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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.

-Tom Peters

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I Used To Be

Tom Peters

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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.

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

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Reward Excellent Failures. Punish Mediocre Successes.

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

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.

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If You're Not Confused, You're Not Paying Attention.

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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.

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.

I Would Not Be Surprised To See Interesting New Forms Of Expression And Literary Genres Develop As The E-book Movement Matures.

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.

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

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.

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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!

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.

Something Mysterious Happens To A Curious, Fully Engaged Mind - And It Happens As Often As Not, Subconsciously. Strange Little Sparks Are Set Off, Connections Made, Insights Triggered

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They Say Plan It. I Say Do It.

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

I Urge You To Set A Tough, Quantitative Target For Adding "differentiators" As I Call Them, To Every Service You Provide.

The Magic Formula That Successful Businesses Have Discovered Is To Treat Customers Like Guests And Employees Like People.

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

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You Can't Live Life Without An Eraser.

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Bricks And Mortar

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.

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

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

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Test Fast, Fail Fast, Adjust Fast.

Screw-ups Are The Mark Of Excellence.

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

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

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Remembers Everything

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

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.

Leaders Do Stuff That Matters.

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

The Day Firing Becomes Easy Is The Day To Fire Yourself.

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 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.

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Good Managers Have A Bias For Action.

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

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

We Often Hear That The Digital Age Has Resulted In A Devaluing Of Time, Space, And Place. But I Wonder If Theseclaims Are Exaggerated.

Develop A Respect And Reverence For The Principle Of Variation: The Idea That The Message Ain't In The Mean, The Mode Or The Median - It's In The Differences That Occur Throughout A Population.

Want To Accomplish Something, Any-damn-thing? Sharpen Your Political Skills!

The Trouble With Much Of The Advice Business Gets Today About The Need To Be More Vigorously Creative Is That Its Advocates Often Fail To Distinguish Between Creativity And Innovation. Creativity Is Thinking Up New Things. Innovation Is Doing New Things... The Shortage Is Of Innovators.

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 Thing That Keeps A Business Ahead Of The Competition Is Excellence In Execution.

Life Is Too Short For Non-wow Projects.

Life Is Too Short

For Me, Reading Is Reading.

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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.

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.

Mistakes Are Life. Mistakes Are Not To Be Tolerated...they Are To Be Encouraged. The Bigger The Better.

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.

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

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.

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

Effective Visions Are Lived In Details, Not Broad Strokes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Companies Have Got To Learn To Eat Change For Breakfast.

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

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.

Have You Thanked A Front-line Employee For Carrying Around A Great Attitude ... Today?

I Find Digital Content Much Easier And More Rewarding To Interact With On Screen Than Printed On Paper.

What You Decide Not To Do Is Probably More Important That What You Decide To Do.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Congratulations

Who, Precisely, Are Your Dreamers? Are Their Dreams In Technicolor? Do You Allow Their Most Outrageous Dreams To Be Seen In Public?

What Gets Measured Gets Done.

Inspirational Customer Service

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.

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

Because Nearly All Digital Libraries Are Tied To Bricks-and-mortar Institutions, The Funding Base Tends To Be Quite Localized.

Bricks And Mortar

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?

If, As I Anticipate, A Wide Array Of Personal, Portable Information/communication Devices Becomes Increasingly Important And Widespread For Information-intensive Users, It Will Be A Major Challenge For Libraries To Adapt Their Content And Services To Such A Diverse Technological Environment.

Authors And Publishers Want Fair Compensation And A Means Of Protecting Content Through Digital Rights Management. Vendors And Technology Companies Want New Markets For E-book Reading Devices And Other Hardware. End-users Most Of All Want A Wide Range And Generous Amount Of High-quality Content For Free Or At Reasonable Costs. Like End-users, Libraries Want Quality, Quantity, Economy, And Variety As Well As Flexible Business Models.

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

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

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

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

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

Hire For Attitude. Train For Skill... More

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

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.

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.

Make An Extensive Table Of Project 'deliverables'. Label One Column 'as Requested'. Create Another Column Labeled 'could Be'. Make Each 'could Be' Wild And Woolly!

Change Is Not So Much About Being The First One To Embrace A New Idea, But Being The First To Forget An Old One

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

Accepting Change

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.

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

You Can Only Improve What You Measure.

Progress Is Mostly The Product Of Rogues.

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

Leaders Understand The Ultimate Power Of Relationships.

Cost Does Not Equal Value... And Low Cost Parts Decrease Brand Equity For A Very Long Time.

Learning Is A Matter Of Intensity Not Elapsed Time.

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.

Do It, Fix It, Try It.

Hire Disrespectful People.

Winners Must Learn To Relish Change With The Same Enthusiasm And Energy That We Have Resisted It In The Past.

Mastery Is Great, But Even That Is Not Enough. You Have To Be Able To Change Course Without A Bead Of Sweat, Or Remorse.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

There Is No Such Thing As An Insignificant Improvement.

Self Improvement

Self Discipline

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.

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.

If Your Company Has A Clean-desk Policy, The Company Is Nuts And You're Nuts To Stay There.

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.

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

Listen To Everyone. Ideas Come From Everywhere

I'm Fundamentally Not Interested In The Fortune 500 Companies - In Us, Mexico, Anywhere. The Real Backbones Of Economic Growth Are Small And Medium Businesses.

The Unthinkable Is Thinkable. No: Likely.

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.

We Cannot Innovate Without Opening The Door To Havoc.

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.

I Am Confident That For The Foreseeable Future (barring Some Catastrophic Event Affecting Economic, Energy, Electrical, And Communications Systems), Many Subpopulations That Use Information Intensively (e.g., Students, Academics, Library Patrons, White Collar Workers) Will Be Using Some Sort Of Portal Information Appliance.

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

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

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.

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

Train Everyone Lavishly. You Can't Overspend On Training.

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

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