The Best Wisdom of Tom Peters

On October 25, 2016 By thesuccessmanual Topic: Remarkable, Quotes, Mba

This guide belongs to 100 Ways To Be Being Remarkable Series, a special project that brings you business and self-development advice from The Success Manual.

Tom Peters is considered by many as one of world's most influential management guru. He is most famous for having co-authored In Search of Excellence, a seminal book on business management.The book advises comoanies to solve business problems with as little business process overhead as possible, and empowering decision-makers at multiple levels of a company.

DO COOL SHIT. EVERY DAMN DAY.
OR DIE TRYING.

1. Get up earlier than the next guy.
2. If no Wow, no go.
3. Design means you.
4. Hire funny, fire gloomy.
5. Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.
6. Give a lot, expect a lot, and if you don't get it, prune.
7. Statistically, CEOs have little effect on performance.
8. Leaders need to be the Rock of Gibraltar on Roller Blades!
9. Boss mantra No.1: “I Don ’t Know”.
10. Boss Rule 1: GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY.
11. All middle management destroys value.
12. Integrity. Credibility. Humanity. Grace.
13. Opportunism (with a little forethought) mostly wins.
14. It's Relationships, Stupid; Deep and from multiple functions.
15. Your colleagues' successes are your successes. Period.
16. Obsess on ROIR (Return On Investment In Relationships).
17. Change takes however long it takes.
18. Conversation is the breath of the curious, learning life.
19. If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade.

Keep it simple! (Damn it!) No matter how "sophisticated" the product. If you can't explain it in a phrase, a page, or to your 14-year-old ... you haven't got it right yet.


Under promise (i.e., don't over-promise; i.e., cut yourself a little slack) even if it costs you business; winning is a long-term affair. Over-promising is Sign #1 of a lack of integrity. You will pay the piper.

Don't waste your time on jerks,
it'll rarely work out in the mid- to long-term.

If no one is pissed-off with you then you are dead but just haven't figured it out yet.

Managing at any time, but more than ever today, is a symbolic activity. It involves energizing people, often large numbers of people, to do new things they previously had not thought important. Building a compelling case - to really deliver a quality product, to double investment in research and development, to step out and take risks each day (e.g. make suggestions about cost-cutting when you are already afraid of losing your job) -is an emotional process at least as much as it is a rational one.

Technology has changed all the rules. Rigid hierarchies, departments, and job descriptions are history., Today companies are fluid, transformative, organized around temporary networks focused on the WOW! Project - a superbly executed, high-impact, piece of work with a beginning, an end, a Client, and specific deliverables, and an outcome you'll be bragging about 5(!) years(!) from now.

Those who dwell on ‘ Why I can’ts’ at 16 will probably still be doing exactly the same thing at age 66.

Success kills - Success stories are the illusions of egomaniacs (and "gurus")

"Excellent firms don't believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change."

"The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people."

There is less to fear from outside competition than from inside inefficiency, discourtesy, and bad service!

It never ceases to amaze me that companies spend millions to attract new customers (people they don’t know) and spend next to nothing to keep the ones they’ve got! Seems to me the budgets should be reversed!

The new competitive realities demand that we turn our backs on the ones who brung us. Every leader needs a formal “forgetting strategy.”

The only sustainable competitive advantage comes from out-innovating the competition!

In any public-sector business, you must become an avid student of "the politics,"
the incentives and constraints, mostly non-economic, facing all of the players. Politicians are usually incredibly logical if you (deeply!) understand the matrix in which they exist.

Does anyone here know what it means to 'manage the imagination'?"

"Take a single piece of paper and simply write on it, 'every', 'abandon' and 'everything'.
That’s it. Then, when you get back to work, slip the page beneath the glass on your desktop. Refer to it hourly.

 

Also Read

Peter Drucker's Rules of Management

The best og Seth Godin

The Best of Guy Kawasaki

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