Tom Peters Quotes

Quality involves living the message of the possibility of perfection and infinite improvement, living it day in and day out, decade by decade.

Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.

Authority never matches responsibility. That's one of the great myths and delusions of all times. Winning managers and individual performers at all levels know that effectiveness means building your own network and creating your own authority. Those who succeed always reach far beyond formal deputation, take initiatives, and take the heat when things go awry. That's true in the military in times of war, true for 200 person manufacturing firms, and true at giant automakers or software companies.

Fact is, the work place to a great extent is "where we live." We need star accountants. Boffo saleswomen. Over-the-top creatives in marketing and new product development. And so on. But, since we're effectively talking about "where we live," good sense and good business and "good" engagement throughout the "supply chain," from vendor's vendor to customer's customer, we would benefit mightily-including on the P & L-if we insisted (!) on: "Pleasant." "Caring." "Engaged."

For the blue-collar worker, the driving force behind change was factory automation using programmable machine tools. For the office worker, it's office automation using computer technology: enterprise-resource-planning systems, groupware, intranets, extranets, expert systems, the Web, and e-commerce.

You will be remembered, in the long haul, for the quality of your work, not the quantity of your work. No one evaluates Picasso based on the number of paintings he churned out.

They say plan it. I say do it.

I urge you to set a tough, quantitative target for adding "differentiators" as I call them, to every service you provide.

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!

...high end does not necessarily equal high price. It's a matter of attitude.

Formula for success: Underpromise and overachieve.

Hire disrespectful people.

People of all demographic categories and geographic regions will access a good digital library.

Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.

Business, life itself, is damned hard work if you wanna be good at it. Actually, that's precisely wrong. Business ceases to be work when you're chasing a dream that has engorged you. ("Work should be more fun than fun" - Noel Coward.) And if the passion isn't there. then biotech and plumbing will be equal drags.

I find digital content much easier and more rewarding to interact with on screen than printed on paper.

Design is so critical it should be on the agenda of every meeting in every single department.

WORK ON YOUR STORY! He/she who has the best story wins! In life! In business! The White House!

Remember: You are the only human being in the world who can help this particular customer at this particular moment in time.

If the person you delegated to does the job twice as well as you would have done it, consider yourself a leader.

If timing ain't everything, it's damn close

We cannot innovate without opening the door to havoc.

Change is not so much about being the first one to embrace a new idea, but being the first to forget an old one

Ready, fire, aim. Do it! Make it happen! Action counts. No one ever sat their way to success.

Usage tends to be global, while funding tends tobe local. When we allow it to happen, usage of a digital library is remarkably diverse and widespread.

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.

It's this simple: You are a brand. You are in charge of your brand. There is no single path to success. And there is no one right way to create the brand called You. Except this: Start today. Or else.

We must reject all notions of 'reform' that serve up more of the same: more testing, more 'standards', more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy.

Business isn't some disembodied bloodless enterprise. Profit is fine - a sign that the customer honors the value of what we do. But "enterprise" ( a lovely word ) is about heart. About beauty. It's about art. About people throwing themselves on the line. It's about passion and the selfless pursuit of an ideal.

I don't want the 35-year-olds in my audience to think of me as as 'pops' giving the kind of advice that only 65-year-olds can understand.

You can't live life without an eraser.

Celebrate what you want to see more of.

"Old" is definitely not cool in America. Never has been.

Leaders win through logistics. Vision, sure. Strategy, yes. But when you go to war, you need to have both toilet paper and bullets at the right place at the right time. In other words, you must win through superior logistics.

If silly things were not done, intelligent things would never happen.

All white-collar work is project work. The single salient fact that touches all of our lives is that work is being reinvented.

I am my clients. I am defined by who I do business with.

Bold botches are to be cherished.

Books were rare,expensive, time-consuming to create and copy, and difficult to transport. That is why collections ofprint-based books developed around centers of religious belief, learning, and wealth. It was cheaper andeasier for people to come to the collection than for the collection, or parts of the collection, to go to thepeople.

Leaders trust their guts. "Intuition" is one of those good words that has gotten a bad rap. For some reason, intuition has become a "soft" notion. Garbage! Intuition is the new physics. It's an Einsteinian, seven-sense, practical way to make tough decisions. Bottom line, circa 2001 to 2010: The crazier the times are, the more important it is for leaders to develop and to trust their intuition.

Excellence comes from human beings doing things of value that customers find memorable.

Don't let the vision be shot through with holes, but be damn sure some of your best and brightest are shooting at it -- with bazookas as well as sniper's rifles.

The selfish leader will attempt to lead others for their own gain and for the detriment of others.

I believe in the age of the Internet, Facebook and Twitter, that relationships are everything.

If I read a book that cost me $20 and I get one good idea, I've gotten one of the greatest bargains of all time.

The unthinkable is thinkable. No: likely.

The new idea either finds a champion or it dies. No ordinary involvement with a new idea provides the energy required to cope with the indifference and resistance that change provokes.

Digital ink technology holds substantial promise in terms of legibility, portability, and power consumption, but I am less confident about the communication aspect.