Tom Peters Quotations

If you really want to kill morale, have layoffs every two months for the next two years.

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.

If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade.

Business is about people. It's about passion. It's about bold ideas, bold small ideas or bold large ideas.

Community organizing is all about building grassroots support. It's about identifying the people around you with whom you can create a common, passionate cause. And it's about ignoring the conventional wisdom of company politics and instead playing the game by very different rules.

'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.

Celebrate what you want to see more of.

If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.

Everyone has a chance to learn, improve, and build up their skills.

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.

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

Mittelstand companies are incredibly focused and almost always family-run. The young men and women go through the apprenticeship system and learn that the goal is excellence.

South Africa has all the tools to compete in the new global village - an eager workforce, ready to take on any challenge.

The whole secret to our success is being able to con ourselves into believing that we're going to change the world because statistically we are unlikely to do it.

Stop being conned by the old mantra that says, 'Leaders are cool, managers are dweebs.' Instead, follow the Peters Principle: Leaders are cool. Managers are cool too!

Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders.

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

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

Statistically and emotionally, I believe that the way I can be of help to society is by doing what I know and what I've been good at.

As a consumer, you want to associate with brands whose powerful presence creates a halo effect that rubs off on you.

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

Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me, Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.

Give a lot, expect a lot, and if you don't get it, prune.

I know it sounds crazy, but you've got to let what you're going to do find you, rather than you pursuing it.

My problem is not that I see all 17 sides of any issue, but I'm equally passionate about all 17 sides simultaneously.

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.

One simply cannot pay tribute to Stephen Covey without saying at the outset that he was a lovely human being.

Mastery is great, but even that is not enough. You have to be able to change course without a bead of sweat, or remorse.

We found that the most exciting environments, that treated people very well, are also tough as nails. There is no bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo... excellent companies provide two things simultaneously: tough environments and very supportive environments.

Winners must learn to relish change with the same enthusiasm and energy that we have resisted it in the past.

All business success rests on something labeled a sale, which at least momentarily weds company and customer.

I endorse a lot of people - sometimes people say I endorse too many books. And my response has always been the same: If I can get one case study that can give me one good idea that I can implement for $25, or for these days one-third of that on Kindle, I've gotten a very good deal.

The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.

Vision is dandy, but sustainable company excellence comes from a huge stable of able managers.

The best leaders... almost without exception and at every level, are master users of stories and symbols.

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.

A passive approach to professional growth will leave you by the wayside.

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

If your company has a clean-desk policy, the company is nuts and you're nuts to stay there.

I think it's wonderful to save the world, but you need to be part of the world, too.

The top athletes are consummate pros who work obsessively at their craft. Approach yours the same way.

As far as I'm concerned, the first business leader who was able to establish a cult of personality around his tenure was Lee Iacocca.

I don't read many business books. I read good fiction. Business is about people, so my favorite business books are anything by Dickens.

The 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.

Today brands are everything, and all kinds of products and services - from accounting firms to sneaker makers to restaurants - are figuring out how to transcend the narrow boundaries of their categories and become a brand surrounded by a Tommy Hilfiger-like buzz.

'In Search of Excellence' was an afterthought, the runt of the McKinsey consulting litter, a hip-pocket project that was never supposed to amount to much.

One of the biggest problems of 'In Search of Excellence' is that it focused on giant, publicly-traded companies. There are thousands upon thousands of excellent companies. Some of them are two-person accountancies in a community of three thousand people.

Anybody 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.

I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote 'Search.' There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove.

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.

I think economics is about passion. Economic progress, whether it is a two-person coffee shop or whether it is Netscape, is about people with brave ideas. Because it is brave to mortgage the house, when you've got two kids, to start a coffee shop.

Now that we have this opportunity, we need to get with the program. (We've) no idea how long it will last,

My charge to the design team was for them to do the meanest, scrappiest, street-fighting dog they could sketch.

We'll be paying the same amount of money for tickets,

Appreciation, applause, approval, respect - we all love it!

I started out with the Big Brothers program and then went to the American Cancer Society, where I was eventually the national vice president. I'm a mission kind of guy. The Red Cross was an easy mission to embrace, like Chevrolet and apple pie.

I'm most proud of the fact that we've increased our Disaster Assistance Team from three to 50 people. We recently set a goal to recruit 100 more people to be on the Disaster Services Human Resources Team that can be called out of the area.

It seems hard to believe in May that my wife and two kids will go to a game until 10:30 p.m., ... and then try to make the 7 a.m. school bus the next day.

C6 has exposed the headlamps for the first time since 1962, and believe me, there was a lot of emotional discussion around that,

It's amazed me that no one has ever tried to do this before.

This league will effectively become a glorified high school and independent league.

The 'value added' for most any company, tiny or enormous, comes from the Quality of Experience provided.

Innovation comes only from readily and seamlessly sharing information rather than hoarding it.

Divas do it, golfers do it, pilots do it, violists do it, sprinters do it, soldiers do it, surgeons do it, astronauts do it...only business people think it isn't necessary to train.

Communication is everyone's panacea for everything.

The thing that keeps a business ahead of the competition is excellence in execution.

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.

The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget old ideas.

Excellence is not an aspiration. Excellence is what you do in the next five minutes.

Smile if it kills you. The physiology of smiling diffuses a lot of anger and angst. It makes your body and soul feel better.

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

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

The best leaders are the best notetakers, best askers, and best learners.

The good news - and it is largely good news - is that everyone has a chance to stand out. Everyone has a chance to learn, improve, and build up their skills. Everyone has a chance to be a brand worthy of remark

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

To meet the demands of the fast-changing competitive scene, we must simply learn to love change as much as we have hated it in the past.

The difference between great and average is, mostly, having the imagination and zeal to re-create yourself daily.

Unless you walk out into the unknown, the odds of making a profound difference in your life are pretty low.

Remember my mantra: distinct... or extinct.

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.

The winners stun us not by their cleverness, but by the fact that every tiny aspect of the business is just a touch better than the norm.

Only those who constantly retool themselves stand a chance of staying employed in the years ahead.

Never, ever rest on your laurels. Today's laurels are tomorrow's compost.

I don't want an epitaph on my gravestone that says, 'He would have pursued some big dreams in his life, but other people wouldn't let him.

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.

There is no such thing as an insignificant improvement.

I 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.

TRUST, not technology, is the issue of the decade.

If you love your company and love what you do, you will serve your customers better-period!

If future competitiveness depends on treating people as an important part of the institution, the least respectful thing I can imagine doing to a human being is asking him to urinate in a cup.

Creating in all employees the awareness that their best efforts are essential and that they will share in the rewards of the company's success.

Bold botches are to be cherished.

Public Speaking is a skill that can be studied, polished, perfected. Not only can you get good at it, you can get damn good at it and it makes a heck of a difference.

Skill at creating, exploiting, and exiting crucial alliances beats ownership of fixed assets

Leadership is about tapping the wellsprings of human motivation - and about fundamental relations with one's fellows.

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.

Leaders' careers will usually be determined by their handling of one or two critical events that no one could possibly anticipate or plan for.

Companies have got to learn to eat change for breakfast.

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.

Progress is mostly the product of rogues.