China Daily HK Edition - Innovation mantra from top management guru

Global businesses must pursue innovation, be willing to take risks and engage customers in order to prosper, renowned management strategist Tom Peters said on the opening day of the World Business Forum (WBF) in Hong Kong.

One of the most influential management thinkers in the global business scene for the last 30 years, Peters rose to partner at McKinsey & Co in San Francisco where he worked from 1974 to 1981, when he left to become an independent consultant. Since 1982, he has operated out of the Tom Peters Company, providing management consultancy services.

Tagged variously as the “Red Bull of management thinkers” or the “uber-guru”, Peters is also a best-selling author. He co-authored In Search of Excellence, a seminal work widely considered to be the best book on management. His latest work, The little BIG Things, is a guide to achieving business excellence.

The foremost strategy business firms should cultivate is to never be afraid of making mistakes. On the contrary, whoever makes the most mistakes wins and this is the paradox of innovation, Peters told the audience at the WBF seminar, held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.

“What really matters is that companies that do not continue to experiment — companies that do not embrace failure — eventually get into a desperate position,” Peters said. “Success can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection. In business, you reward people for taking risks because they are willing to try new things.”

Besides risk-taking, businesses should focus on raising customer satisfaction, Peters advised, pointing out that there is a slight disjunction between how customers and companies perceive the notion of customer satisfaction.

Peters quoted a survey by global management consultants Bain & Co, which found only 8 percent of customers described their service experience as “superior”, while as many as 80 percent of companies used the same term to describe the service experience they provided.

The business strategy to aim for is to turn “Things Gone Wrong” into “Things Gone Right”.

“Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones that strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart,” Peters noted.

Besides raising customer satisfaction, enhancing customer engagement should be a core business strategy, especially in the age of social media.

“Customer engagement is moving from relatively isolated market transactions to deeply connected and sustained social relationships,” Peters said. “The Internet and technology have made customers more demanding, and they expect information, answers, products, responses and resolutions sooner than ‘as soon as possible’.”

“What used to be word of mouth is now word of mouse. (The Internet) is either creating brand ambassadors or brand terrorists doing brand assassination. In the age of social media, it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it,” Peters warned.

The fourth strategy for business success involves being careful of every relationship-partnership decision — whether related to an employee, vendor or customer — because this is a strategic decision that will affect whether the companies will innovate or not.

Companies must create more innovative designs because they cannot rely only on low prices to drive business growth, Peters concluded.

Source: http://www.chinadailyasia.com/hknews/2015-06/03/content_15271812.html