TP: What's changed, in my mind, is the whole metabolism of the
economy. The half-life of new products changed. For instance, the number
of grocery and drugstore products increased from 2,600 in 1980 to more
than 16,000 in 1992, and 574 new salty snacks appeared in 1991 alone
according to the records. And so the institution has to achieve a degree
of flexibility--of the agility and the ability to reinvent itself, to
destroy itself and re-create itself I'm not suggesting that I know how to
survive. I think I have a pretty good idea of how to die.
PT: Your ideas are remarkable in their compassion for
failure.
TP: Well, to not fail is to die. To pursue failure is not
necessarily to succeed. You see, that's the key to what I'm saying. If
you are not pursuing some damn dream and then reinventing yourself
regularly, assiduously, you're going to fail. Period.
PT. And you will be less interesting.
TP: Yes, and you will be less interesting. And when you look in the
mirror at the age of 60, you will be somewhat less ashamed of yourself if
you've gone for it, regardless of the outcome. Part of it, I admit, is
personal. The thought of going to the grave having been boring is much
more terrifying than the thought of going to the grave $ 10 million in
debt. There are worse things in life.
PT: You said to not fail is to die. That's going to seem to our
readers like a typo. Can you explain that?
TP: In the world of dull, boring management, the essence to me of
everything that one accomplishes in life, from the trivial to the grand,
is failure. You don't ride a bike the first time. You don't play a violin
the first time. The essence of experimental physics is to create
experiments at which you fail; then along the way you eventually achieve
some knowledge of something. It's hard to articulate because, for me,
it's so damned obvious that the only thing worth pursuing is
failure.
The most worthwhile pursuit is pushing yourself to the limit, and
the definition of that is failing, for god's sake. It's running faster
than you could possibly run and therefore dropping out of the race with a
phenomenal cramp that puts you out of action for six months. But pursuing
failure vigorously is to me the essence of individual success, career
success, corporate success.
Richard Lamb, the former governor of Colorado, said "No nation ever
survived the ravages of success." The problem with the IBMs of the world,
with people who win Nobel prizes and who write best-selling books, is
that there is such pressure to replicate what you did last time. And that
might be profitable for a while, but eventually the world is going to
catch up with you. People are going to come in from left field and nail
you. In the old days, maybe you could have a 60- or 70-year run; I'm not
sure you've got that luxury anymore. How long before somebody comes and
takes a serious whack at Wal-Mart?
PT: Are you really saying pursue failure or are you saying take a
chance, don't be afraid to fail?
TP: I am saying, as an analyst, as an observer, as a man from
Mars--pursue failure. Pursue risk until you screw up. If you believe
Warren Bennis' work, a shockingly high share of successful people have
been identified as having had significant failures. And it's not good
enough to fail, you have to do it with real panache! Public, embarrassing
failures. That makes sense to me, because in an environment that is
moving as fast as I think this one is, to not be pushing the limit is to
be falling back.
Most of us I think as kids believed that once you got out of high
school or college, one of the great joys of life was no more homework.
What I am essentially saying today is that the teamster, wine maker, and
receptionist had all better think about doing homework for the rest of
their lives. If you are not growing today, if you can't demonstrably say
at the end of the year I have learned some new stuff and tried some new
stuff, then you've fallen back. And there just isn't any room, it would
seem to me, in a developed-country economy, for people who are standing
still.
PT: Are you biased toward small?
TP: Well, toward non-huge. One of the problems with the American
language is that American has two words--small and big. Big is Exxon and
small is the person peddling warm chestnuts on Fifth Avenue. Somewhere
between one-person and 200,000-person organizations is a lot of stuff. So
one has to watch the language. I get upset when people say I am an
advocate of small business. Well, yes I am. I am an advocate of more
units rather than less units. But that doesn't make me a fan of the Small
Business Administration and how do we get a $7,000 loan into the hands of
every man, woman, and child in America.
PT: Aren't you really talking about a perception change? You are
trying to get people to look at things in a different way--the way we
perceive ourselves and the rules that we learn, including the ideas that
bigger is better, haste makes waste, look before you leap. Doesn't that
involve a cultural sea change?
TP: First of all, yes. Alvin Toffler recently said that this change
was so significant we'd have to reinvent civilization. I don't find that
excessive. My father, for instance, worked for the Baltimore Gas and
Electric Company for 44 years. That was normal. I'm saying that the man
or woman entering the work force [today] should expect to work for about
eight or nine different companies in the average career.
Tags:
ad nauseam,
agile organizations,
american businesses,
bureaucracy,
business,
cart before the horse,
eight months,
entrepreneur,
large corporations,
management,
mauro,
mea culpa,
middle management,
organizational structure,
paradoxes,
philosophy,
sports event,
Tom Paters,
tom peters,
two books,
visible management
