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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.

-Tom Peters

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Business Isn't Some Disembodied

Tom Peters

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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.

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Business Is About People. It's About Passion. It's About Bold Ideas, Bold Small Ideas Or Bold Large Ideas.

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Communication Is Everyone's Panacea For Everything.

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Companies Have Got To Learn To Eat Change For Breakfast.

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If Timing Ain't Everything, It's Damn Close

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An Ability To Embrace New Ideas, Routinely Challenge Old Ones, And Live With Paradox Will Be The Effective Leader's Premier Trait.

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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.

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The Widespread Availability Of Information Is The Only Basis For Effective Day-to-day Problem Solving, Which Abets Continuous Improvement Programs.

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.

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Innovation Comes Only From Readily And Seamlessly Sharing Information Rather Than Hoarding It.

Information Sharing

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If A Window Of Opportunity Appears, Don't Pull Down The Shade.

Every Managerial Act Must Be Seen As An Unequivocal Support For Urgency In Pursuit Of Constant Testing, Change, And Improvement.

It May Be Primarily Property Taxes In The Case Of A Public Library, Or State Taxes And Tuition In The Case Of An Academic Library At A Public University, But The Funding Sources Of Most Libraries Continue To Have A Strong Geographic Component.

Even A Poor, Out-of-datecollection Reflects In Its Own Way The Values Of The People Who Created It And The Community It Serves.

The Principal Reason, Invariably, Most "successful" Giant Companies Rather Quickly Become Also-rans, Or Just Amorphous Blobs On The Competitive Landscape, Is Their Failure To Re-tool In Anything Like A Fundamental Way. In Fact, The Worse Things Get, Typically, The More They Dig In Their Heels And Defend Yesterday's Turf.

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.

All Business Success Rests On Something Labeled A Sale, Which At Least Momentarily Weds Company And Customer.

Congratulations

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Bricks And Mortar

The Dominant Culture In Most Big Companies Demands Punishment For A Mistake, No Matter How Useful, Small, Invisible.

Perception Is All There Is. If The Customer Think He's Right, He's Right.

The Little People Will Get Even, Which Is One Of A Thousand Reasons Why They Are Not Little People At All. If You're A Jerk As A Leader, You Will Be Torpedoed. And Usually It Won't Be By Your Vice Presidents; It Will Be On The Loading Dock At 3am When No Supervisors Are Around.

He Who Makes The Quickest, Coolest Prototypes Reigns!

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.

"old" Is Deﬁnitely Not Cool In America. Never Has Been.

They Say Plan It. I Say Do It.

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.

As A Consumer, You Want To Associate With Brands Whose Powerful Presence Creates A Halo Effect That Rubs Off On You.

The Market May Never Coalesce Around One Basic Design, Or Even Around Two Or Three Dominant Devices.

Hire Attitude Train Skills.

Trust, Not Technology, Is The Issue Of The Decade.

Quite 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.

Excellent Firms Don't Believe In Excellence - Only In Constant Improvement And Constant Change.

Organizations Exist To Serve. Period. Leaders Live To Serve. Period.

The Company's Most Urgent Task Is To Learn To Welcome, Beg For, Demand - Innovation From Everyone.

Leaders Do Stuff That Matters.

Skill At Creating, Exploiting, And Exiting Crucial Alliances Beats Ownership Of Fixed Assets

Stellar Teams Are Invariably Made Up Of Quirky Individuals Who Typically Rub Each Other Raw, But They Figure Out - With The Spiritual Help Of A Gifted Leader - How To Be Their Peculiar Selves And How To Win Championships As A Team...at The Same Time.

Listen While You Can, So That You Can Lead When You Must.

I Believe In The Age Of The Internet, Facebook And Twitter, That Relationships Are Everything.

Integrity May Be About Little Things As Much Or More Than Big Ones.

Lavish Credit On Anyone And Everyone Who Helped You The Least Bit.

The 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.

Like It Or Not - And Often We Don't - Power Is A Pervasive Phenomenon. From Midnight Decisions In The Oval Office That Risk The Lives Of Young Americans To Quarrels Over The Kitchen Table, Power Is Part Of Every Human Equation. Yes, It Can Be - And Often Is - Abused, In Business As In All Arenas Of Endeavor. But It Can Also Be Used To Do Great Good For Great Numbers. And As A Career-building Tool, The Slow And Steady (and Subtle) Amassing Of Power Is The Surest Road To Success.

There'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.

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.

A Good Collection Is More Than Just The Sum Of Its Parts.

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.

Portability Of Lots Of Information Should Not Be Underestimated.

Musing On The Phrase 'waste Of Time.' So Much More Complex Than It Appears. Many 'wastes Of Time' Small Talk, Daydreaming Are Imperatives.

In The Great City Of San Francisco, Where I Used To Live, At 2 In The Morning Every Other Victorian House Has Somebody Who Is Writing The Great American Novel. And The City Is Not Loaded With James Joyces Or Virginia Woolfs. But Entrepreneurship Is About Distorted Views Of Reality.

Leaders Don't Create Followers, They Create More Leaders.

Excellence Is Not An Aspiration. Excellence Is What You Do In The Next Five Minutes.

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!

Remembers Everything

Excellence Comes From Human Beings Doing Things Of Value That Customers Find Memorable.

Vision Is Dandy, But Sustainable Company Excellence Comes From A Huge Stable Of Able Managers.

You Can Only Improve What You Measure.

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

I Am My Clients. I Am Defined By Who I Do Business With.

Life Is Too Short For Non-wow Projects.

Life Is Too Short

I Still Read Quite A Few Printed Books, But If Something Is Available In Digital Format I Do Not Print It Before I Read It.

We Must Reject All Notions Of 'reform' That Serve Up More Of The Same: More Testing, More 'standards', More Uniformity, More Conformity, More Bureaucracy.

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.

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.

Some People Have Argued That Listening To A Work Of Literature Does Not Really Promote Literacy In The Same Way That Reading Does. Having Tried This For Several Months, However, I Can Report From The Trenches That, For Me, Immersive Listening Is As Intellectually Challenging, Stimulating, And Rewarding As Immersive Reading.

The World Has Not Just "turned Upside Down". It Is Turning In Every Which Way At An Accelerating Pace.

Power Lies In The Details, And The Tenacious Pursuit Of Such Hidden Levers Can Pay Off Enormously. While You Don't Want To Get A Reputation As A Prissy Worrywart, Worrying About The Details In Private Is Important. You May Think You Are The World's Greatest Speaker, But If The Auditorium's Sound System Is Singing Static - Well, Forget It.

I Don't Read Many Business Books. I Read Good Fiction. Business Is About People, So My Favorite Business Books Are Anything By Dickens.

A 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.

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.

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James H. Douglas

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