Re-imagine! The Musical

Tom Peters's Re-imagine! (2003) was boundary busting in terms of its design and style. It was a Technicolor Book from a Technicolor Guy.*

These days...

Mr. Peters is Tweeting. About everything management under the sun, of course, including this, a current and concise summary of his Prescription for Success -- which is pretty much what it was when he released his 1982 masterpiece, In Search of Excellence:

Cherish your people, cuddle your customers, wander around, 'try it' beats 'talk about it,' pursue excellence, tell the truth. 

Now, given the fact that Twitter messages can't be more than 140 characters, condensing thirty-plus years' worth of his professional experience had to have been a real challenge. (Kudos for pulling it off.) And the "end product" is clever enough that I can see it finding its way onto a t-shirt or some other promotional object.

What I can't quite see, though, is Technicolor Tom. The exuberant dude who was vowing eight years ago that he'd reinvent the business book, among other things.

Consider this:

If I, or perhaps you, had fired off the same missive, would anybody've paid attention? Would it have been regarded as actionable and /or caused anyone's chin to drop? I don't think so. Which leads me to wonder: Is he bored? Is he losing his eye for color? If "yes" to either, then...

Might he be open to some ideas?

The problem is that the thing doesn't really sing. Keeping in mind that a tweet is a chirping sound, what if he were to start over and to try expressing himself -- if only for the creative exercise of it -- musically this time?

Here are three suggestions in that vein, from the simply whimsical to the outlandish:

[1] Twitter is limiting, but not altogether so. So, suppose he'd add musical notes to his Tweet; one for each of his six pointers (his "Tom Commandments"). It's feasible and could look something like this:

Doesn't that seem a little more Tom-like?

[2] Thinking outside the figurative box, how about actually setting the stuff of that already-sent Tweet to music? In other words: make a tune of it. A ditty. A short song. He could post a recording at www.tompeters.com. And then Tweet about that. (i.e., supply a link) 

Could be fun, huh?
But why stop there?


[3] Why not have some real fun and re-present his full-blown formula as a full-blown musical?!? A production bigger an' more colorful than Re-imagine! itself to capture the author's intensity and high spirits. For this I re-imagine he'd want to collaborate with others who share his same Technicolor sensibilities. (I have just the group for the show's big number: "Ladies and gentlemen, direct from the school of Go Big or Go Home...MarchFourth Marching Band!" To experience the band for yourself, click on the pic below. You'll probably want to turn up the volume, by the way. And hold onto your hat.)

Re-imagine! The Musical

MAKE IT AN EXPERIENCE.

Too far out and over the top? Well, I'm at least half kidding about each of the above. But I throw 'em out there to make a point, one of the same points TP was making implicitly and explicitly when he wrote Re-imagine! That is, business writing is typically dull. It's often pretentious. It's (foolishly? misleadingly?) devoid of imagination, art, and emotion.

About his Tweet in question -- it's not bad. It's just not great. What concerns me is that it does away with almost all of the "cloudlike, nonlinear, hard to see, biased, and impossible to formalize" (thanks David Brooks) stuff that makes Tom Peters Tom Peters. Necessary stuff that helps us to know what he really means, and to decide for ourselves whether or not we like what we're taking in.

I'm reminded of this Wendell Berry nugget: 

The abstract, "objective," impersonal, dispassionate language of science [business]...cannot replace, and it cannot become, the language of familiarity, reverence, and affection by which things of value ultimately are protected. 

How much does Mr. Peters value and wish to protect the same things he did in '03? It's a little hard to tell based on the 127 characters he chose.

*I likened Re-imagine! to a modern day illuminated manuscript in this prior posting: [linked] 

WB's Way: A Certain Kind Of Modesty

The way of ignorance, therefore, is to be careful, to know the limits and the efficacy of our knowledge. It is to be humble and to work on an appropriate scale.

How are we ever going to make our collective way toward healthier communities? Wendell Berry’s been suggesting for years it has to start with personal decency, humility and cautiousness, a disposition he’s referred to as the way of ignorance. (a phrase borrowed from T.S. Eliot’s poem, East Coker)

I’m interested – for purposes of this short series – in what happens when the way of ignorance meets and conducts business. How do people and companies live up to its requirements in the real world? What kinds of results do they get when they do? Mr. Berry’s done more than his share to frame questions and provide answers, but I think more work is needed still.

Specifically, I’d like to try to link his ideas to the MANAGEMENT ADVISEMENT arena. And I’ve been keepin’ a sharp eye out lately for anyone or anything that might help.

Enter stage right: David Brooks and his new book, The Social Animal.

Enter, too, the concept of epistemological modesty. 

Epistemological What?

Might as well let him explain:

Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know. Epistemological modesty is the knowledge of how little we know and can know.

More user-friendly:

Epistemological modesty is an attitude toward life. This attitude is built on the awareness that we don’t know ourselves. Most of what we think and believe is unavailable to conscious review. We are our own deepest mystery.

Epistemological modesty is just like the way of ignorance.

If our ability to understand our selves is limited, so, also, by extension, must be our ability to understand other people, circumstances, and events. We still have to make decisions and take actions, of course. So the question becomes, How do we do so modestly? Mr. Brooks submits that we “can design habits, arrangements, and procedures that partially compensate for the limits on our knowledge.” In one of my favorite parts of the book, he then takes his best shot at illustrating what he means.

What really set my eyes a poppin’, though, were the parts in which he relates epistemological modesty to business management. This he does c-o-n-s-p-i-c-u-o-u-s-l-y via the characters (this is a fictional work) of Harrison, a “typical” management consultant* who DOES NOT exhibit epistemological modesty, and Raymond, a mid-level manager, who DOES. The narrator goes to great lengths to describe their respective decision making processes and the effects their decisions have on their companies.

It’s here where Mr. Brooks does just the kind of linking I alluded to before, and where he fills in some of the missing pieces. I don’t know what kind of impact this has had inside the consulting community, but I’m curious to find out.

I also want to find out if there are any real, living, breathing consultants who are talking this same sort of talk.

Philip Evans of the Boston Consulting Group is referred to in The Lords of Strategy (Walter Kiechel, III, 2010) as one who likes to think and talk about epistemology, specifically the nature of the knowledge of how to achieve competitive advantage. But, as for the modesty part?

BCG’s bailiwick has been strategic analysis and strategy formulation, along with the mission, vision, and values stuff that precedes it. In conversations about these topics with clients, what characteristic attitude does he bring? I’m sure all BCG consultations address enterprise risk management (ERM), but is that the same thing DB and/or WB have in mind?

"The Full Wendell" would call for companies to carefully consider, among many other things, the ramifications of the use of their products or services in the world. (Do they help end users become more self-sufficient? Do they promote wasteful consumption? Are they instrumental in helping people maintain and enhance their home towns?) Has any consultant at BCG, itself a US$ 3.05 billion firm, ever gone so far as to recommend to a client that the scope of her company’s operations should be limited, because, for example, further growth could be destructive?

These things I don’t know.

As always, more investigation is needed.

*Can you believe it, a management consultant in a novel?!?

WB's Way: The 78th Most Common Word

From ‘70s and ‘80s pop music:

Ooh, baby I love your way [Peter Frampton]

That’s just the way it is [Bruce Hornsby]

You can go your own way [Fleetwood Mac]

That’s the way of the world [Earth, Wind & Fire]

I don’t think I could’ve guessed that the word “way” is one of the most common written words in the English language. Now that I know it is, though, I’ll pay even closer attention.

Way originally meant “road, path, or course of travel.” A definition that interests me more, however, is: “a manner, method, or means” – as in a way of doing or of knowing. As in there are as many different ways of being as there are humans.

I’ve actually been paying some attention to its use for a while. This blog (as an indication) is all about various ways of managing. Every manager has her way. The Harvard Business School teaches its comprehensive way. Tom Peters recently summed up and tweeted about his way this way: 

"Cherish your people, cuddle your customers, wander around, 'try it' beats 'talk about it,' pursue excellence, tell the truth."

I haven’t thought this through, but – an exposition of Wendell Berry's way would almost certainly include and revolve around these notions: 

• we (people) have to act; 
• we have to act on the basis of what we know; 
• what we know is incomplete; 
• therefore, “the question of how to act in ignorance is paramount.” 

The Way of Ignorance. That’s the title of a 2005 collection of his essays. It's also a name I think he’d still happily give to his general approach to things. How do his thoughts (more specifically) about business follow from it? That’s what I hope to keep exploring and writing about...

A ways down the road.

WB's Way: Intro

I’ve never really bought into the idea that graduates of MBA programs know better ‘an the rest of us what makes companies tick. Peter Drucker was a sociologist. Kenneth Andrews, who (among other things) headed up Harvard Business School’s advanced management programs in the '70s, earned a PhD in English.

Walter Kiechel wrote about both men in The Lords of Strategy, lauding them for the power of their insights and their contributions to The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World. (the book’s subtitle) He described Andrews as “a humanist in all that word’s senses.” And, he noted about Drucker that his “output was so rich, wide-ranging, and ever-renewed with fresh observations that it somehow didn’t come across as systematic.”

Rereading those snippets the other day, I couldn’t help but think of Wendell Berry. 

Wendell Berry.“The best serious essayist at work in the United States.” The recipient, this past March, of the 2010 National Humanites Medal. A swell guy, in my eyes, whose values, opinions, and sensibilities have intrigued me for at least a dozen years.

During their careers, Messrs. Drucker and Andrews were up to their respective elbows in big business. As for Mr. Berry? The word “business” hardly ever surfaces in his writings. And yet he has loads to say about: Work. Economy. Community. Propriety…

The human condition. That’s been his domain. Within it, he's developed interesting points of view that (IMO) speak to the role of people in getting things done and making things better. He's examined all sorts of stuff business thinkers haven’t traditionally shown much willingness to examine – but managers with responsibility for the overall success of their organizations must necessarily address.

I have a vague feel for Wendell Berry’s formula (which has ne’er been formulated, as far as I know) for success. I have a sense I’d enjoy working alongside him. But, I’m not positive. So I want to get a firmer grip; I want to make his approach more explicit, if possible. And then kick it around some.

Ultimately, I’d like to end up with a more informed opinion about whether or not more Wendell Berry in business would be good for business.

Any business.

Coming Soon...