Intellectual Capital/Stewart 113-114

114 Another compelling reason to make a formal effort to map corporate brainpower: coping with growth and staff turnover.

...so important to capture the knowledge.

The Pursuit of WOW/Peters 14-15

15. My concern is creating an environment where good people want to hang around.

SIX KEY IDEAS ARE ANIMATING BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION.

Total Quality Management. No doubt about it, superior quality is a must for competitive success these days.
Reengineering
Leveraging knowledge. Brains are in; heavy lifting is out. Therefore, the development of knowledge is close to job #1 for corporations. ...an organization that dotes on sharing information rather than hoarding it.
The curious, cannibalistic corporations. Corporations need an appetite for adventure, a passion for bold leaps into the unknown.
The virtual organization. Business and management have long been about control, job descriptions, organizational charts, headquarter towers, structures that are changed reluctantly every five years, and linear careers that rise up "ladders." Now impermanence and improvisation are markers for success.
Empowerment. ...running companies boils down -- surprise! -- to the folks who actually do the work. People, they, them, always were important; they always were our most important asset. Hierarchies are going, going, gone.

VALUES FOR BUSINESS?
Do fabulous work.
Attract exciting people.
Raise hell, constantly question "the way things are done around here"
Make sure that those who leave us, voluntarily or involuntarily, can testify to having a learned a lot, having had a special experience, and having made fast friends while they were here. (Ye shall be known by your alumni!)
Have a collegial, supportive, yeasty, zany, laughter-filled environment where folks support one another, and politics is an absent as it can be in human (i.e., imperfect) enterprise.
Ensure that no questions or innuendo ever surfaces about our ethics.
Dot the "i"s, cross the "t"s, answer the phones promptly, send out error less invoices, and in general never forget that the devil is in the details.
Work with exciting customers (and other partners) who turn us on and stretch us, from whom we can learn, and with whom we enjoy associating (and who pay their bills on time too).
Take in substantially more money that we spend (where spending includes above-average compensation and a very high level of investment in the future).
Grow via quality services and customers, not via growth for growths sake.

GOOD TO GREAT/COLLINS 79-81

81 Scott Paper's and Kimberly-Clark's differing reactions to P&G bring us to a vital point. In confronting the brutal facts, the gtg companies left themselves stronger and more resilient, not weaker and more dispirited. There is a sense of exhilaration that comes in facing head-on the hard truths and saying, "We will never give up. We will never capitulate. It might take a long time, but we will find a way to prevail.

Intellectual Capital/Stewart 106-113

108 Structural capital...it is knowledge that doesn't go home at night.

Even the smartest people in the world need a mechanism to assemble, package, promote, and distribute the fruits of their thinking.

113 Knowledge databases also help companies work globally.

The Pursuit of WOW/Peters 6-14

10 Simple. It's the very essence of humanness, of connecting with the customer--and a strong indicator of superior service and quality.

13 The worst bosses are wholesalers

Retail also allows--no, requires--continuous reinvention.

14 The difference between great and average or lousy in any job is, mostly, having the imagination and zeal to re-create yourself daily.

GOOD TO GREAT/COLLINS 77-79

79 Indeed, we found no evidence that the gtg companies had more or better information than the comparison companies. None. Both sets of companies had virtually identical access to good information. The key, then, lies not in better information, but in turning information into information that cannot be ignored.

The Art of the Start/Kawasaki 145-147

147 Investors are looking for people who can implement ideas, not simply come up with them.

Here are the fine points of using an NDA:

Never ask an investor to sign one to have a first meeting or in the first meeting.

If you’re asking for an NDA to merely discuss your idea…you’re clueless.

Freely circulate your executive summary and PowerPoint pitch. They should not reveal your magic sauce.

It is reasonable for an interested investor to ask this (NDA) in the due diligence stage.

Once patents are filed, you should feel pretty safe in discussing your magic sauce under an NDA.

The bottom line is still that the best protection of an idea is great implementation of the idea.

When do I stop trying to find/negotiate a better deal and take what’s offered?...It’s a good idea to stop looking and negotiating if you can’t meet payroll. If the deal that you’re offered is within 20 percent of what you wanted.

Intellectual Capital/Stewart 105-106

106 The gainsharing bonus thus becomes, in effect, a dividend paid to employees for investing human capital. Peter Drucker says, that "the true investment in the knowledge society is not in machines and tools but in the knowledge of the knowledge workers need them.

...is that they need knowledge workers for more than knowledge workers need them.

If every person were able to capture the full value of his services, there would be no corporations.

When people work together, they create something that is worth more than the sum of their individual efforts.

...there is some economic value that is created by our being part of an organization, a reason why the work we do is more valuable when we do it with a group that when we go it alone

The Pursuit of WOW/Peters 5-6

6 ...people nurturing has two good sides, too -- one for the nurtured and another for the nurturer. The phone call, the small courtesy, the warm words, are all modest acts of engagement that make customers feel good.

Lou Holtz, "It's not my job to motivate players. They bring extraordinary motivation to our program. It's my job not to de-motivate them."

TOM PETERS' TRUTHS
Unintended consequences outnumber intended consequences.
Fiction beats nonfiction.
Success begets failure. IF you (or your company) luck out and find something that works, you're in trouble. You'll most likely try to make history repeat itself, which can hardly ever be made to happen. (The times that it does happen are when you most want it not to.)Circumstances change, and the strengths that led to your first success often become weaknesses.
Democracy and markets are untidy, but effective.
Vermont farmers have a lot to teach us.
Lighten up.
Smile if it kills you.
Each day is a miracle
Reject simple explanations.

The only security we have is in our ability to fly by the seat of our pants. Brad Blanton/Radical Honesty.

GOOD TO GREAT/COLLINS 75-77

77 Like Nucor, all the gtg companies had a penchant for intense dialogue. Phrases like "loud debate," heated discussions,"and "healthy conflict" peppered the articles and interview transcripts from all the companies. They didn't use discussion as a sham process to let people "have their say" so that they could "buy in" to a predetermined decision. The process was more like a heated scientific debate, with people engaged in a search for the best answers.

3. Conduct autopsies, without blame.

Cullman/Philip Morris (made a bad decision to acquire Seven-Up) " I will take responsibility for this bad decision. But we will all take responsibility for extracting the maximum learning from the tuition we've paid.

When you conduct autopsies without blame, you go a long way toward creating a climate where the truth is heard. If you have the right people on the bus, you should almost never need to assign blame but need only to search for understanding and learning.

4. Build "red flag" mechanisms.

The Art of the Start/Kawasaki 144-145

145 When should an entrepreneur reverse a negative decision by arguing?...I’ve never seen an entrepreneur reverse a negative decision by arguing.

What is a reasonable salary that a CEO should set himself up with that will not scare an investor away?...The CEO should not be paid more that four times the lowest-paid full time employee.

Angels want entrepreneurs to have some skin in the game. I don’t have any money to invest in the business. How do I overcome this? What do venture capitalists look for these days as fare as “skin in the game”?...you will have a lot of skin in the game in the form of days of sweat equity.

If I do not have an IPO or acquisition as my exit strategy, will I ever be able to attract investors? Would investors ever be interested in making their return through profit sharing or a buy-out from the founders of the company in five to ten years?...If the investors are professionals investors, you can forget about raising money without a shot at an IPO or acquisition. …But profit sharing or buying out investors is attractive to few investors.

Do entrepreneurs have to accept the valuation proposed by the venture capitalist who want s to invest into their businesses? …Whatever the first offer, ask for a 25 percent higher valuation because you’re expected to push back.

Intellectual Capital/Stewart 104-105

105 For pure information age companies, the principal barrier to entry is the ability to concentrate intellectual property.

Microsoft was originally incorporated to create a vehicle to share ownership, not to ramp up production.

Forming a corporation and taking it public gave employees a financial incentive to keep their assets working for Microsoft, rather than take them elsewhere.

The Pursuit of WOW/Peters 3-5

4 70% of lost customers hit the road not because of price or quality issues but because they didn't like the human side of doing business with the prior provider of the product or service.

5...a token of human kindness--is the greatest gift we can give someone.

GOOD TO GREAT/COLLINS 74-75

75 Indeed, Wurtzel/Circuit City stands as one of the few CEOs in a large corporation who put more questions to his board members than they put to him.

When we asked the executives about their management team meetings during the transition era, they said that they spent much of the time "just trying to understand"


"So, what's on your mind?" Can you tell me about that?" Can you help me understand?" What should we be worried about?" These non-agenda meetings became a forum where current realities tended to bubble to the surface.

Leading from gtg does not mean coming up with answers and then motivating everyone to follow your messianic vision. It means having the humility to grasp the fact that you do not yet understand enough to have the answers and then to ask the questions that will lead to the best possible insights.

2. Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion.

The Art of the Start/Kawasaki 140-144

144 Is it better to have fewer, bigger investors or numerous, smaller investments? …

1) More investors means that there are more people helping you by opening doors, recruiting, the generating buzz,

2) When you need additional capital, it’s nice to have sever sources already in the deal,

3) It’s dangerous to have only one investor calling the shots in case you have a disagreement.

When accepting angel money, is it reasonable and customary to have a buy-out clause, to allow me to retain my stock if I am able to pay back the angel’s loan with interest?...If you do pull of buy-out clause, you’ll rack up bad karma points—and a start up needs all the good karma it can get

Intellectual Capital/Stewart 101-104

103 Human capital represents a major portion of the total value of some companies.

Human capitalists are investors

104 ...when knowledge is the chief resource and result--the input and output, the raw material and finished product--ownership of that knowledge becomes fuzzy, shared: The worker is part-owner, the capitalist is part owner, and the customer is part-owner.

The Pursuit of WOW/Peters 1-3

1 IBM founder Tomas Watson...If you want to achieve excellence, he said, you get there today. As of this second, quite doing less-than-excellent work.

2...that's life) is working like the devil to 1) keep your spirits up through the inevitable storms, 2) learn something new every day, and 3) practice that something, awkward or not and no matter what, until it's become part of your nature.

3 The determined shift of mind-set is an all-or-nothing deal.

Change is that simple. Honest.