Tom Peters talks about effort in this video:

Highlights:

If I ever finish a speech and I can still stand up, then it was a lousy speech.

If you don’t fall over [after your performance – whatever it is], then you weren’t going hard enough.

Kathy Sierra nails it:

According to Google’s corporate information page, the beta label came off the company’s website on this day eight years ago.

Some of you may not be aware that Google did not come to be the search power it is today via some grand strategic plan.

Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were not the first to enter web search, and their site has never been the best in terms of quality of results. It soared in popularity during its early years because it was easy to use. Ironically, its simple interface is rumored to be more the product of the founders’ lack of programming ability than intelligent design.

While Google has certainly made it easier for non-techies to sort through billions of web pages, their biggest impact has arguably been in revolutionizing advertising. Their premise: Ads are most effective when viewed only by people who are interested in what’s for sale, based on what they are searching for or reading about on the Internet.

Initially, Google’s ads were sold at fixed prices. Larry and Sergey were hesitant to adopt an auction-based model out of concern for users. In early 2002, an employee named Salar Kamangar convinced CEO Eric Schmidt and the founders to switch to an auction-based system like the one used at Goto.com, where advertisers paid only if their ad is clicked on, and the highest bidding advertiser was listed first. The New York times wrote about this last October in Google Wants to Dominate Madison Avenue, Too:

Mr. Kamangar, though, had an important improvement on the model. Rather than giving priority to the advertisers that bid the most per click, as Goto did, he realized that it was better to save the front of the line for ads that brought in the most money - a combination of the bid and the number of clicks on the ad. This was not only more profitable, but it also linked readers to ads that were more relevant to them. He also figured out that the system should use what is called a Vickrey auction - that is, to charge the winner only one cent more than the second-highest bidder. That gives advertisers an incentive to bid high, knowing that they will not be penalized if they are far higher than the rest of the market.

The rest, as they say, is history. And history might be what this company will change — in a big way — over the coming years.

Update: Google’s Dennis Hwang blogs about the birthday here.

Robert Scoble is shaking a finger at business leaders again in Printing For Less in the middle of nowhere:

[M]ost businesses don’t give tours and, even if they do, you don’t get an idea of what makes that business special.

I’ve lost count of how many salespeople have told me over the years that a facility tour was key to them sealing the deal with a big customer. Same thing with recruiters courting prospective new hires. Problem is, everyone is busy these days, and plane tickets cost money, so it can be tough to convince folks from distant lands to pay you a visit.

Enter the Virtual Business Tour. Scoble conducted one at Printing For Less (PFL) during a vacation last month in Montana.

Granted, neither Scoble’s interviewing technique nor the video quality in the PFL tour (about 29-1/2 minutes long) are up to par with what your local TV news station can produce, but that’s not the point. You get a look at their new facility, find out how the organization is structured, meet some of their people, learn what customers can do to make their print jobs go smoothly, and hear about CEO Andrew Field’s open book management approach to running the business.

It’s an authentic, informal, [mostly] unscripted tour. I personally felt like I was really there while watching it, and I was actually able to see the company’s capabilities. Mission accomplished for PFL.

Update: I’m not the only one mesmerized by the power of video. Jacob Bowser comments on The ScobleShow episode Photowalking with Thomas Hawk:

I don’t know if it’s the way Scoble shoots it, or what, but once again it felt like you were right there, part of the conversation.

Prefab home design/build firm Hive Modular and landscape design/build firm rosenlof/lucas partner on a project. They make the following 4-1/2 minute video about it, and use the video as the hook for an invitation to a party (likely for prospective customers):

Seth Godin gets wind of the video, and blogs about it (bold text is mine):

For the 100 people who will get the link by email, it’s not about competing with Black Dahlia. It’s about being more vivid than a postcard or a letter. And now there’s room for a billion more just like it.

Exactly.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Today, it’s not difficult to find a camcorder with an exposure rate of 30 frames per second. At that rate, a 34-second video is literally worth a thousand pictures — with sound. And thanks to sites like Google Video, YouTube, and Revver, the cost of video distribution is zero (at least for now).

In Zen Golf, PGA Tour instructor Dr. Joseph Parent writes about mastering golf’s mental game. The very first concept he addresses in the book is beginner’s mind:

Beginner’s mind is a mind that is open, eager to learn, an empty cup. If your mind is open, empty of preconceptions, it is always inquisitive, receptive to whatever arises, and ready to engage.

[N]o matter how good the instruction is, it is only as useful as the student’s interest and effort in learning.

Dr. Parent notes that Buddhist teachings offer an excellent analogy for the learning process:

Four types of cups symbolize four kinds of students. Instruction is symbolized by water being poured.
The first cup is upside down. This represents a student who is supposedly there to learn, but pays no attention. You may have experienced something similar while reading a book: Your eyes move across the words all the way down the page, but when you get to the bottom, you realize you were daydreaming and have no idea what you read. That’s what happens when a cup is turned upside down. No matter how much is poured, nothing gets in.
The second cup is right side up, but has a hole in the bottom. We hear what’s being taught, but we forget it all too soon. We don’t chew on it and digest it and take it to heart…This is the classic case of “in one ear and out the other.”
The third cup is right side up and doesn’t have a hole in it, but the inside is covered with dirt. When the clear water of instruction is poured in, the dirt makes it cloudy. This symbolizes the way we can distort what we hear, interpreting and editing it to fit into our preconceived ideas or opinions. Nothing new is actually learned. When we take a lesson, if the instruction matches how we already see things, it is taken as confirmation. Anything new that doesn’t match our opinion is resisted, ignored, or disregarded.
The fourth cup represents the ideal way to be a student. It is upright, receiving what is taught. It has no holes, retaining what is taught. It is clean, open to learning something new.

NPS = Net Promoter Score

Ever heard of it? GE CEO Immelt says his entire company will be using it. The metric is apparently a key part of his strategy to drive growth there.

Here’s NPS in a nutshell:
Promoters are the assets that drive your company’s growth. Detractors are the liabilities that stifle growth.
Ask customers to score your company, using a 0-to-10 scale, on this question:
“How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?”
Label those who rate your firm with a score of 9 or 10 as promoters.
Label those who give your company a score from 0 to 6 as detractors.
NPS = [percentage of promoters] - [percentage of detractors], or assets minus liabilities.

Business Week just published NPS: The Next Six Sigma? Some highlights:

Loyalty leaders such as Southwest Airlines and American Express register NPSs around 50%…[but] the average U.S. company sputters along with an NPS of only 5% to 10%, meaning that promoters barely outnumber detractors.

Like any good metric, NPS presents challenges. Companies must spend a significant amount of resources gathering and reporting reliable data. They must track variations in NPS, and they must understand how and why customers react as they do to their products and services.

Like Six Sigma, NPS is more than a metric—it’s a set of disciplines for using that metric to understand customers and drive strategy and operations.

I wouldn’t be surprised if, like Six Sigma before it, NPS create certification levels which borrow from the martial arts. Maybe GE employees are already clamoring for their NPS Black Belt.

Steve Shu points to this article, which reports on a recent study titled “Academic Dishonesty in Graduate Business Programs: The Prevalence, Causes, and Proposed Actions”. The study found that 56% of graduate business students admitted to cheating in the last year.

David Maister saw the article while hearing a story about cheating in the professional services sector:

[T]he “20-something” daughter of some good friends was telling us about her new job as a personal assistant in the world of public relations. She pointed out, with great discomfort, that it was not unusual for her boss to say “I worked on the XYZ account for 4 hours but bill them for 20.” There’s even a word for this form of lying in PR firms, accounting firms, consulting firms and law firms: “value billing.”

This may be why I hold high respect for occupations which require part- or full-time performance on some kind of public stage. In professional golf, a foot wedge would never fly. A line forgotten by an actress in theater can produce awkward silence [unless she reverts to creative improvisation]. An executive’s speech delivered without passion fails to inspire the corporate troops.

Global business is a highly competitive game these days, so the pressure to perform at the individual level has increased. Most of us toil not on a public stage, but in relative isolation much of the time. Too many respond to the increasing pressure by cutting corners when the world isn’t watching.

Like Maister, I can’t say that I’ve never padded a handful of hours. Truth be told, most of us have one or two “young and stupid” moments in our past.

Here’s a recommendation for about half of today’s recently minted MBAs — and anyone else who wants to sleep better at night: In every situation, conduct yourself as if your five-year-old child were watching you.

Marketing headhunter Harry Joiner confesses that he’s hired to fix problems that are totally preventable.

One of his latest candidates, a talented Internet marketer, tells her boss that others in her field are earning up to 50% more than her current paycheck. Her boss replies, “[I]f you can get that kind of money elsewhere, go for it…Take [your current pay level] or leave it.”

Pogo said it best: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Harry tells us how such stories usually play out:

The best way to keep your recruiting costs low is to not lose good people. [Her] defection is totally unnecessary. She’s trained. She has solid intercompany relationships. She’s well-respected by her peers outside of the company. And her desk is very cash-flow positive. Replacing Susan will be a costly hassle if the company does it without my help. And if the company does it with my help, I’ll charge them 20-25% of the replacement’s base salary…The total cost to clean up this mess will be $60-70K.

Trust me, if I get an unsolicited call from one of your A-players, I will remind them that you don’t appreciate them. That’s my job: I’m a management recruiter, and I’m pretty good at it.

Joiner even provides the simple fix which, if adopted globally, would dent his own paycheck:

[I]f you want your company to go from Good to Great, for each employee under review ask “Would I hire this person again?” If the answer is yes, then keep in mind the total cost to replace that person and assign their bonus accordingly.

According to this news story, Sir Richard Branson (a.k.a RB) just pledged $3 billion towards renewable energy initiatives. The money will reportedly come from all profits derived from the Virgin Group’s airline and rail businesses over the next 10 years. RB explains:

What we’ve decided to do is to put any dividends, any profits, any shares, sales from those businesses, into tackling environmental issues.

Hopefully this contribution will help our children experience our beautiful world and encourage others to also do what they can.

How cool is that?

Granted, his move surely isn’t purely philanthropical. I suspect that RB sees future business opportunities in the renewable energy space. But actions like this only solidify his standing as my favorite entrepreneur in the world.

One should note that Branson’s announcement comes one day after the Bush administration said it was committing $3 billion to climate technology research & development. Check that math: One multinational corporation commiting as much money as the world’s economic superpower to [hopefully] reduce global warming. Isn’t that interesting?