Tom Peters: in search of great leadership

Thursday, November 12, 2009 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Business advice | Tags: business, Richard Branson, success, leaders, leadership, future, Tom Peters, Nelson, Napoleon, Chris Alden, revenue stream, Jack Welch

Is the modern business leader dogged or clever? What’s the best focus for making money in difficult economic times? Business management guru Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence, talks about what makes a successful business leader now – and why being clever may not be your smartest move… 

You’re not a great fan of business jargon, but everyone uses the odd phrase such as ‘business model’ – are there no nuggets of truth to be found here at all?

I understand the glory of making all this business stuff sound shockingly sexy. I have an MBA from a quant school and I worked for McKinsey for eight years. But the reality is that my favourite Brit, Horatio Nelson, was known for the simplicity and the clarity of the orders he issued to his commanders. And the orders basically said: ‘Just bloody keep sailing’. (Or England expects every man to just bloody keep sailing, but you get the point.)

There’s a wonderful Napoleonic quote that fundamentally says: ‘The art of war isn’t that complicated, so why is it that generals continue to get into trouble?’ And the wonderful final line, which is that they try too hard to be clever. A bit less cleverness and a little more doggedness wins the battle – at either Trafalgar or in the City of London!

You often espouse the idea that a leader needs to align the values of a business with the personal values of its staff? For example, Patagonia, which sells recycled polyester fleeces and organic cotton T-shirts, has a core team of motivated, outdoorsy staff.

Again one has to watch out, just to keep the language simple. We need to drop three-syllable words like ‘alignment’ and just say: ‘If people are excited about what they’re doing, they’re more likely to excite their customers.’

It helps [explain] Richard Branson’s success. The British have written too much about Branson as we have written too much about [Jack] Welch but, far more than Welch, Branson deserves it. Everything from the colourful nature of his logos to the fact that he really enjoys it most when he’s stuffing it in the ear of stuffy old BA is something that turns people on.

My understanding – and I don’t pretend to be an expert – is that people feel that, while it might not be quite as holy as a reduction of carbon footprint, [Branson’s record attempts, ventures and so on] are a cause worth signing up for. 

You’ve said success is about having excellence as an aspiration – whether you’re the leader or the led…

I also contend that in the medium to long term it’s the best way to make money, and to have a sustainable revenue stream. When we watch the failure going way back to the British Leylands and the British Steels, or General Motors, which is Leyland II, their biggest problem is that they stopped making great cars.

So it’s a back-to-basics approach for the future?

The signature phrase of In Search of Excellence, as Bob Waterman and I said, is: ‘Hard is soft and soft is hard.’ In the long run, it’s the numbers that are squishy, and the relationships and people development stuff which is the truly hard stuff. That’s an easy sell in 2009, given the squishiness of the numbers that have laid us low around the world.

But isn’t this all a bit… obvious? Isn’t it embarrassingly… simple?

One guy who attended [my] seminar said: ‘This was a great seminar – I didn’t learn anything at all. It was a blinding flash of the obvious.’ I subsequently used that in a chapter title of a book! Whether we talk about you as a freelancer or me as whatever the hell I am, it’s pretty damn basic stuff really.

Even as a Brit, if we listen to Napoleon on ‘why do generals fail?’ – that might take us a long way.

Interview by Chris Alden. Image: © Allison Shirreffs

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Tom Peters also features in the next issue of Grant Thornton’s Elevate magazine for entrepreneurs, which is out mid-November. To view a PDF version of the magazine when it comes out next week, just register and download here. To subscribe to receive future editions either electronically or as a hard copy, please email your name, address and preferred format to elevate@gtuk.com

Further reading: Entrepreneur’s Diary – find out what life is like behind the scenes of two of leading UK chief execs as we follow them over summer 2009.

Further reading: Grant Thornton’s My Big Decision – a series of video podcasts where business and thought leaders reveal their life-changing moments.