An ode to Excellence, a #twog for Tom.

In the past couple days I engaged in a flurry of activity encouraging people to follow Tom Peters (@tom_peters) on Twitter to get him across the 100,000 barrier. 

Now why would I do such a thing?

There is more than one answer, so here you go:

1) If you are serious about success, Tom is an excellent resource. Funnily enough, I think the fact that such amazing content and interaction is essentially free throws people off. Don't value it by the price, value it by the utility.

2) As Cameron Morrissey (@ManagersDiary) coincidentally wrote in his recent blog entry #200, (Celebrate Milestones - http://dld.bz/c6cBm ) milestones matter. Sure, Tom is a remarkably accomplished and successful guy. Does that diminish his desire for recognition? I haven't asked, but I rather doubt it. If success alone was enough for most, there wouldn't be so many multi-gazillionaires still working and so many top athletes stretching their careers. 

Let's sound the trumpets as he crosses the line! Three cheers. You'd want the same.

3) I also did it because I like Tom and I'm grateful to be acquainted with him. He gives a tremendous amount of himself on his Twitter account. Moreover, he is the kind of person that everyone should hope is advising them or their employer. He cares about people and it radiates through virtually everything he talks about. In a world of self-aggrandizing dolts, Tom shines through as a genuinely nice fellow who happens to be very knowledgeable about leadership. 

4) The final reason, which is something obvious: I did it because I felt like it. If it makes him smile, then my mission is accomplished. 

Thank you Tom.  For sharing your thoughts and insights on a regular basis on Twitter. For sidestepping the trolls, and steadfastly holding down your end of every argument. You could have the campfire all to yourself, but you open it up frequently for anyone to pop by for and enjoy some heady conversation. 

Congratulations on cresting the 100,000 follower mark. There couldn't be a more deserving person.

A time to #twog. Twog - n. a short blog entry of roughly 140 words.

Why #twog?

Everyone is super busy. You stopped by, and thanks for that. But you need to go soon.

In thinking about my own time constraints, I wished people would make a clear concise point, and wrap it up. So give me a #twog.

If you have a more technical or robust topic, your #twog can migrate a reader from tweet to full blown blog.

The #twog provides the extra information needed for the reader to decide whether to proceed. It's their time. Respect it.

You have, on the honor system, 140 words to make your case. Use them wisely.

Gotta go. See ya!

PS – Try some #twogging and see if it works for you.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

   A great quote from Mark Twain. I love putting it on Twitter. It always gets positive feedback. But that is actually rather ironic. If so many people love that quote, then why are such gargantuan sums spend on schooling?

   In a similar sense, parent after parent brags about how their child does in school. As I parent, I too feel some of the glow from a "good grade". Some is a simple matter of wanting to let my kids know that I appreciate the effort they make. But I question how important the grade is, what meaning it actually holds. Moreover, I wonder how much more meaningless it becomes when put into a global schematic.

   As someone who is "successful" I look back at my own schooling and see how incredibly unprepared my schools and teachers were for me. I did well in school at times, but was pretty much always a discipline problem. Mostly because I refused to accept some lessons as true. I wasn't content to just digest and regurgitate the information they fed to me. I wanted some answers. They didn't like that, they didn't like that at all.

   A dramatic example occurred in the seventh grade. Having been asked to solve an algebra problem I went up to the chalkboard and began scrawling out my answer. "No, no, no" my teacher screamed. Bewildered I looked over to her. "You have to show ALL YOUR WORK." she continued. Right about this time my blood headed to an immediate boil. I stormed over to my desk and grabbed my things. I then walked back to the front of the class and threw my books onto her desk. "If your way is so perfect then do it yourself" I shouted. I then proceeded to walk out of the class, and out the front door of the school, and continued walking until I was home roughly four miles away.

   A rash decision? Maybe, but I don't regret it. She was wrong to publicly humiliate me for not following "her" method to precision. It was also pretty obvious from the way I wrote the equation that I had used logical thinking to arrive at the answer. Her goal wasn't that I simply know the math. Her goal included my submission to her methodology. As you may have noticed, submission isn't my strong suit.

   The problem, from my vantage point, is the teacher's desire to make me conform to her methodology. She valued compliance over competence. It doesn't matter why. Schooling should create thinkers, not fleshy calculators. The desire for compliance makes children into pliable robots who indirectly learn to keep their head down, and put out what is asked. No more, no less.

   "Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel." - Socrates

   Socrates knew something about educating people. If we spark a student's passion, we unleash a powerful force upon the world. Imagine a world of people taught to think rather than simply remember. We need people who push boundaries rather than retreat inside them. 

   How different might my education have been if I had actually been encouraged to think differently. What would my perspective be if it had been molded through an educational model of investigation rather than recitation and repetition.

   As parents, students, or both, we need to demand that school provide a true education. School must provide the spark, the catalyst, that will drive students to excellence. Not excellence as measured by a standardized test, but excellence that is demonstrated in ideas and actions. 

   As much as I love the Mark Twain quote, I'd be happy to make it irrelevant.

Outrunning the Monster...

  My parents were sticklers for punctuality. So as a kid, I concocted a motivational game to get myself home on time. I would imagine a huge, ugly monster chasing me through the streets of Akron, Ohio. I'll never forget that adrenalin-propelled rush of nearly flying over the pavement, feeling the monster's hot, rancid breath (I think it may actually have been the tire factories) while sprinting just ahead of his moldy grasp.

   Over the years, my monster has provided the motivation I've needed not only to succeed, but to thrive in the business world. He has served me well.

   His dogged pursuit is responsible for both my vocation and my avocation. The hairy beast chased me through college and graduate school, and finally into entrepreneurship. And I'm still running, but now for fitness; and not in Akron, but St. Petersburg, Florida.

   When I decided to start my own private-investigation firm in 1996, the monster breathed the specter of poverty. My new wife and I were living in a small apartment, whose rent, like everything else in our lives at the time, was paid by credit card. The monster helped me chase after business just to make sure we could eat and keep gas in the car and a roof over our heads.

   He also spewed the foul odor of self-doubt. I often lay awake at night wondering how a guy like me could possibly presume to run a business, especially against older, wiser (I thought!), and more experienced competition.

   But as I ran faster to escape the monster's clutches (he now sported a cheap, private-eye trench coat), I found myself learning a lot about how business operates. One particularly revealing lesson was that my "competition" was really only a little more gifted than my monster.

  For the most part, private investigators were what they always had been - retired police officers, special investigative unit (SIU) guys, or insurance adjustors. They often worked alone, used manual processes, and for sales collateral brandished their business cards.

   So while they clung to their Sam Spade model (and, for the most part, still do), I decided to innovate. While they snoozed between cases (feet up on the desk, of course), I learned about my marketplace - the claims and risk professionals who were purchasing investigative services. With the monster ever in the wings, I talked to people, read the trade journals, and found out what they really needed from an investigator.

   Then I decided that when fighting monsters, there is strength in numbers. So I took on partners, then employees. Every year, university criminal-justice programs were turning out legions of bright, energetic graduates, hungry for their first job and looking to learn the ways of surveillance. Why not hire them, pay them a decent salary, and teach them the ropes?

   And in order to keep my new employees working, why not find innovative ways of generating more business - by using what I had learned about our market, exhibiting at trade shows, producing sales literature that worked, by advertising, and by constantly generating new ideas for promoting the business? And why not self-publish a helpful booklet for clients about how surveillance works?

  We also made a commitment to using the hottest technology to run the business. (The monster was using none.) We outfitted our field investigators with the latest in video and wireless technology, trained them in its most efficient use, and sent them forth to generate revenue.

   But the real coup d'etat was the Internet. Our business is surveillance, which generally means video tapes accompanied by written reports. Our clients are claims and risk-management professionals, who spend entirely too much of their time on the telephone with claimants, physicians, attorneys and others.

   What better way to make surveillance information available to our harried and phone-weary clientele than to offer it on our secure Web site for them to peruse at their leisure - not only written reports but video snapshots and actual streaming video of the surveillance as well? Why rattle them with even more phone calls when e-mail and our Web site can provide them exactly what they need in a concise form, exactly when they need it? Why force them to store videotape cassettes when we can embed the video into the on-line record?

  Since we implemented the technology and juiced up the marketing, the monster has been quieter. He's not gone; in fact, I still hear his grunts when I look at our Web site and see how much remains to be done.

   And poverty is no longer the issue. The business, which now has grown to 85 employees, generated $4.1 million in revenues last year.

   But of course all those great investigators need to be paid, the office rent is due every month, and the technology doesn't come free.

   Where are my shoes? I can smell that ogre's breath right now.

(This was written by Robert DeRosa and myself in 2000.)