A little bit of crazy can go a long way

Tom Peters. Picture / Greg Bowker

There's a temptation to redesign Tom Peters.

Black slacks topped off with a grandfatherly red cardigan isn't exactly the look you'd expect for such a renowned US business management "guru" who delivers his spiel for five figures.

But Peters, in Auckland this week to help Kiwis sharpen their design capability, isn't conventional.

Among the 400 hand-picked business and design leaders at Better by Design, he stood out like a bright red exclamation mark.

And the author and professional loudmouth - to whom thousands of entrepreneurs turn for the secret to success - knows that's why he was invited here to speak.

"They knew what I was going to say and at what volume I was going to say it. I was brought here to vivify the start of this conference and to make sure it was loud and noisy."

And, in his audience, he was delighted to finally find people who were affirming what he has been spouting, mostly to himself, for the past 20 years.

This was a willingness to embrace new business thinking and to put design on the front-burner so local products could better compete in global markets.

To use a term from his latest book, Re-imagine, he "did theatre" with New Zealand this week.

"Obviously, this is the epitome in terms of me and my message of preaching to the choir. The people who are here are here because we share the same biases and same value sets."

But he made one thing clear.

If he's invited back in the years to come, he won't accept unless there are more women speakers.

"Why are 80 per cent of the people in this room men?" he asked the gathering.

"Chief design executives should know, women make the majority of purchasing decisions in most consumer categories.

"The women's market is opportunity number one. This is enormously important to this conference."

Is this what Peters flew 19,300 kilometres to tell New Zealand businesses?

"My whole shtick is - whether you are New Zealand or the US - you're not going to compete by doing what's been done for the last 100 years, so you've got to find a new act, which is what Better by Design is all about."

His vibrant presentations were intended to help guide us in the search for "gasp-worthy" design ability or perhaps to show us that we already have what it takes.

"I am 100 per cent - and I almost never say that - behind the goals of this conference," Peters said.

"It makes sense to me that [change] will come from the New Zealands of the world.

"Maybe it's just because you're a long way from the rest of us, but New Zealand's a mysterious place - it's in the antipodes, for God's sake.

"I think it's always had a cool cachet, obviously it vaulted up the perception ladder quite a bit with the Kiwi boats in the last decade or so."

One thing he objects to about this country is our aspiration to get back into the top quartile of growth among the OECD nations.

"That's fine but who really gives a damn about the OECD nations? It's not really much of a yardstick anymore.

"Sure, better to be in the top quartile than the bottom quartile, but the point is if we measure ourselves against what's going on in France or Germany, whether its Americans or New Zealanders, it's the wrong yardstick because the competition has changed.

"I'm not doing a Rumsfeld, I'm not doing an old Europe/new Europe, but what I am saying is we have got to change our benchmark, and our [new] benchmark is what's going on in India, China and Southeast Asia.

"You can't beat Wal Mart on price or China on cost - that's all you need to know about business strategy."

Attention-grabbing, brightly coloured, text-heavy slides guide Peters' presentations.

There were no charts, graphs or tiny numbers, just simple instructions - Peters' style - exalting a new way of thinking: If it ain't broke ... break it. Hire crazies. Read odd stuff. Avoid moderation. Ask dumb questions. Lead, follow ... or get out of the way.

The energetic stage performer paced the platform as he spoke, stopping, arms folded, to peer down at the front row emphasising key points.

"I love freaks. Why? Because when anything interesting happens it's always a freak who does it. Freaks are fun. Freaks are never boring. We need freaks, especially in freaky times."

The term "guru" is not his own and, if it weren't for the economic value, it's one he'd be more comfortable dismissing as nonsense.

He prefers the title "provocateur" which a UK colleague once printed on his business cards.

He showed his skills as such with his comments on education, asking one favour of his audience: "Don't send your kids to business school."

To a Government Minister in the audience, he shot: "Your education system is working brilliantly assuming the goal is to stop creativity."

There was no such thing as a national design advantage unless the school system was destroyed and re-imagined.

The fact that leading business schools in the US lacked core courses in design, creativity or innovation was "insane".

Peters later said: "I understand some of my remarks about education hit home because of the movement towards more standardised testing in New Zealand, which I think is absolutely wrong in a creative age."

Speaking at 75 seminars a year has seen him stay at almost every top hotel in the world, but this week he discovered "nirvana" here in Auckland at luxury hotel Mollies in Herne Bay.

Although he has been to New Zealand four or five times before on business, he considers this visit to be his first because it's the first time he's been accompanied by wife Susan and ventured outside his hotel room.

After the conference, they planned a few days of wandering around the lower North Island before flying home to Vermont today.

So what did we grasp from him before he left?

"The creative age is a wide-open game and one in which design is the secret soul of the new enterprise."

Quoting Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, Peters says the future will belong not to the nations with size but to those who have creative excellence.

Design as a core business competency was a cultural imperative. "My point is this: [design] is not just a nice idea,"he said.

"We may be able to hire human beings who are trained as designers, or hire the design audit, but at the end of the day, design is about surprises."

TOM PETERS

* Age: 63.

* Born: Baltimore, US.

* Education: Civil engineering graduate of Cornell.

* Business graduate of Stanford, MBA and Ph.D.

Career path

* 1966-1970 US Navy.

* 1973 Senior White House drug-abuse adviser.

* 1974-1981 McKinsey & Co, partner 1979.

* 1981- Management and business consultant, the Tom Peters Company.

Books

* 1982, In Search of Excellence co-authored with Bob Waterman.

* 1992, Liberation Management.

* 1993 The Tom Peters Seminar: Crazy Times Call for Crazy Organisations.

* 1992 The Pursuit of WOW!

* 1997 You Can't Shrink Your Way to Greatness.

* 2003 Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age.