Tom Peters on…

In This Page:

• Who Is Tom Peters?
• Tom on… Design
• Design – Top 10 To-Dos
• Tom on… Leadership
• Leadership – Top 10 To-Dos
• Books & Videos by Tom Peters

Tom Peters has plenty to say about all aspects of business as it is done today. He has been doing so for several decades. He has always proven to be right, even when his critics scream out that he is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Tom has an especially great deal to say about the essential place of design and designers in business organizations, the need for companies to focus their attention on women, baby boomers and seniors as huge and still untapped markets, and the absolute necessity for women to be leaders and drivers of modern business and business organizations.

He also demands that business organizations of all kinds recruit artists, writers, painters, poets, designers and other creative people, even when the organization’s business is not ostensibly creativity itself. He states that creativity is crucial in transforming all business organizations for the better, to ensure profitability, and to ensure their survival.

I agree with him.

In making statements about all this, Tom is right, now, as he has always proven to be in the past.

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Who Is Tom Peters?

From Tom’s biography at his website…

Without much doubt, Peter Drucker and Tom Peters have shaped the idea of modern management more than any others over the last six decades. Drucker is said to have “invented” management as a discipline worthy of study – in particular, he gave management of large firms the essential tools to deal with their post-World War II enormity, complexity, and growing global reach. Tom Peters, in turn, led the way in preparing management for the current era of staggering change, starting in the mid-1970s.

The likes of Fortune, the Economist, the New Yorker and the Los Angeles Times have said Tom is the “uber-guru” of management and inventor of the enormous “management guru industry,” that “in no small part, what American corporations have become is what Peters has encouraged them to be,” that Tom is “the father of the post-modern corporation,” and that “we live in a Tom Peters world.”

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Tom on… Design

From Design (Tom Peters Essentials)…

Billions upon billions of dollars are at stake. (Trillions?) Some companies do get it: Sony. Nike. Gillette. Apple. Body Shop. VW. Amazon. Nokia. Target [USA]. Bloomberg.

Nothing … NOTHING … (!!!) … is more important to the executives of these enterprises than unabashed … Fanaticism … about … Design.

But most companies (the vast majority!) just don’t get it. Hence they don’t really bother about design. (And it is a bother. It’s damned hard work, and it requires constant care and attention and love and affection and … obsession.) And those that don’t bother are, to put it simply, BLOWING OFF A V-E-R-Y BIG THING.

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Design – Top 10 To-Dos

1. Think and rethink “beauty.” Consider the dullest, homeliest process or system within your company, and ask: How can I make it beautiful?
2. Get lean (and mean it). Put your company, starting with its document-management system, on a reducing program. Mantra: Reduce steps and (where necessary) reduce staff.
3. Keep it simple. Scrutinize your every business practice for well-intentioned but (ultimately) ill-advised accretions of Bureaucratic Gunk. Remove same. Rinse. Repeat.
4. Keep it to one page. Distill every memo to a single page. If it’s worth writing, it’s worth editing.
5. Get creative. Call in the poets, the painters, the pianists. Call in those trained in art – in the creation of noble form and organic wholeness. (Yes, this is a business imperative.)
6. Bring in relief. Hire and empower an EVP/SOUB – Executive Vice President, Stomping Out Unnecessary Bullshit. (Okay, give him/her another title if you must …)
7. Take it away. Post a “subtraction box” at your company … in lieu of a suggestion box. (A Wal*Mart-approved idea. Enough said.)
8. Say “Grace.” Learn to use terms like “elegance” and “grace.” (“Great spreadsheet. How can we make it more graceful?”)
9. Loathe systems. Treat every enterprise system, every established procedure, as guilty until proven innocent. If it’s not simple, clear, graceful, beautiful … then scrap it.
10. Love systems. Aspire at all times to wrest Order from Chaos. (I am not – I repeat, not – an anarchist.) Business is about systems. Successful business is about Designing Beautiful Systems.

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Tom on… Leadership

Leadership – Top 10 To-Dos

1. Say … Make “I don’t know” a central, strategic part of your leadership lexicon. Uncertainty is here to stay. Acknowledging it is a Show of Strength.
2. See … Keep your inner eye on the Grand Possibilities that lie beyond – nay: within – the uncertainty all around you. Be (per Napoleon) a “dealer in hope.”
3. Do … Become an Action Figure. Life is too short – business life is too chaotic – to “get it right” first. When in doubt (especially when in doubt!) … DO SOMETHING!.
4. Fail … Accept mistakes as the price of Greatness. Post a sign in your office that says “REWARD EXCELLENT FAILURES. PUNISH MEDIOCRE SUCCESSES.” – and keep it always in view.
5. Weave … Remember that bringing people together – not ordering them about – is Job One for all leaders in our Disruptive Age.
6. Plan … Tend to your Legacy by making specific arrangements for people to succeed you. Mantra: Mentor, mentor, mentor!
7. Act … Cultivate the Art of Leadership – in particular, the Art of Performance. Leading well is a Confidence Game of the Highest Sort. So … Act the Part.
8. Prune … Clear away the mass of clutter that undermines your Sense of Focus. Create a To-Don’t list, add stuff to it regularly, and “follow” it religiously.
9. Chill … Know when to take a break. When colleagues ever-so-carefully warn you against burnout, listen to them. Schedule regular vacations (long ones – not a three-day weekend here or there), and keep to that schedule.
10. Love … Laugh, smile, and (in every way possible) express your Passion for What You Do.

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Books & DVDs by Tom Peters:

• Design
• Leadership
• Talent
• Trends
• The Brand You 50
  
• The Professional Service Firm 50
• The Project 50
• Tom Peters Live – Re-imagine!: Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age (DVD)
• Re-imagine!
  

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