Thomas J. Peters (born November 7, 1942) is an American writer on business management practices, best known for In Search of Excellence (co-authored with Robert H. Waterman Jr).
Who, precisely, are your Dreamers? Are their Dreams in Technicolor? Do you allow their most Outrageous Dreams to be seen in public?
The common wisdom is that. . . managers have to learn to motivate people. Nonsense. Employees bring their own motivation.
Excellent firms don't believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change.
The best leaders are the best notetakers, best askers, and best learners.
Organizations exist to serve. Period. Leaders live to serve. Period.
It's not enough to be close to the customer. You've got to be glued to the customer.
Nearly 100% of innovation-from business to politics-is inspired not by "market analysis" but by people who are supremely pissed off by the way things are.
A passive approach to professional growth will leave you by the wayside.
Are you placing enough interesting, freakish, long shot, weirdo bets?
Hire attitude train skills.
Never, ever rest on your laurels. Today's laurels are tomorrow's compost.
If there is a single tragic flaw that mars our biggest enterprises, it is conservatism - the failure to fail, and fail big, in an era of unprecedented volatility and ambiguity.
If, as I anticipate, a wide array of personal, portable informationcommunication devices becomes increasingly important and widespread for information-intensive users, it will be a major challenge for libraries to adapt their content and services to such a diverse technological environment.
MP3 players and flash memory devices are good for data storage and playback of music and digital talking books, but they offer little or nothing in the way of visual presentation of information and communication.
Passion. The life of an entrepreneur is occasionally exhilarating, and almost always exhausting. Only unbridled passion for the concept is likely to see you through the 17-hour days (month after month) and the painful mistakes that are part and parcel of the start-up process.
Treat the customer as an appreciating asset.
Had Twitter been invented earlier, my books would have been shorter.
Effective visions are lived in details, not broad strokes.
Gandhi and Mandela and Churchill and JFK and Reagan and Thatcher and Sarkozy and Franklin and Washington set the tone to an incredible degree-their "personal style" was their "brand. " ("It" starts with personal style of the tip-top leadership team. Sorry to be politically insensitive, but who would give a hoot about Tibet if it weren't for the look and style of the Dalai Lama?) Boss at any level: You're either on the "it" boat-or not.
Forget all the conventional 'rules' but one. There is one golden rule: Stick to topics you deeply care about and don't keep your passion buttoned inside your vest. An audience's biggest turn-on is the speaker's obvious enthusiasm. If you are lukewarm about the issue, forget it!