Tom Peters

I rarely get through his powerpoints, but I’m always energized by reading them and I’m very appreciative that they are available for free on the web.  Check his latest out here.

Whitney Tilson on School Reform

See slides from presentation tonight (10/5/09) by Whitney Tilson on school reform (venue was Howard, Rice law offices in SF).  Major takeaways for me:

• public schools in US have more money and worse results than any other country
• why?  poor teacher quality, antiquated systems
• Kipp is a black swan, proving that better is possible
• DFER was organized specifically as a Democratic organization in order to influence the Democratic party
• political organizing is least glamorous and most necessary for true reform

Speech to Community Indicators Consortium

I gave the speech below to the Community Indicators Consortium (CIC) today.  CIC is a terrific group committed to the neutral presentation of data for the benefit of community advancement.  For more information about CIC, see www.communityindicators.net.   I am a member of the CIC and if you have an interest in joining, please email me and I will put you in touch with someone in membership. 

The Decline Of News

View more presentations from tompaper.

National Geographic Feature on Redwoods

Webster Pacific has been working in the redwood industry for a number of years.

The Future of Social Networks

Presentation by Charlene Li of Forrester Research, from March 4, 2008

The Future Of Social Networks

View more presentations from Charlene Li.

Summer Camp and Business?

 I went back to my summer camp’s 75^th reunion in 1999 and found an unlikely model for business excellence.

For six summers I was a camper a YMCA Camp Widjiwagan in Ely, Minnesota. “Widji,” as it is referred to by all who know it, is not your average “Y” camp. You don’t go here for archery, riflery or arts and crafts. Widji is about wilderness travel, which has usually meant canoeing, be it in the Minnesota-Ontario “Boundary Waters” or on a chilly and desolate river in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Friends of mine who know Widji have ribbingly called it “Camp Sparta.” I call it my secret inspiration.

As a camper, when you arrive at Widji, after a five hour bus ride from the Twin Cities, you’re immediately joined by your “group,” four other campers and a counselor. No one has generally met the other members of their group before they arrive, so you’re usually feeling a bit uncomfortable, but you quickly feel glad that you’re part of the group. (I was told recently that other camps put people who know each other into teams, but Widji chooses the more anonymous approach, because they believe that prior friendships may inhibit the full team-building experience.) The team then begins two to three days of intensive training in “The Widji Way.” The business corollary to “The Widji Way” is “standard procedures.” There is a “Widji Way” for just about every aspect of wilderness travel and most of these Widji Ways have been memorialized in written documents. The Widji Way covers:

• Putting up and taking down a tent (always with drop cloth under the tent; campers always clean out the inside of the tent prior to taking down; no shoes are ever allowed inside a tent).
• Packing a pack (smooth items are always packed against your back for camper safety and comfort; a liner is always placed inside the pack; campers never yank on the leather straps to close the pack but instead pull with one hand at the junction of the strap and the pack and use the other hand to close the pack).
• Landing at a portage (a portage is a the stretch of trail between two lakes; it is also the verb for the heavy carrying of canoes, packs and gear through buggy, muddy, rocky and inhospitable terrain; there is a Widji Way for how to land and unload your canoe at a portage).
• What the bottom of a canoe can touch (air, water and bread dough).
• How to rest with a pack on your back during the portage (leaning over, rather than resting your pack on a rock while it is still on your back).
• Pushing off rocks with your paddle (with the butt end).
• Brushing your teeth (don’t spit it out your toothpaste into the lake; spit it onto land where it won’t cause extra algae to grow).
• Going to the bathroom on the trail (bury it or bring it back).

In my first couple years at Widji, I, like many others, rebelled from all these rules and procedures. In later years, I became an ardent supporter of The Widji Way because I understood the purpose. Businesses are no different. Most have standard procedures for how they do what they do. And many employees rebel from these “rules” because they don’t understand or don’t buy into the purpose behind these “rules.”

The Widji Way can be distilled to a few simple principles:

• Make good use of your resources. Widji has, it seems, forever been strapped for cash. Therefore, the camp takes good care of its assets. If you’re carrying a pack on a portage and want to rest, it’s easy to keep the pack on your back and plop the pack onto the nearest rock. The problem is that when the pack meets the rock, the pack can be easily ripped, costing the camp a quick $100. It takes a bit more work, but if you simply lean over and put your hands on your knees, your back gets a rest and the pack remains undamaged. Another example of resource care is canoes: Widji has used wood canvas canoes since the camp was founded in the late 1920’s. The canvas on these canoes will rip if they are run aground and, therefore, the only three things that can touch the bottom of a canoe are air, water and bread dough. When a Widji team gets to a portage, you will see each member of the group spring out of the canoe prior to the canoe bottom touching anything, all to protect their canoe. This not only saves money, it leads to a safe trip.
• Safety first. Widji is consumed with the safety of its campers.
  • On my trips, at the first hint of lightning, we would pull onto land, despite however badly we may have wanted to keep going.
  • In addition, we only shot rapids after careful scouting of our path. It was hard at times to watch other canoers, not from Widji, paddle up to a set of rapids and quickly shoot the rapids. It seemed like a lot more fun. But it only took one story of a group being swamped because they didn’t scout the rapids to understand Widji’s widsom.
  • No food or toothpaste was allowed in our tents lest a bear think that something tasty was inside.
• Leave it better than when you came. When a Widji team gets to a campsite, you will often see the group cleaning up the litter (other people’s litter!) and putting it into their packs to throw out when they get back. And if there’s wood scattered about the campsite, the group will use this wood first in their campfire.
• Sing! The Widji Way encourages taking joy in the moment. Songs are sung after every meal in camp. On the trail, singing breaks up the monotony of paddling across long lakes. For years, Widji has published a songbook of all the favorite camp songs. One of the highlights of my reunion trip was purchasing a copy of the songbook. I can now be spied on the highway, one hand on the wheel of my pickup, another with my songbook, singing hokey camp songs with a big grin on my face.
• Write it down. Widji has chronicled itself for years, from the details of The Widji Way to the names of its campers and each trip they took. Widji even has a log of every canoe and every trip it has taken. Widji cares deeply for its past and thinks hard about its future. Widji knows that when something is written down, it is more likely to be clearly followed and less likely to be forgotten.
• Contemplate. The Widji campfire is a touching and beautiful experience of song and sharing. It’s hard to describe, but being there with a group of people with whom you have shared the experience of wilderness travel, singing, lighting a candle, reading a verse from Sigurd Olsen, one feels alive and a part of something everlasting. I am Jewish by faith and, even though Widji is a Christian camp, I have always felt that the Widji experience knows not religious bounds.
• Love. It’s always been clear that the leaders of Widji love the outdoors and their camp. This deep care permeates and drives everything that Widji does. The leaders of Widji have every intention of seeing that their camp will last for another 75 years.

How many businesses have this kind of enthusiasm and love devoted to their operations?

To learn more about YMCA Camp Widjiwagan, visit www.widjiwagan.org.

Webster Pacific as CMO?

Webster Pacific is an analytical consulting firm, helping businesses advance their business strategy in a data-driven manner.  In addition, we provide interim CFO services to Bay Area businesses.  So why would we have spent the past six months helping a large company manage its marketing efforts?  The answer is that the CEO of this company recognized that a data-driven approach to marketing would optimize customer acquisition and retention opportunities.  As the Chief Marketing Officer of a $200 million company, Webster Pacific has been assisting the client with:

• Management of design and implementation of a digital marketing strategy including evaluation and selection of outside digital marketing firms
• Development of data-driven information systems that insure that the company onboards the maximum possible number of customers each season
• Development of strategies to integrate information systems used to market to (and build loyalty with) prospects, customers and even internal staff
• Implementation of a CRM system
• Hiring a Customer Insight manager, a Customer Service manager and our replacement, the Chief Marketing Officer

As a part of assisting the client company’s new media strategy, the Webster Pacific team summarized the recently acclaimed book, Groundswell, which explains strategies businesses can use to maximize their relationships with customers using new media.  Click here to see a Webster Pacific’s summary of Groundswell, which was written by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li of Forrester Research.

Another one of our favorite books over the past couple years is The Ultimate Question, by Fred Reicheld, which describes a very simple (but powerful) system for building long-term profitable growth with a customer research and feedback system based upon “the referral question.”  Click here to see Webster Pacific’s summary of The Ultimate Question.

 

If your company or a company you know might be interested in applying data-driven methodologies to marketing, please send an email to Tom Paper (tom@websterpacific.com) or call Tom at 415-733-9740.

The Harlem Children’s Zone

An incredible and noble effort to erase poverty in Harlem.  Webster Pacific has done some work in the educational space and so it was with great interest that my family paid a visit to The Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) on June 15, 2009.  Our tour was guided by Rasuli Lewis, who has been with HCZ since 1993 and went to college with HCZ’s CEO, Geoffrey Canada.  For those of you not familiar with HCZ, it is a series of programs intended to guide and support families raising children, from when families are expecting a child until the children go to college.  It’s mission is to end generational poverty.  Barack Obama has been a supporter of HCZ for a number of years.  See one of Barack’s speeches on HCZ from 2007 here.

My over-arching impression of HCZ is of incredible and noble effort, made possible by the steely determination of Canada, Rasuli and many others, as well as generosity of many private individuals, most notably Stanley Druckenmiller, a college classmate of both Canada and Rasuli.  I am convinced that HCZ has the right approach to solving generational poverty.  The challenges in the way of HCZ’s mission are the government, vested political interests and funding.

Other impressions:

• Engineering Approach.  HCZ is trying to solve problems of poverty at the earliest possible stage…before children are born.  This approach completely resonates with my experience improving business operations, which involve the theories of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, who helped revitalize the Japanese economy after the second world war.  (See “Meta-Quality Seminar” summary here.)  Deming would say that the most leverage in any system is at the beginning of that system.  He developed and used a memorable demonstration of this theory called “The Red Bead Experiment“.  Educating the parents of children not yet born is about as early in the system of education as one can conceive (no pun intended).
• Intelligent Marketing.  I asked Rasuli about Baby College and how they get families to come to a program in which they may have no interest.  I asked him, “How do you get someone to buy something they don’t think that they need?”  He said that when they first started Baby College, they put out fliers for their informational events with big words saying something like “Brain Research Proves Importance of Early Childhood Education.”  In small print at the bottom, they put “Free Diapers.”  Attendance was lousy.  Then they changed it around, putting “Free Diapers” at the top in big letters and leaving research at the bottom.  Attendance was terrific.  His point is that many of the people they are trying to attract are at the base of Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs, just trying to provide food and shelter for the present day.  HCZ tries to reach them at their level of need, but then upsell them on a larger mission.  My impression is that HCZ is being smart about their marketing efforts, along the lines of a great book about marketing ideas, called Made To Stick. 
• Data-driven & Technological.  Rasuli and all the people I met were thinking about and conversant in the unbiased data-driven measurement of their efforts.  I was impressed to learn that HCZ is using CRM (customer relationship management) software to keep track of all the families in Harlem.  Outstanding!  Many of our business clients are just starting to take on this sort of a systematic approach to tracking their customers.  HCZ understands that each family will engage with HCZ when they are ready.  A CRM system means a comprehensive, long-term view of ALL the possible customers.
• Most At Risk.  The most noble (and challenging!) part of the HCZ program is that they target those most at risk.  Rasuli segments the world of possible HCZ families into 1) those who understand and want HCZ’s services, 2) those who are indiffierent, 3) those who don’t want what HCZ has to offer, although, in HCZ’s opinion, would benefit from HCZ services.  HCZ is going after group 3, the families that don’t want their services and are most at risk.  I remember this concept from the Paul Tough book and it struck me again as very noble AND very challenging. 
• Costly.  Providing the HCZ services costs a significant amount of money.  I was told that the cost per student of providing their GEM’s preschool program was in the high teens, meaning roughly $17,000 to $19,000 per student per year.  This is a big number.  This funding comes from three sources:  private investment, Head Start and New York State’s Universal Pre-K program.  I should note that GEMS is ancredible program.  They have a teacher student ratio of 4 to 1 and their facilities are as nice as the facilities the preschool in San Francisco where I sent my kids.  However, I paid less than $12,000 per child (although that was for only about 8 hours where HCZ offers 10 hour days).  I’m not saying that HCZ is inefficient with their use of money.  I’m just saying that providing the services that HCZ offers takes a significant investment.  However, HCZ should be evaluated in light of the costs of NOT providing this program or one like it.  Both Canada and Barack Obama realize this and have specifically pointed to the societal costs as a result of poor education:  lack of productivity, crime and corrections, which far outweigh the additional costs of education.  A recent and important McKinsey study, commented on by Tom Friedman here, pointed out that the costs of NOT educating our children properly is between $310 and $525 billion in GDP per year.  Compare that with the roughly $60 billion spent each year on American public k-12 education (100 million public school students times $6,000 per student per year).  So, even if we doubled our budget on education, spending an additional $60 billion to provide for programs like HCZ nationwide, as well as to upgrade our existing public school educational system, the benefits could be at least five times our investment.   It is also worth noting that for k-12 education in New York, I believe the state funding is about $17,000 per student, so GEMs costs about the same and in that light might not be expensive.
• Replicable.  The success of HCZ could be replicated in other communities.  HCZ is open to and has already shared their systems with other social entrepreneurs in other communities.

My conclusion is that the Harlem Children’s Zone is a program worth getting behind.  While they are actively raising money, I think they also understand that money is not the only factor that will solve generational poverty.  Paul Tudor Jones, a successful investor and supporter of charter schools, recently spoke at a graduation ceremony about his efforts helping kids in New York and how, in his first foray, he threw money at the problem, but was unsuccessful.   In his second foray, he changed his strategy and tactics and ended up successful.  “That [experience] was the first real-time example for me of how intellectual capital will always trump financial capital.  In other words, I had the money to help these kids, but it was useless because I didn’t have the brains to help them. I had tried to succeed with sheer force of will and energy and financial resources.  I learned that this was not enough. What I needed were better defined goals, better metrics, and most importantly, more efficient technologies that would enable me to achieve those goals.”

I was going to conclude with a discussion of the challenges facing HCZ, but I realized that it is more important to point out the challenges facing America in its effort to educate its children and end generational poverty.  HCZ has taken up the challenge that America as a whole must accept.  HCZ is an example for what the rest of the country must get behind if we are to end generational poverty, educate our children and remain a vibrant and productive country.  The challenges facing America around education and poverty are, first, government.  While it is great that Barack has gotten behind HCZ and its mission, if the government tries to be the organization that sets up programs like HCZ in every community we are headed for failure.  We need entrepreneurs to solve this problem and they DO exist.  Second, vested political interests are a huge challenge to education in America.  Unions represent their members, not children.  Democrats represent Democrats, not children; Republicans represent Republicans, not children.  It continues to amazes me that states like California have not and are not paying for early childhood education.  We pay for educating kids in high school, when the die on a person is solidly cast, but we don’t want to pay for early childhood education, when we can have a profound positive impact on a child’s life?  How can we be so dense?  For a history, click here.  The third challenge to educating our children and ending generational poverty is funding.  How can that be?  America spends more than most countries on educating its children.  The problem is that America, like Paul Tudor Jones in his first effort, spend it on schools that are simply not working.  Throwing more money at bad school systems and bad ideas is wrong.  However, funding programs that get it right, like The Harlem Children’s Zone, will lead us toward the end of generational poverty, toward renewal and revitalization.

See Stephen Colbert’s interview of Geoffrey Canada here.

See Barack speaking about HCZ here.

See documents received during our visit to HCZ here.

Tom Peters

I love Tom Peters.  Check out this 2.5 minute video on passion.

http://vimeo.com/1087738

Digital Darwinism

Digital Darwinism

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