Tom Peters - The Professional Service Firm 50 (Reinventing Work): Fifty Ways to Transform Your Department into a Professional Service Firm Whose Trademarks are Passion and Innovation!

CONTENTS

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DEDICATIONS

Marvin Bower, grand panjandrum of McKinsey & Co. (Mr. PSF!)

David Ogilvy, 1911-1999, guru and founder of Ogilvy & Mather

David Kelley, IDEO Design & Product Development, the only company (other than my own) Id ever consider working for

50 LISTS: CREDO

CUBICLE SLAVES... HACK OFF YOUR TIES... FLIP OFF YOUR HEELS...

THE WORK CAN BE COOL!

THE WORK CAN BE BEAUTIFUL!

THE WORK CAN BE FUN!

THE WORK CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

Y-O-U CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

BASH YOUR CUBICLE WALLS!

RIP UP YOUR DILBERT CARTOONS!

THE WHITE COLLAR REVOLUTION IS ON!

90 PERCENT OF OUR JOBS ARE IN JEOPARDY!

TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR LIFE!

SUBVERT THE HIERARCHY!

MAKE EVERY PROJECT A WOW!

BE DISTINCT... OR EXTINCT!

ITS A NEW MILLENNIUM: IF NOT NOW... W-H-E-N?

50 LISTS: SERIES INTRODUCTION

We arent knocking Dilbert. Who would dare? But we do believe that work can be cool. THAT THE WORK MATTERS.

Tom Peters

Work yours and mine as we know it today will be reinvented in the next ten years. Its as simple as that. And as profound. Heres why...

The tough old union militant remembers. In 1970 (not exactly an eon ago) it took 108 guys some five days to unload a ship full of timber. And now? Container daze: eight guys... one day.

It happened on the farm when the thresher came along. It happened in the distribution center when the forklift arrived. And it happened dockside.

But, hey, its the new millennium. Ninety-plus percent of us even in so-called manufacturing companies work at white collar jobs. Fact: We havent touched or really even bothered with white collar productivity. Never. Until now...

Its a brand-new ballgame. THE WHITE COLLAR REVOLUTION IS ON! The accounting shop is coming under the same productivity searchlight that those docks did. And we think we have an inkling of what the new rules will be.

The revolution: Information systems. Information technology. Enterprise Resource Planning systems. Intranets. Knowledge-capital-management schemes. Enterprise Customer Management. The Web. Globalization. Global deregulation. Etc. Etc. All fueling a no hype once every 100, 200, 500(?) years revolution.

Which brings us to this new series of books which aims at nothing less than a total reinvention of work (how we think about it, undertake it, bring ourselves to it). The work-reinvention revolution turns out to be a matchless opportunity for liberation in our organizations and in our lives.

This book is part of the first release in a series of what we call 50Lists. Each book describes a different aspect of work in the New Economy. Each book is built on 50 essential ideas.

The Editors

INTRODUCTION: THE INEXORABLE PSF LOGIC

The White Collar Revolution will envelop 90+ percent of us. And quickly. The commonplace, if traumatic, changes that came to the factory, the distribution center, and the London docks are now racing toward the relatively unscathed world of purchasing, finance, HR, IT, etc.

Of course, we had re-engineering and downsizing in the nineties. But truth is, work-in-finance today looks about the way it did decades ago. We pass papers electronically, to be sure but the topics are about the same. And the processing delays are maddening as ever. As are the petty tyrants who oversee the processes. (Witness Dilberts monumental popularity; the comic strip depicts my dads day in the Credit and Collections Dept. at the Baltimore Gas & Electric Company, circa 1955, as accurately as it captures white collar world at the millenniums turn.)

But I repeat all that is about to change. So-called Enterprise Resource Planning systems from SAP, PeopleSoft, Baan, et al. will hit high gear within the next decade. Clumsy knowledge management and knowledge-sharing systems will gather a full head of steam... or, should I say, a light-speed flow of bits.

Those of us in jeopardy 90+ percent, dont forget! must invent a new game. A hot game that transforms accounting from the butt of a million jokes about useless overhead, purposeful obfuscators, and petty bureaucrats to the... ta da... scintillating center of value added through knowledge capital accumulation.

Sound too grand for you? Fine.

But... then...

whats the (your) alternative?

AN ANSWER/T-H-E ANSWER?

I contend there is an alternative, an answer even. And that is and long has been right under our collective noses. To wit: the real Professional Service Firm, or PSF. la McKinsey & Co., Chiat/Day, Arthur Andersen. And Andersen Consulting. IDEO. And EDS. Pricewaterhouse-Coopers. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati. Etc.

These firms can be tiny... or huge. (EDS employs well over 100,000 people.) But regardless of size, they perform pure intellectually based services, own damn little in the way of hard assets, and sometimes deposit billions of $$$$ on the bottom line. They do Good Work. Valuable Work. And, often, Important Work.

Moreover, Life in a PSF is about as far a cry from DilbertDrones in DrearyVille (a.k.a. Departments) as one can imagine.

So why have we left these firms out in the cold for so long? Why havent we studied them? (We havent. Period.) I think there is an answer. In short: We didnt take them seriously! When I joined McKinsey & Co. in 1974, the consultants... and lawyers... and accountants and ad agency denizens were considered the bloodsuckers, the parasites living off the sweat of real mens USW, UMW, and UAW members brows.

And then a funny thing happened.

We woke up one morning and discovered...

wed won!

The economy had taken a 180-degree turn. Bill Gates was the richest man in the world... and the soft guys, the service guys, ruled. From Hollywood to Silicon Valley... to a revived (branding ber Alles!) Madison Avenue.

And so we started jawing about virtual organizations and knowledge capital accumulation. Exotic, new stuff. And we imagined that we had to invent a brand-new wheel.

Not so!

Ill be the first to acknowledge that there are crappy professional service firms... just as there are incompetent retailers and second basemen who bat .200. But the pick of the litter just as with retailing have a lot to teach us. Teach us about, say, scintillating projects that add value. I.e.: Work that Matters!

THE MODEL

Our model is simple. And it will be expanded upon in this book and others in this 50List series. To wit:

New Work: Core Model