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Please select a category for action ideas:

Talent
Ambition
Performance
Experience
Brand
Execution
Architecture
Top Tips

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Talent
The talent is the organisation... Everybody works on ways to attract, develop, stimulate, engage and reward a wide array of talented people; fostering a community where a diverse group of people have the freedom to excel in what they do, in ways that are unique to them.

To get going…

Conduct a talent assessment exercise – with your team, create a comprehensive list of all the skills, experience and knowledge that your team possesses – not just work related – draw out all the talents people possess. Ask yourselves to what extent are you using the talent available? Ask yourselves how you can help each other to excel…
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Ambition
The shared ambition is what galvanises all other activity. If the ambition is truly unique and demonstrates how the organisation will make a dramatic difference through common values, people will sign up to be a part of the cause.

A soaring ambition, described expressively, will attract, energise and retain the talent needed to deliver.

To get going…

Make ‘our uniqueness’ an agenda item at your next team meeting. Together with your team, discuss what you think your business/team/department does that makes you unique. Draft a short statement that you all support that describes your distinctiveness - keep it rough. Get your team to talk the statement through with anyone and everyone. At the following team meeting share what you have learned from your many conversations.
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Performance
The output. The measurement of the progress towards the ambition, where talented people take pride in executing their personal accountability and continually add value through discipline, hard work and continuous learning.

Goals, targets and rewards focus talent on the performance parameters that will deliver.

To get going…

With a few like-minded people create a list of all the performance measurements you use. Analyse what type of behaviour the measurements reward. Ask yourselves if the rewarded behaviour really helps to achieve your ambition. If it does; do more of it. If it doesn’t; challenge your assumptions of having it as a measurement. Start a discussion on how you could measure the real value added of your business/department.
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Experience
Winners create ‘relational’ experiences with their customers/clients (as opposed to ‘transactional’). There is a true understanding and desire to seek and create partnerships with extraordinary customers/clients to enable everyone to achieve their ambitions.

Creating great client/customer experiences provides talent with personally and professionally rewarding challenges.

To get going…

Ask a group of clients/customers to join you for lunch – ask them to describe their experience as a client/customer. Ask ‘if they were king, what would they wish for as a customer/client?’ Really listen to the ideas – take them back to your team and work out how you could make it happen. Collect and relay stories of when it happens.
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Brand
The description of what you stand for. A brand, described in an engaging and emotional way, can retain existing clients/customers as well as reach out for new ones. Everyone in the organisation understands their role in bringing the ‘brand’ to life - ‘lovemarks’ are consistent and inherent throughout the whole of the organisation.

Brand values can attract the right talent and provide them with a framework for their input and efforts.

To get going…

What does your Brand really stand for? Try asking customers/clients to give you three words that describe your reputation. Ask the people in your organisation to give you three words to describe the organisation’s reputation. What do the two lists tell you about the Brand?
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Execution
Talented people focus on work that matters; work that will create outstanding value for the client/customer. Talented people proactively work together to constantly look for new and better ways of delivering their commitments in the pursuit of their ambition.

The execution element provides talent with the day to day platform on which to display and properly apply their skills and knowledge.

To get going…

Consider what would turn your internal or external customers/clients into raving fans? Create an extensive (and honest!) list of what your team delivers. Then create a column along side this labelled ‘could be’. For each item on your delivery list come-up with the best that item could be. Make each ‘could be’ as wild as possible; agree with your team how you’re going to work together to make the ‘could be’s’ happen.
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Architecture
The structure/framework that supports the ongoing relationships between all the elements that enable people to pursue the ambition in accordance with their shared values.

Systems and processes provide talent with value adding tools and create a positive and creative work culture.

To get going…

Conduct a review of your business architecture and identify which components are enabling talent to do a great job and those that are getting in the way. What can you do about this?
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Top Tips
After many years of helping our clients to apply Tom Peters’ lessons in practice, here are our top tips from Tom Peters Company for getting your ideas from today’s London session into action.

1. Do something right away. Go back to your office and tell someone what you heard. Go to lunch with someone different and tell them. Have your team meeting outdoors instead of in the usual place and tell them. Reframe your tasks into WOW! Projects that are exciting and energising. If you want WOW! outcomes, you need WOW! targets at the outset. Choose your language, written and spoken, very carefully. Be daring. Use hot words, words that stretch the imagination – your own and others’!

2. Work out precisely who you must recruit to the cause as co-conspirators, activists, and sponsors. You will need strong players in all three categories if you are going to get serious about executing on your daring ambition. Who do you need to do things, with you and for you? Who can give you advice and guidance? Who can be a source of energy or resources? Who can contribute those crazy ideas that will stretch your ambition even further? Set about winning converts, champions and allies in all key constituencies.

3. Chunk up your big ambitions into small, defined and manageable WOW! Projects – and start working on them NOW! Now that you’ve arrived at your list of projects, tell everyone who is important to you, at work and in your private life, about them, and do this right away. Public commitment will kick you into taking action in those difficult or awkward areas that desperately need addressing! Appoint someone you know and trust to be your “deadline dragon” to keep you on track and bone honest with yourself on progress.

For a more structured planning tool, using the Future Shape of the Winner, click here.

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