An Interview with Tom Peters
Tom Peters, host of Tom Peters: Re-Imagine Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age shares his thoughts with APT ...
Q: How did you get your start in the business world? What motivated you to teach others about your unconventional ideas of business management?
A: I got my start in the world of organization while I was in the Navy between 1966 and 1970. I was in Vietnam as a platoon commander of sorts for a couple of years, and then I was in Washington in the Pentagon for a couple of years. I saw all kinds of different organizational forms and I saw things that worked and I saw things that didn't. I saw bosses who paid attention to their people — namely their sailors and soldiers, and bosses who didn't. I think that's where my fascination really began.
Q: In your new special Tom Peters: Re-Imagine Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age, you profile five leading companies: Healthworks! Kids' Museum, TNT, OXO Good Grips, Ellie Mae and The Container Store. What are some of the techniques that help drive success in these businesses?
A: Well, we picked each one obviously for different reasons. If there is a theme that goes through all of them, it is this: if you want to serve your customers well, you have to serve your people well. I think the place where that shows up perhaps unexpectedly is at The Container Store. The Container Store sells pretty mundane stuff by most measures, but it treats its people like kings and trains them well and pays them well and so on. In every one of the cases you see the same thing. At OXO, you see the freedom that people are given to do things. There's also a wonderful line from Healthworks! about how most of the people who work there can't wait for Sunday to get over so they can hurry up and get to work. This is a long way from the normal workplace.
The number one technique is: absolute abiding attention to talent, to the people who do the work. And number two is that each one of these places is amazingly creative and taps into the creative talents of people.
Q: What are some of the worst things someone could do when trying to get a new business off the ground?
A: You got a couple of hours? The answer is to not understand how what you're doing is different from what's being done around you. There are an awful lot of people who decide to take the big leap and leave their company and start a restaurant in Boston or wherever and it's not a very special place, it's just another restaurant. The reality is that Boston or Chicago or Los Angeles or probably Omaha or Des Moines don't need just another restaurant. How you are special is critical. That's number one.
Number two is talent. My wife just started a store on Newbury Street [in Boston] and that store is as energetic as the people she hires. We think her product is terrific and her design is unique, etc., but the energy on a day-to-day basis that's presented to the customer comes from the people who are working there day-to-day.
Number three — particularly for the small business person — is to have enough money to make it through at least the first winter. You don't have to have millions and millions of dollars, but you do have to have a good accountant from day one who is on top of managing things like inventory. The financial side has to be in as good an order as the people side and the creative side.
Q: In today's unstable economy, what advice would you give to people who are looking to keep a steady business or to those who would like to start a new business?
A: One of the answers was in Section E of the Boston Globe yesterday. The cover story was on restaurants that keep re-inventing themselves. For example, Louis' is not Louis' anymore. Louis' is Club L now. I had an interview with Fortune Small Business last week and somebody said Club L and I said, 'What the heck is Club L?' And then I said 'Where is it?' And they gave me this address, and I said, 'Well, that's Louis'!' But they changed their name because they felt they were getting stale. They changed their menu. They changed their chef. So, it's really critical to continue to stay fresh.
Q: In your opinion, over the last 100 years which business models, companies or people have had the greatest impact on business today?
A: My real answer is that it's impossible to say. Ford and Wal-Mart. Ford changed the way that we made things back 90 or 100 years ago, and Wal-Mart has changed the way we distribute things and think about business basically in the last 10 or 12 years. The answer I'd love to have is an answer like Apple or a company like that, but in terms of totally different business practices that came out of nowhere, I'd have to say Ford and Wal-Mart.
*This interview is available for use in the marketing and/or promotion of Tom Peters: Re-Imagine Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age (program guides and/or Web sites). No part of this interview may be used relating to any product or service, other than the program. Tom Peters: Re-Imagine Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age (1/60) (Exchange; start date: 5/1/04) Produced by Enterprise Media and presented by APT.
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