tom Peters continues, "That's my "little tale." But of course it's not so little at all. It's near the heart of what happens on those occasions when human beings take the trouble in the face of trouble to deal in a civil and empathetic and even cheerful fashion with their fellows. That's not "news"...except that of course it is!"

Yep again. That's my news for the week. Your enterprise life can be one you can be proud of. It's the easier path. You don't need to live it out among broken windows and commercial idiots.

Build something you can be proud of. You can do this. You should do this. Keep up the details, then execute with civility, please.


Eric Hoffer resource site "Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good."

Tom Peters. Want to lead a good enterprise life? Put Tom on your daily links.

Labels: entrepreneurship, Tom Peters

Everybody searches for some kind of recognition.

We'd gotten our first patents a couple of years into our new enterprise. I found that I was going to be working around Washington DC and thought I'd stop by the patent office to feel like a big shot for a while. I imagined that there might be a separate door for inventors with patents. A celebrity runway for geeks.

That didn't happen, but I was able to find the US Patent and Trademark museum in Alexandria. Lots of very interesting stuff behind their glass cases. I was still hoping for some recognition, what with the new patents and all, but other than a nod from the security guard, the hushed, quietly lit displays kept everyone's attention.

That's when I walked over and set my notebook on the glass cover of a large diarama style display set up in the middle of the room. Except there wasn't a glass cover. My notebook fell with a crash right into the noisiest place it could.

Finally. Recognition from my peers.

Sunday's New York Times (11/13/05) business section featured a page one story about invention and innovation. The author, Timothy L. O'Brien, does a nice job of making the case for increased spending on research and development at all levels. The piece especially makes the case for Big Commerce/Big Academia research funding problems. However, at the meta level, that crowd can make things sound pretty bleak.

A recent National Academy of Sciences report on the subject says that, without a host of upgrades in science and math education and a package of federal spending on basic research and tax incentives, "For the first time in generations, the nation's children could face poorer prospects than their parents and grandparents did."

Even a top guy from M.I.T., Emeritus Professor Merton C. Flemings, who runs the wonderful Lemelson Foundation's innovation program there, puts his fears right up front, "The future is very bleak, I'm afraid."

And yet, and yet, and yet... Professor Flemings later goes on to describe something we don't talk about much. Places like Singapore which have high national test scores but still do not generate the innovation culture so apparent in the US. Singapore sends its education researchers here to study how creativity, an unmeasurable, is developed.

It is not just increased spending for math and science education, both of which absolutely should be done to increase our inventiveness. It's also recognition and support for creativity and a nurturing environment for innovation and innovators.

In fact the Times' piece quotes an M.I.T.- Lemelson Study issued in 2004: "In addition to openness, tolerance is essential in an inventive, modern society. Creative people, whether artists or inventive engineers, are often nonconformists and rebels. Indeed, invention itself can be percieved as an act of rebellion against the status quo."

The headlines for the NY Times article was, "Not Invented Here. Are U.S. Innovators Losing Their Competitive Edge?"

If I was selling this idea, I would have taken those lovely words from the M.I.T.-Lemelson study and headlined the Times piece something like, "People everywhere! Hurry! Rebel against the status quo! Storm the Gates! Over the ramparts, mates! The rebellion lives! Charge!!!"

What's hard about THAT sell?

I love to make that pitch, especially to young people. They get it. But I digress.

The Times' piece follows this hopeful direction nicely with the introduction of the work currently being done by Nathan Myhrvold, an inventor rebel himself from the early Microsoft years, subsequently the head of Microsoft's research arm. Mr. Myhrvold has set up a fund specifically to fund independent inventors, and they seem to be growing a nice enterprise from this platform.

I really like Mr. Myhrvold's focus on support and nurturing for the innovators, while also sharing ownership with jointly developed projects. "We all love the goose that lays the golden eggs but somehow we've forgotten about the goose," Mr. Myhrvold said. "This decade, I'm hoping will be the decade of the invention."

Yes, we want to increase innovation. Yes, it typically takes progressive institutional spending to make changes at the meta level.

Do big science, big spending and big institutions matter? Of course.

But there's always the goose to remember. There's always the revolutionary at the gates that needs to be encouraged.

Tom Peters makes this point brilliantly in his 11/11/05 blog. The Times did a major piece on this subject. Tom, as usual, cuts to the core questions, usually within a phrase. A full sentence, max. This time, Tom serves is up as really great bar bet: "Q: #1 R&D spending in the last 25 years? A: GM"

Big academic science research programs are critical to world progress. Big corporate research budgets are also critical. However, both can be used for good or ill.

Measuring the real inventiveness of cultures needs to also include the willingness of all of us to actively participate in the work.

Affirm innovation everywhere you find it. When you see a screwed up legacy piece of status quo getting in the way, attack it. Search out the innovators working in your communities locally or on line and support them.

We're all responsible for the future. Work on it every way you can.



New York Times article link

Lemelson Foundation program at M.I.T.

Intellectual Ventures, Nathan Myhrvold's program for supporting individual inventors.

Dr. Myhrvold's bio. Yes an important person in the field, but his Times picture makes him look more important to me as a guy I'd like to drink a couple beers with.

Tom Peters. Always walking a mile ahead.

National Inventors Hall of Fame

Photo for this post is the Catoctin Furnace, just south of Gettysburgh, PA.

Someday I will post a link to my upcoming invention, "Clear cover for diarama at the US Patent Museum"

Labels: entrepreneurship, innovation, startups, Tom Peters

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Great stuff unexpectedly drops in over the transom sometimes.

I've wanted to write about enterprise and innovation for a long while. Our current start up has been soaking up its share of waking hours, but this past April I got around to opening up this site for posting some ideas that had been stacking up.

I'm an avid reader of biz related books and mags. Like life, the content quality of what's published is all over the board. Some great, some awful. However, even in the bad ones, I find there is usually one or two small things that are valuable and that can be put to good use.

Tom Peters is another story. When Tom wrote In Search Of Excellence, the business of enterprise changed forever. There are now over 10 million copies in print, in a zillion languages. Tom has written, or had a hand in, a dozen or so other books, nearly all best sellers, and untold articles about business, life, innovation and enterprise.

Every single time I come in contact with Tom Peter's work I come away better. When Tom writes, there aren't one or two good things in each piece. There are one or two good things per page. Typically there's one or two good things per paragraph. Book after book, article after article. Decade after decade. Tom is the best of the best.

Fortune magazine calls Tom Peters the Ur-guru of management and compares him to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman and H.L. Mencken. CBS MarketWatch said "Tom Peters is the most provocative and engaging (as well as annoying and threatening) management guru running loose in America today."

Tom Peters web site is the only permanent outside link I've ever included on this site. It was there from the first day I put the site up.

I just received an unexpected, "over the transom" gift from Tom and friends. We were asked if they could include SustainableWork on their blog roll, their list of recommended reading sites.

My goodness. Thank you!

The subject of start ups, innovation and self enterprise is an area of life that's typically full of the worst kind of hype and hucksterism found anywhere. I've been trying to talk about these subjects with a minimum of noise and as much straight talk as I can muster. That approach usually doesn't stand out amid the tidal forces of popular culture.

The fact that Tom and friends think enough of this approach and this content to include it in their recommended reading is among the coolest gifts I've ever received.

Fortune magazine summed up Tom's impact this way: "We live in a Tom Peters world."

I know I do and I'm very grateful.

Many thanks Tom and friends!
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Labels: entrepreneurship, innovation, Tom Peters