Thomas J. Peters (born November 7, 1942) is an American writer on business management practices, best known for In Search of Excellence (co-authored with Robert H. Waterman Jr).
Now it is much faster and cheaper to bring thedocument to the user, rather than ask the user to come to the document or collection.
Innovation comes only from readily and seamlessly sharing information rather than hoarding it.
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.
If you're a leader, your whole reason for living is to help human beings develop - to really develop people and make work a place that's energetic and exciting and a growth opportunity, whether you're running a Housekeeping Department or Google. I mean, this is not rocket science.
The hyperfast-moving, wired-up, reengineered, quality-obsessed organization will succeed or fail on the strength of the trust that its managers place in the folks working on the front line.
Listen to Everyone. Ideas come from everywhere
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.
Nothing good or great can be done in the absence of enthusiasm.
Bold botches are to be cherished.
And remember: Everything in business is a paradox. To be excellent, you have to be consistent. When you're consistent, you're vulnerable to attack. Yes, it's a paradox. Now deal with it!
Quality involves living the message of the possibility of perfection and infinite improvement, living it day in and day out, decade by decade.
The dominant culture in most big companies demands punishment for a mistake, no matter how useful, small, invisible.
If the other guy is getting better, then you'd better be getting better faster than the other guy is getting better. . . or you're getting worse.
Winners must learn to relish change with the same enthusiasm and energy that we have resisted it in the past.
We are no doubt in the Great Age of the Brand.
I used to be skeptical when educators and technologists predicted that we may be entering a new era of oral culture, in which audible information will be at least as important as visible information. Now that I have adopted into my own daily life a device that makes music and spoken-word files easy to access from anywhere, I have tempered my skepticism.
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.
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.
My real bottom-line hypothesis is that nobody has a sweet clue what they’re doing. Therefore you better be trying stuff at an insanely rapid pace. You want to be screwing around with nearly everything. Relentless experimentation was probably important in the 1970s-now it’s do or die.
I don't believe in holy writ. Buy fifty books or twenty-five books, take three weeks off, read them and make up your own theory. The fact that you end up literally burning twenty-two out of twenty-five books is beside the point.