Tom Peters: The Return of Excellence

Listeners of the Remarkable People podcast will learn from some of the most successful people in the world. They provide practical tips and inspiring stories that will help you be more remarkable if you live in the US or Canada. Text 831-609-0628 to get notified of each new episode. I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People. We're on a mission to make you remarkable. Helping me in this episode is the one and only Remarkable Tom Peters. Tom is the co author along with Bob Waters of In Search of Excellence. This isn't an overstatement. In the 1980s, this book changed the way the world does business. Tom was on the first list of the 100 Most Powerful People in Silicon Valley from 1965 to 2000. In 2017, he received the Thinkers50 Lifetime Achievement Award. Tom was in the Navy from 1966 to 1970. Then he was employed in the White House as a senior drug advisor. Following his time at the White House, he worked at McKinsey & Company from 1974 to 1981. Then he founded the Tom Peters Company. Tom is a civil engineering graduate from Cornell and He has a PhD from Stanford Business School. In addition to In Search of Excellence, some of his other books are Thriving on Chaos, Liberation Management and the Pursuit of Wow. Now he has a new book, Tom Peters Compact Guide to Excellence. This book is a guide for leaders of all ages. In this episode you'll learn why it's important to show you care, invest and make decisions like a girl. Create great communities and how to MBZA manage by zooming around. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is remarkable people. And now here's the one and only Tom Peters. I asked Marshall Goldsmith what I should ask you and Marshall said, it doesn't matter what you ask him, he's just going to say what he wants to say.

Anyway. Marshall's a little cheeky. I think you could say the same thing about him. The funny thing he said was something else. And I remember reading this years ago and it was just a little one liner somewhere. How will we know that artificial intelligence has really progressed to the point that it's borderline human and you were sucker played right into it? The answer was you ask the AI a question and it says, let me tell you a story. That's when you'll know that you've humanized.

It. I don't look forward to that day, Tom. But okay, yeah, so now that we've established the ground rules here, there may be young people who don't know what we're talking about when we talk about In Search of Excellence, which was a pivotal book in my life. So perhaps you can just recap the story of In Search of Excellence. Now, I realize that's a painful thing for me to ask you, just like everybody always asks me, what's it like to work for Steve Jobs? Are you related to the motorcycle company? But I have to ask you to recap.

It. Okay, Yeah, I can do it pretty quickly. Very specifically, I worked for the now disgraced McKinsey and Company, peddler of opioids. I worked for McKinsey. And we got a new managing director. And the managing director said, we produce brilliant strategies for our clients and they can never implement them. What the hell's going on? Let's take a look at organizations that actually get things done. That was number one. Number two, which has more to do with why the book took off. We're talking 1982, and the Americans came out of World War II. We owned the planet. Our dear brothers and sisters from Japan started sending us these weird cars that actually worked when you turned the ignition key and were kicking us in the butt. And the car is the holy symbol for the mail, at least in the United States. So we were hurting. And what Bob Waterman and I did, it wasn't really the plan is we said, hey, you're not going to believe it, but there are actually a few American companies that do pretty good work. And so we wandered around for a couple of years and found some companies. The more interesting thing that I'm sure you and I will get into is my one liner that I use in 2022 is, I'm a greedy person. I am absolutely delighted to collect royalties when you buy all 20 of my books. But the dirty little secret is they all say exactly the same thing. The message has not changed. You know, we had eight attributes that defined the excellent companies in 80. And they had to do with these really strange things like, listen to your customers, throw the planners out the window, and actually try something. People first, people second, people third. That was a message. And if anything, I've become more adamant, more of an extremist than I was in 1980. But that was the context. It was really funny guy. I taught an executive program at Stanford one summer, and we had this seniorish guy from General Motors, and the course was over, and he and I went out to have a beer, and we were having a beer, and he said, tom, I know you really do good work, but you were not the most important part of my summer. He said, but this is a guy From Detroit headquarters. He said the most important part of my summer was pulling up to a traffic light in Palo Alto and seeing a Toyota on one side, a Nissan on the other side, a Honda behind me. And whatever he said, that's when we went beyond market research and came to real reality was, holy shit, where are the American cars? Because you know, Detroit had these stupid rules. They probably still do. If you were working for Ford in the headquarters, you weren't allowed to park a non Ford car in the headquarters. And you con yourself into thinking that's the way the world is. I had a great buddy who was a very senior guy at Levi Strauss, and he said, I'm always telling my people, when you walk out at lunch and you see a lot of people wearing Levi's, that's not our actual market share. I thought it was just a wonder lie. But our timing was, I would say, more generally in life. We wrote a pretty good book, guy, and the timing was perfect. I've said to many people, and I more or less mean it, There are three things I despise in life. Mass murderers, number one, Child and spouse abusers, number two. And number three on my list is successful people who think they deserve their success. I worked hard, I had intelligent parents. But the reality is 80 jillion matters of timing, from the time that you're driving down the road, you have your window down and the bee doesn't fly into your eye, and you don't kill the 12 year old crossing the crosswalk or what have you. Hard work's great, all that stuff's great. I have no problem with that whatsoever. But if something really takes off, all of the stars were aligned. And you had f all to do with it.

Yep. Clearly Marshall Goldsmith was right. But okay, Marshall's always.

Right. So come on, guy, you are the same quality bullshit artist than I am. And the answer is, every question is an opportunity to declaim on whatever the hell you want to declaim claim on. So.

Don'T. That's high.

Praise. Anything with me. I've known you too long. I know how good you are. Just stop it right.

Now. Can I get a question in.

Edgewise? Yeah.

Sure. So do you have any alterations to any of the themes of excellence? Are they all just proven right and there's no changes you'd.

Make? It's not that they were proven right. We said your people are your most important asset and that was considered a bombs bursting in air new idea. It still frigging is in most companies and so these are pretty eternal lessons. One thing by the way, that's really important and I'm not sure exactly the demographics of your audience and I don't know whether you are a sinner to the extent that I am. I suspect you aren't. But the management guru class, to use an awful term that was invented by the economist, the management guru class tends to focus on the Fortune 500 and as somebody said, because they pay for the advertising in the magazines and there's probably more than a little bit of truth to that. The Fortune 500 are poor performers. And in the United states the Fortune 500 employs 7% of us and it doesn't employ 93% of us. And the magic of America, or the magic of Poland, or the magic of any place is the so called SMEs, the small and the medium sized enterprises. And there's this wonderful economist, Paul Omerat is his name and he gets my view of big companies perfectly. He said, I'm often asked by would be entrepreneurs, how do I build a small firm for myself? My answer is always the same. Buy a big one and just wait. No, look, my old McKinsey buddies studied the 1000 largest public companies in the United States. As I recall, this was 20 odd years ago. They looked at 40 years of data, all right, the 1,000 largest companies, not one of those 1,000 had outperformed the stock market over the whole 40 year period. Not one. I mean, Jesus, Guy, you'd say hey, gotta be two, gotta be one. But zero for 1,000. And yet we're still so enamored with these people. I had the great privilege, I don't know, 15 years ago or so, I used to do these public television special and we did one on the German Mittelstand, the mid sized German companies. And at that time, which wasn't that long ago, Germany was the planet's number one exporter, not the Americans, not the Chinese. And had been for a long period of time. And it was on the backs of these 100 person, 200 person, 500 person, 700 person companies that owned a market from the alpha to the omega. And so I'm, I'm every day I'm pissed off at myself for having not paid enough attention to the.

SMEs. What's the lesson of Atari and Wang no longer being around from your original 43.

Companies? That we blew it. So the problem is I'd have to give a specific answer. And I'm about 80 million years old. My short term memory isn't worth a damn. I thought you were there. I thought Wang was the best positioned of all the companies when we went to the desktop stuff because they'd given us desktop calculators. And so we were used to using desktop devices that had the four letter word on them, W, A, N, G. And they completely blew it again. The world is a complicated place and I really do hate simplistic answers. I am remember vaguely guy and vague is the key word that Mr. Wang promoted his son and his son didn't exactly do a great job. As to Atari, beats the hell out of me. You know, my step kids in an earlier life went to school with who was the Atari.

Founder? You remember Nolan.

Bushnell? Nolan Bushnell, Yeah. They went with Nolan Bushnell as kids. That's a rough and tough business. I don't know. I have no idea. The ones that bother me more, much more are the General Electrics, which eventually blew itself up and barely survived 20 years of jack Welsh, who is now described as the worst thing that happened to capitalism in America in the 21st century. Johnson and Johnson, which has not blown up. But they don't have the incredible edge that they had before. Three M's alive and well. And three M is. It was alive and well because One of those GE guys who believed that Six Sigma was the Bible tried to put Six Sigma into 3M, did the almost impossible and and screwed up 3M's innovation processes. Fortunately they tossed his sorry butt out and got back to business and they've hung in there. But it's so simplistic to say that people forget the virtues that got them there in the first place. Apple today is not the Apple I remember. Apple redefined the world once a decade with magnificent products that had the same attributes of being just amazingly, incredibly all those intuitive and all those words. And I see Apple as a big company and it does a lot of good things and I use its products, but it doesn't jump out from the mega herd for me the way it did. And I'm more than willing to say it's been a while since I've lived in Silicon Valley, so my ignorance level is pretty high. But my huge problem as I walk into this conversation or any conversation, and you're going to get my rant here, my apologies. The world is a social mess right now and it seems to be getting messier, not less messy. And obviously I don't have the answer. But there is something that some of my colleagues and I are looking at and we call it 2080 to 80. 20. 20% of workers are engaged at work and 80% aren't, and it's true all over the world. And the standard deviation of the number is very low. My hypothesis is that it doesn't take magic to flip the 2080 to an 80 20. And the byproduct is, if people are engaged at work, and assuming you weren't born with a silver spoon, you're going to spend more hours at work than you will with your family, for heaven's sakes. God bless your family. But that's the reality. If you are engaged at work, if you are growing at work, if you appreciate your colleagues at work, I don't think you're such a sucker play for the radicals. I think it has a huge impact. And the real thing, I apologize for doing this to you. But let me tell you briefly how I start every talk these days. A teacher, middle school, whatever that level. A teacher stands in the doorway of her or his classroom, and as the students come in, he smiles, he nods. He might say, hey, Guy. Or he might say, is that head cold, ears getting a little bit better? Or something like that. It takes something like measured four minutes where he just greets people. Disciplinary problems go down by 30% and academic performance goes up by 25%. And all I effing did, Guy, was acknowledge you as a human being who I cared about. That's all. That is all I did. And here's another one that's just absolutely amazing. So your tech text, your CAT scan, and off it goes to the radiologist somewhere next door or in Sri Lanka, you never know. And that radiologist gets his latest data trove, and he's looking at charts and graphs and so on and coming to conclusions about what he's seeing. All right? The bad thing a radiologist finds is called an anomaly. Something that just ain't where it's supposed to be. Okay? Two groups of radiologists working on the same group of patients. Only one difference. When I get to you and when I click on Kawasaki for the data that's going to come, the first thing I see is a picture of Guy Kawasaki. And the reason is, when I went in to have the CAT scan done, the tech said, you know, we have this new damn rule we've got. Would you mind if I pulled out my iPhone and took a picture of you? And what happens is, if I see your picture, I make 80% less errors than if I don't see your picture. Because I'm dealing with a fellow human being with blood and guts and kids and pain and agony and joy, and look at the frigging iPhone picture for two and a half seconds of Guy Kawasaki. And my entire diagnosis flips. And so what I'm really arguing with people is that we really have a chance to make really great workplaces. And it's driven by caring for each other. There was a speech I came across years ago given at the Army War College by a three star general by the name of Melvin Zais. And it was to mid level, mid senior officers. And so he gives his speech about 30 minutes long and he said, I want to end my speech with the one thing which will contribute more to your success, more to your happiness, more to the quality of the work you do. And that is you must care. And he gave this wonderful example. You're a young officer and your troops are having an inspection and you go into their barracks. And he said, you go into the barracks where they're working to clean stuff up. You don't open your mouth, you sit on the bed for 10 seconds and leave. He said, they'll know that you know, that they're busting their asses to make you look good. And he said, just that little connection flips the whole thing. And again, I would say I don't think it's that big a jump, but I'm thinking of Guy Kawasaki and Apple. That's kind of the design theory that Apple had. They made these loving products for God's sakes, particularly compared to the not junk that was coming out, but the primitive stuff. When Brother Jobs passed away, my favorite thing, and I read it from several people, was, was Steve Jobs was not an inventor, he was a tinkerer. He took an idea and he changed it 8374 times until it had completely transformed itself. But it wasn't like, oh, let's have the light bulb. You spent a lot of time with him. I didn't spend much time, but I certainly did around Apple people and used the products in the very beginning. And that was the deal. I think it still is to some extent. But anyway, all you've got to do is stand in the frigging classroom door, show people you care, the money pours in, the customers are happy, people quit falling for the thugs outside who are trying to sell them a different way of life where they can get even with everybody. That's my mission now that I'm 97 years.

Old. And so if Nancy Pelosi calls you up and says, okay, so how do I do that in the political world, what do you say to.

Her? I laugh in her face. I'm sad to say. I Gave thousand dollars to Ms. Pelosi's first congressional campaign which had to be 50 years ago. I'm going to answer your question backwards. I worked in the White House for a couple years in the 70s and we had to get things done where congressmen would be involved. And so in the evenings upon occasion with some congressional aid, I would get invited to one of the bars on Capitol Hill. And the way we way things worked. Obviously this is an extreme statement because nothing's 100%. The way things worked was Tom Peters and Guy Kawasaki stood on the floor of Congress, screamed and yelled and called each other names while the Congress was in session. And afterwards I put my arm around you, you put your arm around me. And we went down to the bar and had some drinks and decided what we would actually do. And someone said again simplistic. They said the end of that life on Capitol Hill was the invention of cable TV where every congressperson suddenly became the star of her or his own reality show. And we no longer went to Capitol Hill and said I'm sorry I have to call you son of a bitch Guy, but you know I don't mean it. I know you don't mean it when you tell me that, but you know there's really some place in here where we can find something we can do. And grotesque oversimplification, but I don't think people talk to each other. They scream at each other. And what would I do if I was Ms. Pelosi? I would, I won't make a on air comment like I'd shoot myself, but I'd shoot myself. She's not a young woman. I don't know how the hell she survives it. I really really don't. So I don't know how to help Ms. Pelosi. But I think I can give good advice to the woman or man who has a 125 person company or I'll even go so far as to say the police Chief who has 125 cop workforce. And that takes us back to the kinds of basics that I'm talking about. There's another thing about all this. I had an article in the FT last year and in the article which caused a bit of a fuss, which of course was my point, I said the world would be a better place if we closed all the business schools. And I meant.

It. Go, go. Okay, I gotta hear this.

Okay. No, no, no. They teach the wrong stuff. This is wonderful research. My old friend Henry Mintzberry, a Canadian, reported on it. One of his books, Liberal Arts Graduates, when they graduate, get half as many job offers at half the price as do their science and techie friends. Year 20. They have wildly surpassed them on the ladder and are much more senior than their old techie people because they discovered something. And what they discovered was my wife and I used to spend a lot of the winters in New Zealand and I taught classes at the University of Auckland Business school. And I had these young, usually men, Chinese men who were coming for a brush up course or something like that. And I said, listen, here's the deal. You're an engineer, you are incredibly bright. You do things very quickly. And I said, then if you're halfway good by the end of the second year, you're running some kind of project or some corner of a project, at that point your Life does a 180 flip. All of your success is driven by your ability to help people grow and do incredible work. And what you think is largely irrelevant. And I mostly believe that. I was just engaged in a, in a little Twitter conversation in the last couple days. I said, the only important measure of Your success, age 44, maybe 37, is how much did the people who worked for you grow as a function of the couple of years that they worked for Guy Kawasaki? And you know who taught me that? I was in Mumbai and I had a four star Indian army general. And I don't know how the hell we got into the discussion, but he said, when I'm trying to decide between Kawasaki and Peters for the promotion to general, I only have one thing I do. I go back and find the people who worked for them on their way up. And what did those two years with Peters or two years with Kawasaki mean? And I find out that the people who left Kawasaki, they flourished, they tried stuff, et cetera. And Peters produced a bunch of bureaucrats. They dotted their I's and crossed their T's and they weren't a drag on the economy. But I just thought it was the most wonderful answer in the world. And to be coming out of a full dress 3 star Indian army general, now that was cool. And he didn't say they have the loudest guns or the most ammunition. He said, they're the ones who develop people the best. And I was in Vietnam for two years. And the most important human being other than my mother in my life was my first commanding officer. Even outstripped my dad. And the real key to that commanding officer was the thing I mentioned earlier from General Zeiss. He cared, he was tough. I was a combat engineer. We had to get stuff Built, we had shitty equipment, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah, blah. There was nothing soft or easy about him. But you knew he cared about who you were as a human being. When he looked you in the eye, he did not see semen. Second, what's his name? He saw Guy Kawasaki. Living, breathing human being with a mom, dad, sisters, brothers. He was a miracle man. I almost tear up when I think about him. And he was, you know, he was tough as nails in the best sense of that word, getting the job done. But we loved him. We'd all work 25 hour days for him without even thinking twice. God, you can't let Captain Anderson.

Down. So I don't even know where to begin. First of all, Madison, I know you're listening. So you understand the pressure on you now because people are going to judge me by how well you do in your career. So the pressure is on you.

Okay? Cut him no slack, Madison. Well, listen, Guy, can I just do one more teeny story which illustrates that thing because it's not as sexy as the generals. I don't know whether you knew him. You probably did. There was a high end specialty chemical company in Menlo park called Ray Chem. Do you remember them? Yes. Called Ray Chem. There was this one guy who was a miracle man. And I got to know him and his secret is the wrong word. It was who he was. I'm the Guy. And you're a 31 year old engineer. 32. And you're doing really great work for me. And I sit down with you at some point and I say, Guy, you are doing fantastic work. You should be promoted in our little unit of 15 people. I'm afraid that's not going to happen. And so I'm working in other parts of the company on finding you the right job where your growth can be accelerated. I didn't make those words up. And if you wonder whether people were waiting in line to work for this Guy, I don't have to tell you that the answer is yes. But it's a little bit of that you thing we were talking about before, of what's most important his goal in life was, you know, I'd love to have guy for another seven years. He does magnificent work. He worked 27 hour days. But he's too damn good to be lost in this job. And Barry Evans or Susan Smith over there has got an opening that would be perfect for Guy. And it was beloved as a result of that. Why the hell can't people think that way? One reason is we hire wrong and we promote wrong. We focus on the technical skills. We fail to focus on the eq. My favorite thing that has appeared in my last two books is an article came out of the Washington Post actually on Google. And Google measured the traits of their best employees and their Most innovative teams. 8 traits associated with the best employees. Google, that's G o o gle. Eight traits that mattered. Number eight was STEM and all the seven other seven were soft. He listens, he cares. He accept other people's opinions. He works with his teammates. This is Google. This is not Mary Kay cosmetics or the Body Shop. And then they found the same damn thing with their teams. Google does this nauseating thing where teams are A teams and B teams, which is a wonderful way to demotivate 50% of the population. The B teams out innovate the A teams for the same traits and the one I loved. And you're a Silicon Valley guy, so you will laugh as hard as I did. The trait that was most different between the A teams and the B teams was no bullying. And you know and I know what a 26 year old Stanford computer science grad sitting next to a 26 year old MIT computer science grad, both of whom are dead flat certain they are the two most intelligent people God ever put on earth. Don't screw with me by giving me ideas. That's fair.

Right? Yes. I have had several conversations with Madison when I told her that she has far more potential than helping me with production of a podcast and virtual helping me and she could be a.

CEO.

Right? Madison, have I not told you that you can go so much further than what you're doing with.

Me? You have, you definitely have. Multiple.

Times. So someday, yeah. Madison is going to be the next Marc Benioff and we're going to say we had the opportunity to work with.

Her. You know what? I call Mark? Now I'm going to get in real trouble. Do you know what I call Marc Benioff? What? The only non asshole among the significant large number of leaders of the giant Silicon Valley companies. Which is unfair. It's not true. But he worries about the right stuff out. You know, in a way that some others don't know that I gave.

Marc Benioff his first.

Job. No. Well done. Fabulous. No, I.

Didn'T. I gave him his first job when he just finished his freshman year at usc. So someday I'm going to look back and say I gave Marc Benioff his first job and Madison Nismer. And look, I am like batting.

1000.

Absolutely. Can I tell you what we call Marc Benioff at Apple. So when Marc Benioff worked for me at Apple, his family is from Hillsborough and Hillsborough, California.

Right? Yes, I.

Do. Okay. And so Marc Benioff at the time and still is, was a big sort of white, let's just say ample person. And so we used to call him the Hillsboro Doughboy after the Pillsbury Doughboy. So now the Hillsboro Doughboy has become the Frickin.

Man. Yeah, absolutely. I love it, I love it, I love it. Yes. Oh.

God. You touched on this briefly and I just want to dig in deeper here. So one of the things you're always saying is that implementation is harder than coming up with the idea. And why is that.

Tom? Because implementation is so boring and non sexy. And there's some truth to what I just said. One of my favorite quotes, the four star army general who commanded American troops at D Day, his name was Omar Bradley. He wasn't a four star then. His quote that I've used in every One of my 20 books is Amateurs talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics. And the whole reason we're having this conversation to go back to our opening couple of minutes was McKinsey said, We're designing perfect strategies and nobody can implement them. And that was the genesis of my research and the genesis of In Search of Excellence. I mean, why did MBA students come to Stanford or Harvard and take as many finance courses and marketing courses as they can and take very few courses on organizational behavior, which is what really determines their success or failure once they get out? Implementation by definition is completely a people business. Let me just tell you one thing about leadership. I'm sorry it triggered to thinking about Bradley and D Day and I'm sure we have many British viewers and I will probably piss them off, but life goes on. It was said that on the eve of D Day, Field Marshal Montgomery, talking to the British troops, gave one of the greatest speeches of all time. What did the Midwesterner who ran the American whole deal, Dwight David Eisenhower, do? What? I'm sorry, I tear up. What did General Eisenhower do? He never wore medals, he just wore a plain uniform. And he went out to the beaches at D Day where the kids were taking off from the UK and walked among the troops and put his arm around them and wished them good health. That was the entire thing he did. That's implementation. I mean, I sterilize it obviously when I say implementation, but it is, it is that. I mean, that's the way Eisenhower was. As I've said to many people, having not quite the Hillsborough level, but you know, east coast or west coaster. God, we were lucky to have a Midwest. I always have loved that one liner. Chicago is New York without the attitude. And there's more than a little truth to that. I love.

Midwesterners. Well, let's ask you a dumb question. If implementation is the key, what's the use of McKinsey and Bain and BCG? Because they're all about strategy, not.

Implementation. Beats the hell out of me. Guy. I am not in the least bit opposed to. For God's sakes. I have. See those fingers? Four fingers. I have four quantitative degrees, two engineering degrees from Cornell, two business degrees from Stanford. So I am not anti analytic and I can prove it. You need to collect data, you need to think. I'm correcting myself as I talk. Because even the strategic planning process would benefit dramatically from people who did the things that we're talking about. There was somebody is an old one liner. I guess this may have even been Eisenhower. You plan and you plan and you plan and before the game starts, you burn the plan and you know, literally in ye olde days set the piece of paper on fire with a cigarette lighter. I have written a lot about implementation and my argument has been that implementation is all about W, T, T, M, S, W. Whoever tries the most stuff wins. And then I've got a long version with some extra letters which says whoever tries the most stuff and screws the most stuff up the fastest wins. And you know, that doesn't happen again in lots of companies. You're constrained by the plan. You can't try this, you can't try that. So I'm not against planning, I'm not against having something written down about where you're heading. But it ain't the be all and the end all. And it is what they teach in the business schools. And go back to my numbers. The Fortune 500 companies don't perform well over the long haul. They are increasingly driven by bureaucrats and planners, for God's sakes. I haven't seen the research on that, but I bet you 99.99% that I'm on the money. Thinking about your Silicon Valley and mine in those olden days. And I mentioned Ray Kemp, the chemical company. And I love this. Paul Cook came from the east coast and came out and started this very sexy chemical company. And he had a guy who worked with him, his name was Bob Halpern. And Paul did all the stuff and Halpern picked up the trash afterwards. He was a mechanic. Halpern was a mechanic. And you need a mechanic. I want a mechanic. There's no question about that whatsoever. I've got to have a plan to get professionals talking about logistics. There's a hell of a lot of planning in logistics. It's just that what General Bradley is arguing is that's the last 95%, boys, is making sure that when the tank lands on the beach that we've got the ammunition for it, that we then stick into it before it starts, you know, heading up the beaches of France. But there's a new book that just came out on McKinsey. I've forgotten what it's called, but it was terrifyingly well researched and it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart. I worked for another McKinsey. A, it was a different McKinsey and B, I worked with the weirdos, which was what the San Francisco office was called where I worked. And they're people you'd love to go to church with or what have you. And something went awry. What I don't understand. McKinsey supports the opioid practices of Purdue Pharma. And on those stupid God damn lists that show where MBAs want to go to work most, McKinsey's still at the top of the list. I'm sorry, children. You pissed away two years of your life getting an mba. If that's the way you think about the world, good God. So this made it onto a chart guy. No, I'm not going to say it because it said it. It's true. There's no question. But I don't want to since we're in a public setting. I don't want to push toward libel, but it's an amazing thing that I'm not telling.

You. So what would happen, Tom, if your grandkids came up to you and said, grandpa, I want to go to work for McKinsey or Procter and Gamble? Would you just basically disown.

Them? Oh, for God's sakes, they're your kids. Of course not. You'd say, great decision. Okay, you. I have no. I have no problem. I have no problem in offering a little bit of advice and making some comments and telling about my problems. But the answer is, they're my grandkids. I adore them. They can do no wrong even when they're wrong. And so of course I'd support them, for God's sakes. Plus, the money's good. They'd be able to support me in my.

Retirement. Up next on Remarkable.

People. When I finish conversations like this, my wife says when she sees me. My God, you're exhausted. As exhausted as you are when you walk off the stage after speaking to a thousand people. Zoom is not unemotional. Zoom is not inhumane. Yes, it's different, but I really believe that. And I'm too old for this guy. As you know, there are a million people you could interview who would have much, much better answers. My answer is all the things we're saying about Zoom. They said about long distance phone calls, and it was just the.

Depersonalization. Want to know when there's a new episode of remarkable people? Simply text 831-609-0628. If you live in the US or Canada, don't miss upcoming shows. Take a moment to follow Remarkable People in your app or podcast player. You're listening to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki. You have stated many times that if women were in charge companies and really the world would be a better place. And why is.

That? I'm trying to think of how to really broach the subject. I'm going to go at it backwards. One of my favorite books and my favorite book title of all time was written by a senior woman at Motley fool whose name is Lou Anne Lofton. And the title of the book is Warren. This is the exact title. Warren Buffett invests like a girl and why you should too. And it's funny, Buffett didn't know anything. You know, Buffett's a decent soul. Buffett knew nothing about the book. He wrote the first review for Amazon and he said, I didn't know I invested like a girl until now. But I think she's right. I'm getting to your point. The standard male approach to life is the market closes at 4. I'm sitting in a terminal and Guy Kawasaki is sitting next to me. My mate and guys had a really terrific day and it's now 20 of 4 and that sob is not going to close the day better off than I am. So I go out and take risks. I buy shit. I do any crazy thing in the world. My whole life is beating Kawasaki. That's a boy thing. That's a boy thing. And I'm not well trained in genetics. There's a fabulous book written by a woman whose name is Lou. Ann Brizendeen is a UCSF neuropsychiatrist and it's called the Female Brain. By the age of three days, baby girls are making four times, four times more eye contact with their fellow human beings than baby boys are. And you know, I think that's a wonderful indicator the other one, by the way, for which this is so important. Charles Darwin never said survival of the fittest. Spencer said it. Do you know what Darwin said? Survival of the best communities. It was 180 off. A good community creates children, creates growth and. But I just love that difference. I learned it from a book that everybody who's watching us, listening to us, ought to buy called Compassionomics. And it's about the role of the power. The guys who wrote it are two research dicks. They're just so hard nosed they wouldn't say anything without a thousand data points, which means when they say this stuff you can believe it. And it's jillion examples of the power of compassion in health care. And I'm going to get back to the women's thing. But my favorite one, and there's just enough research to sink a ship is the world of healthcare now is people who are running and busy and we hire doctors who have very high IQs and very low EQs and they never look at their patients. If a doctor, Dr. Tom looks patient, this is like that teacher in the doorway looks patient Kawasaki in the eye for 39 seconds. Kawasaki's complications go down dramatically. The length of Kawasaki's hospital stay goes down significantly. And all because we humanize the thing now. Anyway, back to your bigger point. The good news by 2022, and I share snippets of it in my books, is that there is enough research to sink a small ship, if not a big one, on the leadership effectiveness of women. And I really use my words with care here. On average women are measurably better leaders on almost every dimension you can name. I use the word on average. I don't want to get nailed by somebody. There are fabulous male leaders, there are awful women leaders. But looking at that bell shaped curve, the center of the curve for men and the center of the curve for women is significantly different. But it is listening, caring, thoughtfulness, appreciation. We're just not very good at it. Guy, how did we make our money out in the veldt? By running around and throwing spears at animals and then coming home and going to sleep until the next morning. There's wonderful research on that, but you and I don't have enough time for it. And it's really cool and you'd love it and I love it. McKinsey does two quantitative studies. McKinsey did a study of companies with something like more than 40% women on boards of directors and they wildly outperformed the other half or two thirds or whatever it was a hard nosed leadership. Guy did the 20 most important leadership traits. And women outscored men on 16 of the 20 with statistical significance. And those 16 included the things, as the researcher said, that are usually thought of as boy things like getting things done. And so I just think women on average are better. I think it's a huge lost resource not to have them in charge. And I think it was Larry Summers, not exactly the world's number one sweetie, who he, I think he got it from somebody else who said, oh God, what was it? If you want to do something, ask a man. If you want to educate a community, ask a woman. I say these things and I, I do have those four quantitative degrees, Guy. I don't open my mouth unless there's data. My thesis advisor when I was getting my PhD at Stanford was the biggest son of a bitch in the world. I have a thesis which is that thick and 80% of it is references. If you were around Gene Webb and you said the sun rose, he would say where the hell is the reference to Newton? And it was. So when I comment on things that may sound somewhat soft, it is with a hard nosed gene. I adore Gene, but God, he was tough on the quantitative research part of it. And so I really believe that none of these quote unquote soft things we're talking about in the compassionomics book. That's the whole point. I love the term because it's an awful term, but it's the kind of a term that even a CFO could love. And it's the power, measurable power of thoughtfulness and compassion. And I, I've given away over a hundred of the books now, probably 50% of them to healthcare people. But buy the book, read the book, memorize the book. Compassionomics, they've written a new one which I have not completely read, which is also.

Wonderful. Madison will buy that and Madison will buy the female brain for me to read. So we'll get on that. One of my favorite Tom Peters concept is managing by walking around. So how does one manage by walking around in a post? Pandemic Zoom teams, Focus.

World. I don't know about you, but I've got a pretty good idea. When the pandemic started, my wife was being helpful and I was sitting on my butt and I said to my colleague Shelly, I know this is arrogant, but let's tell people that Tom would like to talk about leadership during a pandemic. And I ended up doing something like 55 podcasts. I'm getting around to your question. The point is you and I are having an incredibly intense, personal, emotional conversation. Maybe, or maybe not. It would be better over a glass of 27 year old California Chardonnay. I haven't had anything that drinks since 2005, so I wouldn't know. But I think several things. I think when I finish conversations like this, my wife says when she sees me, my God, you're exhausted. As exhausted as you are when you walk off the stage after speaking to a thousand people. Zoom is not unemotional. Zoom is not inhumane. Yes, it's different, but I really believe that. And I'm too old for this guy. As you know, there are a million people you could interview who would have much, much better answ. My answer is that. Go back to my mother's era, for God's sakes. All the things we're saying about Zoom, they said about long distance phone calls and it was just the depersonalization. Here was my definition of leadership in the time of COVID I've got this team, we've had about 20 virtual meetings in the last X and Marianne, who is a superstar, has been on time for every one of those meetings and contributed. And we're now having a little evaluation system. And I smile and I say, marianne, I'm going to give you a couple points off the perfection score. I happen to know that both of your parents are in assisted living. I happen to know that you've got a seven year old and a nine year old. Please miss meetings and come late. We're not looking to maximize productivity in this context. This thing I did for the COVID 19 thing, I developed this list of seven things. And they were be kind, be caring, be thoughtful, be patient, walk in the other person's shoes. And I would give my 30 minute speech, depending on the audience, and I would say, I've done my best in 30 minutes, but I can summarize the whole thing in four words. Don't be an asshole. So first of all, we've been virtualizing since at least the telegraph. The telegraph was Zoom, wasn't it? Pure, raw, unmitigated zoom. And then the telephone. And if I were a teacher of 9th graders, I have no idea what I would do. I'm not an expert. I haven't thought through it at that level. So I cannot give an intelligent answer. That's the most important thing I can say that I believe that you can have the same depth of thoughtfulness, caring relationships, maybe. Guy, we're going to have to. I hadn't really thought of this. I said a few Minutes ago that hiring for EQ and promoting for EQ is incredibly important. Maybe it's even more important. Maybe it's even more important when you're leading in a virtual world. I'm not sure. I'll have to. Have to think about that, but it makes me think that's the.

Case. You said something very interesting, which I want people to hear in great detail, which is that you should write your resume as if it was a eulogy. And I just want you to expound on that as your last topic, as you.

Expressed. Makes me larcenous. I stole the idea. The great New York Times columnist David Brooks had a column a couple of years ago, and in it he talked about the difference between what he called resume virtues and eulogy virtues and the resume virtues are guy graduated first in his class. He was promoted six times by the age of 35. It's his accomplishments list. The eulogy virtues pretty obviously are. How did he treat people? To what degree did he care? And, you know, I now say with some degree of practicality to people. How's your eulogy virtue score today? Did you take that extra 15 seconds to wait under the doorway and say, guy, looks like your sniffles are getting a little bit better or what have you? But I think there was Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal editorialist, et cetera. And there was a journalist who passed away 10 or 15 years ago. His name was Tim Russert. And Tim was known as a tough guy, tough questioner. And Peggy gave This obit for Mr. Russet in the Wall Street Journal, and if you could get through it without weeping, it would be a miracle. It was about the way he cared, the way he went out of his way to help people. And at my age, the eulogy virtues are exceedingly important. But I think they are at age 10, I think they're the essence of parenting. How will you be remembered by your peers, your colleagues, the way you treated, Assuming it's not all virtual. The grocery clerk and I, I don't know, obviously, the details of our audience composition, but I really want to make it clear for the seventh or 17th time that I'm not saying capitalism sucks. Profits are for dummies. I'm saying exactly the opposite. If you take care of people, if you engage people, your bank account will grow. Here is the worst statistic you will ever have heard in your life, Guy. In September of 1970, Nobel laureate, not yet. At the time, Milton Friedman wrote an op ed in the New York Times, which ushered in the shareholder value maximization era, in which he said, and I think my words are almost exact, business has no social responsibility. In 1970 when Friedman said that 50% of profits and the like went to shareholders leadership team, 50% went to people research and development and so on 2014 a study showed. I can't say the word without getting a nausea reaction in my stomach. 45 years later, 91% of profits went to the shareholders, share buybacks and executives and 9% went to people and R and D. Do you wonder why? A lot of shit is going on down on the streets. Friedman should take a large share of the response. 91% guy. So resume virtues versus eulogy virtues. As I said, I'm really a great Quant and McKinsey study, they studied 600 companies that constituted 65% of the GDP and 147 of them qualified by several measures as long term investors. The long term investors killed the short termers on every quantitative and profitability measurement you can name. And one in particular importance, they outdid them on job creation by something like 300%. But Friedman deserves a special place in hell or we do for listening to him. As I said, it's so important to say this to the hard nosed people who are here. I'm not saying be a softie and it'll kill your bank account. I'm saying be a softy, get rich. I said to somebody I was trained well in math so I have to have equations. I've got an equation, it's called K = R = P& it stands for kindness equals repeat business equals profitability. So I'm not a.

Pussycat. This is the way to end this podcast. Okay, that is a great ending.

Statement. All right Guy, I want to tell you that I have not had a more pleasant and I hope helpful to our watchers, listeners, etc. This has just been a great experience and I want to say this on air. It is so fabulous to see you again. Guy and I were never on the same payroll or anything like that, but we wandered around Silicon Valley and some utterly. We were both so damn lucky to be there at that point it isn't even funny. We knew each other during the.

80S. Tom, you are truly a remarkable person. I count as a blessing our.

Relationships. Well the feeling sir is very mutual. So stop talking to.

Me. I want you to tell people that I'm the best interviewer you have ever dealt.

With. Is so there's no doubt about that. None whatsoever. I think you're fantastic interviewer but I do have a Kawasaki bias going in. You have to understand that I don't come in as a neutral. I don't come in as a.

Neutral. Take that part.

Out. Yeah, we can leave that.

Out. So there you have it, the Tom Peters. Don't forget his new book, Tom Peters Compact Guide to Excellence. In fact, I'm not gonna let you forget it. I'm gonna read you the 13 central themes of his book. One. Execution. The last 95%. Number two. Hard numbers. Plans. Org charts. Is soft. Soft people. Relationships. Culture is hard. Number three. Community purpose. Four. Long term investors prosper. Five. People really first. Number six. People really first. Radical inclusion. Put women in charge. Number seven. Extreme humanism. Design that makes the world a better place. Number eight. Sustainability. The right thing to do. The profitable thing to do. Number nine. The world's top two underscored markets. Women buy almost everything. Oldies have almost all the money. 10. Big stinks. SMEs rule. Number 11, innovation. Most tries wins. Number 12, leadership. You must care. Number 13, excellence is the next five minutes. That's what's in Tom's new book. I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is remarkable. People remember, we are on a mission to make you remarkable. You might be wondering who is the we in we? The we in we is Peg Fitzpatrick, Jeff C. Shannon Hernandez, Alexis Nishimura, Luis Magana. And last but not least, the drop in queen of all of Santa Cruz, Madison Nismer. Until next time, mahalo and aloha. Thank you to all our regular podcast listeners. It's our pleasure and honor to make the show for you. Knowing that you like our podcast makes all the difference to us. Please follow the show in your favorite podcast app or find the latest episode every Wednesday@remarkablepeople.com this is remarkable, people.