Quickthink

I had some tough going today working on a draft budget for a project (that would bring together city/university/private/private sector in a rolling three year seminar to institutionalize leadership, entrepreneurship and tolerance values).

The good news is that the work gave me some more time to think about Tom Peter’s Tallinn day. It’s interesting how many of his words are about

stimulating

action. For example - he argues that execution is strategy. When I hear that, I wondered “Is this really right?” Isn’t so that “just execution” can be “just drift”. But then I thought some more. Hmmmm, actually, if you have already taken over core values, then your strategy will be

learning by doing

The opposite of mechanical. The opposite of boring. Interesting thought about business as the art of doing things with people.

One of the core ideas that Tom Peters delivered the other day in Tallinn is that  getting big is not the right management goal. In fact, he was more emphatic, saying that getting big insures that sooner or later you will crash. It is also boring to work in big companies.

This hit a nerve with the audience, who by and large all yearn to be managers in really, really, really big companies. In these parts the mythology is that the smart and cool guys all work for big multinationals. It’s a testosterone, ego thing. 

I agree with Tom on this point. And that’s why I was pleased to see Fred Wilson’s post this morning about how “yelp” may do a take down of Starbucks, McDonalds, Taco Bell and other biggies. Nice post Fred!

Big is not better. It is just bigger.

A quick quote from Tom Peters today

Leadership is a sacred trust.

And how about this for a definition of “institutions”

Organizations are cathedrals for developing leadership 

And according to Peters, what is leadership?`

Leadership helps people succeed

I couldn’t agree more — but it is rather surprising that we spend so little time trying to figure out what “good” leadership really means, and how to get it all the time, every time.

FOLLOW - It seems the word “leadership” is popular these days Tom Friedman weighs in with some thoughts from a book by Stan Greenberg

The über-lesson for presidents?  You can’t be too honest in describing big problems, too bold in offering big solutions, too humble in dealing with big missteps, too forward in re-telling your story or too gutsy in speaking the previously unspeakable.

This rather huge image of Tom Peters is from Rob Millard’s blog called the “Adventure of Stratgy“  which looks pretty interesting.

I will run up to Tallinn on Wednesday to spend a day listening to Tom Peters do his thing, and I am pretty excited about it. I just tuned into his blog Tompeters —- which in turn, clued me into the Economist Special Report on entrepreneurhsip.

Thanks Tom!