Kindness is free

‘Treat your employees like customers’, said Tom Peters who was recently in Muscat to conduct a day-long seminar and promote his new book ‘The Little Big Things’. The acclaimed management guru talked about what corporate leaders need to do during times of economic turbulence in a candid conversation with Akshay Bhatnagar. Excerpts of the chat:
 

With CEOs under increased pressure to meet shareholders expectations on profit generation in the short term, how do you see them investing more on their people for long term gains?

Some day, God willing, those people will be 67! When you are going to look into the mirror, you are not going to see quarterly profits. You are going to see the people you have developed.

Would you like to be someone who met Wall Street expectations for 40 quarters in a row?
I would like to quote Richard Branson. He fundamentally said that if it was not great for employees, you would go out of business.

It is not about money alone. Most of the efforts don’t cost money. I’m an old Navy man and I’ll share an experience from my Navy days. When Lord Nelson would take over a new fleet he would change the entire character of the fleet in a month. Because he had, Mandela like energy. There was respect for his sailors and it was contagious. People respond to respect and appreciation presumably in any market in a pretty universal way.

Many US companies continue to outsource instead of investing more in their own human resources. What do you have to say about them?

They are bad managers. There are two kinds of outsourcing. One is outsourcing for the sole purpose of minimising cost. Then there is outsourcing indeed with a labour cost component but for the quality of work. If you do it to reduce cost and you think you are smart as you can throw them out if required, you should look at partnering with them. People in US have argued loudly that corporates which are outsourcing should be penalised. I think it is nonsense. I think the American goal requirement as it stood for any other country is to develop our own towns and educational resources so that we could hold on to the jobs. If you are doing it to minimise the cost, your quality will go down, customer service will be affected, that’s the case. But if you look at partnering in opportunity, it changes.

China is taking over large MNCs in US and European markets. How is it going to impact the business leadership in these companies?

I was in China for three days last year. They don’t want to be the workshop of the world. They want to play the value added game. I told them that a nation targeting to build up intellectual capital has to have a different relationship with its workforce first. Though US is not like France but we have tough laws in place. I told them that Americans are easy to play compared to the Europeans but we are not going to accept food for babies that is poisoned. Though it is not my area of expertise but when China gives aid, say, to African countries with no strings attached, it is worrisome.

What is your advice to companies operating in a less turbulent economic environment – aim for higher growth or focus on stability?

I would say first things first: Aim for a totally energised work force. I’m in favour of aggressive competitiveness but not terribly charmed when in the midst of a great recession somebody takes advantage of a failing company. We should not behave like sharks. People remember acts of good behaviour in a downturn much longer than they do in an upturn. I wrote somewhere in my new book: “Look if I’ve got a competitor who is going out of business I’m not going to pay his bills that’s for sure but I’ll not start stealing people from him. Behave decently for God sake!”

To answer your question, I think there has to be an emphasis on growth in some form or another. Aiming to be static is not exciting. If the company is in a good shape financially and there are opportunities and things that can be acquired less expensively and if you happen to be sitting on a pretty good heap of cash in Oman, use it. But remember most big acquisitions don’t work.

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we may miss it but that it is too low and we will reach it. Excellence can be obtained if you expect more than you think is possible. Dream more than others think is practical. Care more than others think is wise. Risk more than others think is safe.

How has Tom Peters changed from In Search of Excellence to The Little Big Things?

One of the things I’m trying to do in my new book compared to the first one I wrote long time back is to go back to human basics. In this age of Internet and social networking, the world has changed. But it is still about people. The fundamentals of relationships with people have not changed probably since we started evolving thousands of years ago.

 We are what we are not due to our analytical abilities but due to our social networking ability. The magic of humans differentiating from the rest was that we could form communities. That was good management. You and I can’t beat a tiger individually but if we form a group of people, we can. That’s what scientists term as social grooming. It’s the social glue and it is important. Despite being primitive they could build communities. It has always been about relationships.
I’ll quote Donald Trump who said that if the relationship with company A is better than company B I would rather do business with company A. That’s the real world.

I’m a regular user of Twitter. I got a blog site that’s among the top 10 management leadership blogs. It is all about people and people. I may sound Darwanian but we have not changed much from what we were 50,000 years ago.

What made you write The Little Big Things?

It just happened by chance. In my blog, I had been giving tips on achieving excellence. It was all about tiny little things that leads to an enormous impact on the business. Over the years, the number of tips touched 176 mark. Then one day a publisher sent an email to me – “You have inadvertently written your new book”. That was the trigger and I started working on the book.

 

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