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I Don't Know What It Means To Manage The Human Imagination, But I Do Know That Imagination Is The Main Source Of Value In The New Economy. And I Know We'd Better Figure Out The Answer To My Question-quick.

-Tom Peters

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I Don't Know What

Tom Peters

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I Don't Know What It Means To Manage The Human Imagination, But I Do Know That Imagination Is The Main Source Of Value In The New Economy. And I Know We'd Better Figure Out The Answer To My Question-quick.

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Books Were Rare,expensive, Time-consuming To Create And Copy, And Difficult To Transport. That Is Why Collections Ofprint-based Books Developed Around Centers Of Religious Belief, Learning, And Wealth. It Was Cheaper Andeasier For People To Come To The Collection Than For The Collection, Or Parts Of The Collection, To Go To Thepeople.

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.

Forget All The Conventional 'rules' But One. There Is One Golden Rule: Stick To Topics You Deeply Care About And Don't Keep Your Passion Buttoned Inside Your Vest. An Audience's Biggest Turn-on Is The Speaker's Obvious Enthusiasm. If You Are Lukewarm About The Issue, Forget It!

For Me, Reading Is Reading.

As Project Chief You Are Creating A Narrative, A Story, A Good Yarn. If You Look At The Process-journey That Way, You And Your Gang Will ... Dramatically Up The Odds Of A Wow Outcome!

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.

With Most Competitors Moving Ever Faster, The Race Will Go To Those Who Listen (and Respond) Most Intently.

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.

Public Speaking

Reward Excellent Failures. Punish Mediocre Successes.

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

In Mckinsey's World, All Of Life Is One Of Two Things: Strategy Or Organization.

I'm About As Far From Being A Flag-waver - You Won't Find Any American Flag Pins In My Drawer - As Someone Can Be.

A 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.

The 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.

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

Start By Identifying The Qualities Or Characteristics That Make You Distinctive From Your Competitors - Or Your Colleagues. What Have You Done Lately - This Week - To Make Yourself Stand Out? What Would Your Colleagues Or Your Customers Say Is Your Greatest And Clearest Strength? Your Most Noteworthy (as In, Worthy Of Note) Personal Trait?

The Difference Between Great And Average Is, Mostly, Having The Imagination And Zeal To Re-create Yourself Daily.

Listen To Everyone. Ideas Come From Everywhere

All White-collar Work Is Project Work. The Single Salient Fact That Touches All Of Our Lives Is That Work Is Being Reinvented.

Quality Involves Living The Message Of The Possibility Of Perfection And Infinite Improvement, Living It Day In And Day Out, Decade By Decade.

Many Flagship State Universities Have Wonderful Digital Libraries That Are Accessed By People Around The World. In Future, If Not Current, Budget Crises, Trustees, Board Members, And Administrators May Wonder Why These State Institutions - With An Articulated Primary Clientele Of Students, Faculty, And Staff Members And A Secondary Clientele Of All Citizens Of The State - Should Be Spending Resources On A Digital Library That Is Used By Many People Beyond The Primary And Secondary Service Populations.

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.

Send 10-ten!!-people Flowers. Today. As "thank Yous" For Good Things "small"-or Even Large-done In The Last Two Weeks.

Knowing When To Take Your Losses Is An Essential Part Of Eventual Success.

He Who Makes The Quickest, Coolest Prototypes Reigns!

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

Everyone Has A Chance To Learn, Improve, And Build Up Their Skills.

If The Person You Delegated To Does The Job Twice As Well As You Would Have Done It, Consider Yourself A Leader.

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

But There's No Substitute For Getting Smarter Faster. And The Way You Get Smarter Is To Screw Around Vigorously. Try Stuff. See What Works. See What Fails Miserably. Learn. Rinse. Repeat.

If No One Is Pissed-off With You Then You Are Dead But Just Haven't Figured It Out Yet.

Good Managers Have A Bias For Action.

Screw-ups Are The Mark Of Excellence.

Champions 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.

Support Systems

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.

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.

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.

If You Love Your Company And Love What You Do, You Will Serve Your Customers Better-period!

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.

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.

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

Test Fast, Fail Fast, Adjust Fast.

If Not Excellence, What? If Not Excellence Now, When?

You Will Be Remembered, In The Long Haul, For The Quality Of Your Work, Not The Quantity Of Your Work. No One Evaluates Picasso Based On The Number Of Paintings He Churned Out.

Print-based Libraries Developed In An Age Of Scarce Printed Resources.

The Best Leaders... Almost Without Exception And At Every Level, Are Master Users Of Stories And Symbols.

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

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

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 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.

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

How Do You Humiliate And Demean Someone And Then Expect Him Or Her To Care About Product Quality.

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.

Don't 'tolerate' Mistakes. Embrace Them!

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

One Potential Long-term Problem With Many Current Digital Libraries Is That They Grew Out Of And Aresupported By Bricks-and-mortar Libraries. Although There Is Nothing Inherently Wrong With That Arrangement, Inreality It Creates A Potentially Dangerous Situation That I Call "the Other Digital Divide."

Dangerous Situations

Bricks And Mortar

Management Is About Arranging And Telling. Leadership Is About Nurturing And Enhancing.

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.

Cult Of Personality

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.

Only Those Who Constantly Retool Themselves Stand A Chance Of Staying Employed In The Years Ahead.

'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.

The Simple Act Of Paying Positive Attention To People Has A Great Deal To Do With Productivity.

Productive Work

Customers Perceive Service In Their Own Unique, Idiosyncratic, Emotional, Irrational, End-of-the-day, And Totally Human Terms. Perception Is All There Is!

A Little (or More) Boat Burning Would Do Many Enterprises A World Of Good.

One Reason (among Many) That Women May Well Take Over The World Of "virtual Enterprises" Is That They Seem To Have A Greater Instinct For Networking. And The Unfettered-by-machismo Males Who Have Taken To Networking Will Do Better Than Those Who Shun It As "sissy Stuff." But Truth Is, It Has Always Been The Age Of "networkers"; And In An Era Where Organizations Depend More And More On Tenuously Connected Outsiders To Get The Job Done, It Will Only Become So.

Confidence Means Non-paralysis, A Willingness To Act, And Act Decisively, To Start New Things And Cut Failing Ventures Off.

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.

Life Is Too Short For Non-wow Projects.

Life Is Too Short

Only Pissed-off People Change The World.

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

The Best Leaders Are The Best Notetakers, Best Askers, And Best Learners.

Without Exception, The Dominance And Coherence Of Culture Proved To Be An Essential Quality Of The Excellent Companies.

Oh Lord, There It Is Again. The Question;" What Kind Of Business Should I Start?" Incidentially, It Has A Twin That Also Sets Me Off: "what Should I Specialize In During The Second Year Of My Mba Studies?" Sorry, But Those Are Two Of The Most Profoundly Upsetting Questions Anyone Can Ask - Upsetting Because The Answer Should Be Obvious: Do What Turns You On, Not What The Statistics Say Is Best.

Formula For Success: Under Promise And Over Deliver.

The Greatest Difficulty In The World Is Not For People To Accept New Ideas, But To Make Them Forget Old Ideas.

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.

Old: Be No.1 Or No.2 In Your Market. New: Find A Niche, Create Something New.

Collections Of Books And Other Documents, Either Printed Or Electronic, Are A Form Of Congregation.

Accept Change As A Friend. And Don't Take Yourself Too Seriously.

Accepting Change

The Common Wisdom Is That ... Managers Have To Learn To Motivate People. Nonsense. Employees Bring Their Own Motivation.

Digital Ink Technology Holds Substantial Promise In Terms Of Legibility, Portability, And Power Consumption, But I Am Less Confident About The Communication Aspect.

Treat The Customer As An Appreciating Asset.

Momentum Is A Fragile Force. Its Worst Enemy: Procrastination. Its Best Friend: A Deadline (think Election Day). Implication No. 1 (and There Is No No. 2): Get To Work! Now!

Procrastination

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.

You 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.

When It Comes To E-book Playback Devices And Software, I Have Always Thought That The Emphasis On Ergonomic Concerns As A Tipping Point For The End-user Population Was Misplaced.

You Can't Live Life Without An Eraser.

Give A Lot, Expect A Lot, And If You Don't Get It, Prune.

It's Relatively Simple. If We're Not Getting More, Better, Faster Than They Are Getting More, Better, Faster, Then We're Getting Less, No Better Or More Worse.

Leadership Is About Tapping The Wellsprings Of Human Motivation - And About Fundamental Relations With One's Fellows.

If Silly Things Were Not Done, Intelligent Things Would Never Happen.

The 'value Added' For Most Any Company, Tiny Or Enormous, Comes From The Quality Of Experience Provided.

People Of All Demographic Categories And Geographic Regions Will Access A Good Digital Library.

Your Calendar Never Lies. All We Have Is Our Time. The Way We Spend Our Time Is Our Priorities, Is Our Strategy. Your Calendar Knows What You Really Care About. Do You?

South Africa Has All The Tools To Compete In The New Global Village - An Eager Workforce, Ready To Take On Any Challenge.

Advantage Comes Not From The Spectacular Or The Technical. Advantage Comes From A Persistent Seeking Of The Mundane Edge.

Are You Placing Enough Interesting, Freakish, Long Shot, Weirdo Bets?

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

Community. A Friend Started A Real Estate Brokerage A Few Years Ago. By The Time She'd Added Her Second Employee, She Was A Pillar Of Her 35,000-person Community. No Rule Says That Only The Local Banker Or Car Dealer Can Organize The Program To Raise Supplemental Funds For The Public Library Or Send The High School Band On A Well-earned Special Trip. Participating In Community Affairs, With Time More Than Dollars, Is Good Business From Day One. It Gets Your Name Around, Adds To Your Distinctiveness, And, Best Of All, Makes You An Attractive Employer (which Is The Key To Sustained Success).

Organize As Much As Possible Around Teams, To Achieve Enhanced Focus, Task Orientation, Innovativeness, And Individual Commitment.

The Best Kept Secret In The Global Economy Today Is This: When Your Service Is Awesome You Get So Stinking Rich You Have To Buy New Bags To Carry All The Money Home.

Best Kept Secrets

Gandhi And Mandela And Churchill And Jfk And Reagan And Thatcher And Sarkozy And Franklin And Washington Set The Tone To An Incredible Degree-their "personal Style" Was Their "brand." ("it" Starts With Personal Style Of The Tip-top Leadership Team. Sorry To Be Politically Insensitive, But Who Would Give A Hoot About Tibet If It Weren't For The Look And Style Of The Dalai Lama?) Boss At Any Level: You're Either On The "it" Boat-or Not.

Transforming Leadership, [is Defined As] Leadership That Builds On Man's Need For Meaning, Leadership That Creates Institutional Purpose ... He Is The Value-shaper, The Exemplar, The Maker Of Meanings ... He Is The True Artist, The True Pathfinder.

Are Your Customers Saying Wow?

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.

A Passive Approach To Professional Growth Will Leave You By The Wayside.

Don't Settle For Less Than Is Possible.

Progress Is Mostly The Product Of Rogues.

The Dumbest Mistake Is Viewing Design As Something You Do At The End Of The Process To 'tidy Up' The Mess, As Opposed To Understanding It's A 'day One' Issue And Part Of Everything.

Never, Ever Rest On Your Laurels. Today's Laurels Are Tomorrow's Compost.

Companies Have Got To Learn To Eat Change For Breakfast.

The Top Athletes Are Consummate Pros Who Work Obsessively At Their Craft. Approach Yours The Same Way.

Work On Your Story! He/she Who Has The Best Story Wins! In Life! In Business! The White House!

Remember My Mantra: Distinct... Or Extinct.

Every Collection Reflects The Ideas Andvalues And Interests Of The Individual Or Group Who Developed The Collection.

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.

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

If There Is A Single Tragic Flaw That Mars Our Biggest Enterprises, It Is Conservatism - The Failure To Fail, And Fail Big, In An Era Of Unprecedented Volatility And Ambiguity.

Entrepreneurs Have No Memories. They Take On The World With A Completely Fresh View.

Leaders' Careers Will Usually Be Determined By Their Handling Of One Or Two Critical Events That No One Could Possibly Anticipate Or Plan For.

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.

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

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

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.

The Drive For Control, Or The Perception Thereof, Is Truly The Strongest Force In Human Nature.

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.

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.

Passion. 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.

A Completely Free Library Is As Rare As A Truly Free Lunch.

Be Guided By The Axiom: There Are No Limits To The Ability To Contribute On The Part Of A Properly Selected, Well-trained, Appropriately Supported, And, Above All, Committed Person.

Swipe From The Best, Then Adapt.

Innovation And Business

Ready, Fire, Aim. Do It! Make It Happen! Action Counts. No One Ever Sat Their Way To Success.

The Idea Of Intimately Entwining With Customers [to Get Ideas] Is An Idea Whose Time Has Come.

Smile If It Kills You. The Physiology Of Smiling Diffuses A Lot Of Anger And Angst. It Makes Your Body And Soul Feel Better.

Communication Is Everyone's Panacea For Everything.

Good Communication

Portability Of Lots Of Information Should Not Be Underestimated.

There Is No Such Thing As A Minor Lapse Of Integrity

The Number One Premise Of Business Is That It Need Not Be Boring Or Dull. It Ought To Be Fun. If It's Not Fun, You're Wasting Your Life.

Had Twitter Been Invented Earlier, My Books Would Have Been Shorter.

What Is My Personal Strategy For The Next 10 Hours? Who Can I Talk With Or What Can I Volunteer For To Learn Something New?

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.

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

How Do You Achieve Excellence?...stop Doing Non-excellent Stuff!

To Grasp Organizational Life As It Is, Read Novels (!) .... It Is My Fervent Belief That We Will Never Design Rational Processes That "overcome" Such Irregularities-don't Bother Telling That To A Consultant. Hence, We Should Embrace The Real, Nonrational, Nonlinear World With Vigor And Glee-and Develop Enterprise And Career Strategies Accordingly.

The Leaders Who Work Most Effectively, It Seems To Me, Never Say 'i'. They Don't Think 'i'. They Think 'we'; They Think 'team'.

Leaders Understand The Ultimate Power Of Relationships.

Opportunity Is Not "knocking." It Is Pounding On Your Door.

We're Going To See Leadership Emerge As The Most Important Element Of Business - The Attribute That Is Highest In Demand And Shortest In Supply.

Unless You Walk Out Into The Unknown, The Odds Of Making A Profound Difference In Your Life Are Pretty Low.

We Are No Doubt In The Great Age Of The Brand.

The Chinese Are Quite Entrepreneurial. Remember When Lenovo Bought Ibm's Pc Division. It Was Said That China Didn't Need A Brand Name, China Didn't Need To Buy Lenovo To Get Into The Pc Business, I Remember Reading A One-liner Somewhere Which Struck Me As Quite Possibly True, It Said The One Thing That The Chinese Had Not Been Able To Copy Or Figure Out Was The Way, In Terms Of Systems, That Americans - It Probably Would Be True For Europeans As Well - That Americans Install And Live By Their Management Systems, While China Is Still Quite Half-assed. Perhaps That Is A True Statement.

They Say Plan It. I Say Do It.

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

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

One Simply Cannot Pay Tribute To Stephen Covey Without Saying At The Outset That He Was A Lovely Human Being.

We Cannot Innovate Without Opening The Door To Havoc.

It's Not Enough To Be Close To The Customer. You've Got To Be Glued To The Customer.

Now That Gigabytes Of Accessible, Malleable Information Can Be Carried In One's Pocket, We Probably Will Start To See Some Widespread Shifts And Trends In How And Where People Interact With Digital Documents.

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.

A While Back, I Came Across A Line Attributed To Ibm Founder Thomas Watson. If You Want To Achieve Excellence, He Said, You Can Get There Today. As Of This Second, Quit Doing Less-than-excellent Work.

Bold Botches Are To Be Cherished.

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.

The Delivery And Presentation Media Are Important, And Each Format Has Its Advantages And Disadvantages, But Ultimately I Just Want To Read What I Want To Read, When And Where I Want.

Lists Simplify, Clarify, Edify.

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.

Hire Disrespectful People.

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

I Wrote The Book Based On A Blog That I Keep. I Also Tweet. I Don't Think That For An Incredibly Old Fart I'm Totally Behind The Power Curve. I Really Believe That The Essentials Of Human Relationships Remain The Same.

Remember: You Are The Only Human Being In The World Who Can Help This Particular Customer At This Particular Moment In Time.

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

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.

Take Someone New And Weird To Lunch Today

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.

Do It, Fix It, Try It.

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

Information Sharing

My 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.

I Want The Public As Well As Libraries And Schools To Enjoy Unlimited Access To Public-domain Books. This Means No Charges For These Kind Of Texts Themselves.

...high End Does Not Necessarily Equal High Price. It's A Matter Of Attitude.

To Sell Is Above All To Master The Art And Science Of Listening.

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.

Rewards Should Go To Teams As A Whole.

Steve Jobs Is Perhaps The Most Competitive Human Being I Have Ever Met In My Life, And Yet I Would Argue One Of The Most Artistic Human Beings I Have Ever Met In My Life. You Can Trash The Movies All You Want, But They Do Have An Artistic Component. And Yet Brutal Competition Knows No Peers When It Comes To Hollywood.

Obviously, Despite Hard Work And Heroic Efforts, Many Dreams Don't Come True. But If We Don't Dare To Dream And Then Throw Muscle, Heart, And Soul Into Making The Dream Come True, Then Wow Projects-and All Of The Emotional, Intellectual, Spiritual, And Financial Riches That They Bring Will Surely Not Be Our Lot In Life!

Appreciation, Applause, Approval, Respect - We All Love It!

Brand Inside Is More Important Than Brand Outside For Sustained Success.

The Selfish Leader Will Attempt To Lead Others For Their Own Gain And For The Detriment Of Others.

Have You Set High Standards In The Past That Make It Clear What Level Of Performance You Demand?

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.

You Are Your Projects!

Execution Excellence! (show Up On Time! Leave Last!)

The Unthinkable Is Thinkable. No: Likely.

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

Winston 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.'

It Doesn't Matter What Product Or Service You're Offering; There Is Unlimited Ability To Improve The Quality Of Anything.

Digital Content And Electronic Networks Have Changed The Basic Environmental Conditionsin Which Documents Are Created, Distributed, And Used.

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

Congratulations

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.

There Are Few Things That Will Take You Further In Life, Than Your Ability To Make A Good Presentation.

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.

The Manager, In Today's World, Doesn't Get Paid To Be A Steward Of Resources, A Favored Term Not So Many Years Ago. He Or She Gets Paid For One And Only One Thing: To Make Things Better (incrementally And Dramatically), To Change Things, To Act - Today.

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