smile – slide from Tom Peters (Photo credit: k-ideas)
Tom Peters certainly has experience and wisdom. He said he learned from Henry Herzberg (HBR article "How Executives Spend Their Time")—you are your calendar. The calendar does not lie. The only thing we have is our time. How we spend our time is how we spend our lives.
Peters shared how several years ago he heard the owner of Hilton talk about the leadership lessons he had learned. And the main lesson was: Remember to tuck the shower curtain into the bathtub. There were several things about this image to remember.
- small things can make a big difference
- execution is critical
- When you don't pay attention to the little things, you have a big mess!
Peters believes that the average person cares about what s/he are doing. They want acknowledgement of their work. They want to know they exist. Not recognition, but acknowledgement. This reminded me of how I tell people to pretend that everyone has a sign around their neck that says:
"Treat me as if I am important."
How many times have you felt as if the sign said: "Treat me as if I am unimportant?"
Have you ever experienced this? How does it make you feel?
This happened to me recently and it did not feel good. But it reminded me of the sign metaphor so that I don't treat others like that. Everyone is important.
He closed with the statement that "most of us are not Steve Jobs–we are not one of a kind. Meaning that Jobs could get away with treating people however he wanted because he was special–a genius who people respected regardless of how they were often treated. But most of us just want to be acknowledged. We want to know that we exist.
