Business book writing for me is when some set of ideas gets stuck in my mind, I write a book about it. I haven't got a theory and I haven't got a framework.
Tom PetersThe trouble with much of the advice business gets today about the need to be more vigorously creative is that its advocates often fail to distinguish between creativity and innovation. Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things... The shortage is of innovators.
Tom PetersUnless you walk out into the unknown, the odds of making a profound difference in your life are pretty low.
Tom PetersMistakes are life. Mistakes are not to be tolerated...they are to be encouraged. The bigger the better.
Tom PetersThe 10 or 12 artists I have known really well all my life are at least as competitive as professional athletes. They may express it in slightly different terms, but you look at the Jackson Pollocks et al., and they are as interested in wall space in the galleries as Joe Montana is in the percentage of completed passes. So the notion that symphonic conducting, or stage play, or pure art, is not a competitive business is real bullshit.
Tom PetersI would not be surprised to see interesting new forms of expression and literary genres develop as the e-book movement matures.
Tom PetersIt boils down to studenthood-in-perpetuity / curiosity-in-perpetuity / applied fanatic restlessness. That is, a belief that life is ONE BIG LEARNING EXPERIENCE. Something mysterious happens to a curious, fully engaged mind - and it happens as often as not, subconsciously. Strange little sparks are set off, connections made, insights triggered. The results: an exponentially increased ability to tune up / reinvent / WOW-ize today's project at work.
Tom PetersLeaders' careers will usually be determined by their handling of one or two critical events that no one could possibly anticipate or plan for.
Tom PetersWe're going to see leadership emerge as the most important element of business - the attribute that is highest in demand and shortest in supply.
Tom PetersYou are who you go to lunch with! Break bread with cool and you will become more cool. Conversely: break bread with dull and well, you can figure it out.
Tom PetersThere's nobody in the world that wouldn't change places with the Americans. The economy is phenomenally large, the entrepreneurial class is very alive and very well, the universities, despite budget problems, still turn out something like 90 percent of the refereed academic and technical articles in the world. There's a lot on everybody's agenda.
Tom PetersEven a poor, out-of-datecollection reflects in its own way the values of the people who created it and the community it serves.
Tom PetersA career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand.
Tom PetersWinners must learn to relish change with the same enthusiasm and energy that we have resisted it in the past.
Tom PetersA vibrant, rich, growing corpus of public-domain books is a vital public good - similar to parks, the infrastructure of basic services, and other hallmarks of any advanced society.
Tom PetersI imagine a school system that recognizes learning is natural, that a love of learning is normal, and that real learning is passionate learning. A school curriculum that values questions above answers...creativity above fact regurgitation...individuality above conformity.. and excellence above standardized performance..... And we must reject all notions of 'reform' that serve up more of the same: more testing, more 'standards', more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy.
Tom PetersThe workplace revolution that transformed the lives of blue-collar workers in the 1970s and 1980s is finally reaching the offices and cubicles of the white-collar workers.
Tom PetersChampions are pioneers, and pioneers get shot at. The companies that get the most from champions, therefore, are those that have rich support network so their pioneers will flourish. This point is so important it's hard to overstress. No support systems, no champions. No champions, no innovations.
Tom PetersAnybody who is an entrepreneur is a person who essentially has impaired judgment. The odds of success are zilch. This valley is loaded to the gills with a whole lot of totally insane people who honest to God believe that they can be the next Bill Gates or the next Scott McNealy. And that is genuinely stupid.
Tom PetersThe difference between great and average is, mostly, having the imagination and zeal to re-create yourself daily.
Tom PetersThe most important and visible outcropping of the action bias in excellent companies is their willingness to try things out, to experiment. If you wait until you believe you are safe, sure to be without occasional foolish feelings, you've most likely waited too long.
Tom PetersMy half-baked reading of history is that we continue to go through these waves of entrepreneurial explosion followed by merger mania and consolidation. Out of that come big sluggish companies that eventually collapse under the weight of what they've created, and are killed off by the next wave of entrepreneurs.
Tom PetersQuite simply, no matter how hard you try, no matter how "open" you are, you'll end up surrounded by "yes people." It's hard not to believe people who are repeating your own ideas. Resist the temptation.
Tom Peters'In Search of Excellence' - even the title - is a reminder that business isn't dry, dreary, boring, or by the numbers. Life at work can be cool - and work that's cool isn't confined to Tiger Woods, Yo-Yo Ma, or Tom Hanks. It's available to all of us and any of us.
Tom PetersPassion. 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.
Tom PetersWinston Churchill said that appetite was the most important thing about education. Leadership guru Warren Bennis says he wants to be remembered as 'curious to the end.' David Ogilvy contends that the greatest ad copywriters are marked by an insatiable curiosity 'about every subject under the sun.'
Tom PetersThe world has not just "turned upside down". It is turning in every which way at an accelerating pace.
Tom PetersExcellent firms don't believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change.
Tom PetersI found myself declaiming, full flower, for an hour on the "utmost importance and urgency" of Blogging, telling him in no uncertain terms that, especially in a high-end niche business, Blogging is "the premier way" to have "intimate conversations" with his Clients. Funny thing, I believe it!
Tom Peters