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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.

-Tom Peters

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If There Is A

Tom Peters

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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.

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

There Is No Such Thing As A Minor Lapse Of Integrity

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

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

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

Formula For Success: Underpromise And Overachieve.

Inspirational Business

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.

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

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.

The Whole Secret To Our Success Is Being Able To Con Ourselves Into Believing That We're Going To Change The World Because Statistically We Are Unlikely To Do It.

Effective Visions Are Lived In Details, Not Broad Strokes.

Leaders Understand The Ultimate Power Of Relationships.

The Workplace Revolution That Transformed The Lives Of Blue-collar Workers In The 1970s And 1980s Is Finally Reaching The Offices And Cubicles Of The White-collar Workers.

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.

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.

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.

Remember My Mantra: Distinct... Or Extinct.

Success Requires A Persistent Misreading Of The Odds.

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

Become A "learning Organization". Shuck Your Arrogance - "if It Isn't Our Idea, It Can't Be That Good" - And Become A Determined Copycat/ Adapter/ Enhancer.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Reward Excellent Failures. Punish Mediocre Successes.

When You Choose A Managerial Path, You Are Choosing To Devote Your Life To People. Period.

Take Someone New And Weird To Lunch Today

I Don't Want An Epitaph On My Gravestone That Says, 'he Would Have Pursued Some Big Dreams In His Life, But Other People Wouldn't Let Him.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Productive Work

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

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

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

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.

We All Know Of The Dangers And Inequities Of The Traditional Digital Divide: People Who Have Good Access Tocomputer Networks Have A Distinct Advantage - In Terms Of Both Life Opportunities And Quality Of Life, I Wouldargue - Over The Vast Majority Of The World's Population That Does Not Yet Have Good Access To Computernetworks. The "other" Digital Divide Points To An Increasingly Unstable Situation That Has Developed Inlibrarianship As Digital Libraries Have Evolved And Matured.

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.

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

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.

Swipe From The Best, Then Adapt.

Innovation And Business

Only Pissed-off People Change The World.

'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.

We Cannot Innovate Without Opening The Door To Havoc.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Formula For Success: Under Promise And Over Deliver.

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

Authority Never Matches Responsibility. That's One Of The Great Myths And Delusions Of All Times. Winning Managers And Individual Performers At All Levels Know That Effectiveness Means Building Your Own Network And Creating Your Own Authority. Those Who Succeed Always Reach Far Beyond Formal Deputation, Take Initiatives, And Take The Heat When Things Go Awry. That's True In The Military In Times Of War, True For 200 Person Manufacturing Firms, And True At Giant Automakers Or Software Companies.

You Can Only Improve What You Measure.

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

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

Portability Of Lots Of Information Should Not Be Underestimated.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

What Gets Measured Gets Done.

Inspirational Customer Service

Effective Listening Is A Professional Achievement-achieved Only Through Hard Work.

Effective Listening

You Can't Think Your Way Out Of A Box; You've Got To Act.

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

Rewards Should Go To Teams As A Whole.

Hire Disrespectful People.

You Have To Stand Out If You Want To Move Up.

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

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

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

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

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

An Era Similar To The One In Which The Black Rotary Phone Dominated Its Product Category May Not Recur Anytime Soon.

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

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

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

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

If Future Competitiveness Depends On Treating People As An Important Part Of The Institution, The Least Respectful Thing I Can Imagine Doing To A Human Being Is Asking Him To Urinate In A Cup.

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.

One Size Never Fits All. One Size Fits One. Period

Communication Is Everyone's Panacea For Everything.

Good Communication

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

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.

Leaders Win Through Logistics. Vision, Sure. Strategy, Yes. But When You Go To War, You Need To Have Both Toilet Paper And Bullets At The Right Place At The Right Time. In Other Words, You Must Win Through Superior Logistics.

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

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

I Think Economics, Content, And The Ability To Interact With Content In New And Different Ways Are What Will Drive The Adoption Of E-books.

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.

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.

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

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

Congratulations

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.

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

I Found Myself Declaiming, Full Flower, For An Hour On The "utmost Importance And Urgency" Of Blogging, Telling Him In No Uncertain Terms That, Especially In A High-end Niche Business, Blogging Is "the Premier Way" To Have "intimate Conversations" With His Clients. Funny Thing, I Believe It!

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

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.

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

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.

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

Test Fast, Fail Fast, Adjust Fast.

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.

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.

The Unthinkable Is Thinkable. No: Likely.

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

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.

You Are Your Projects!

Usage Tends To Be Global, While Funding Tends Tobe Local. When We Allow It To Happen, Usage Of A Digital Library Is Remarkably Diverse And Widespread.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Design Is So Critical It Should Be On The Agenda Of Every Meeting In Every Single Department.

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

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

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

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.

They Say Plan It. I Say Do It.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Companies Have Got To Learn To Eat Change For Breakfast.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Today's Economy There Are No Experts, No 'best And Brightest' With All The Answers. It's Up To Each One Of Us. The Only Way To Screw Up Is To Not Try Anything.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Listen To Everyone. Ideas Come From Everywhere

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.

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

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

Good Managers Have A Bias For Action.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Hire For Attitude. Train For Skill... More

Screw-ups Are The Mark Of Excellence.

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

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.

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

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?

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

Accepting Change

We Are All Michaelangelos.

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

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.

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

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.

The Race Will Go To The Curious, The Slightly Mad, And Those With An Un-satiated Passion For Learning And Dare-deviltry.

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!

Dot The I's, Cross The T's, Answer The Phones Promptly, Send Out Errorless Invoices, And In General Never Forget That The Devil Is In The Details.

Treat The Customer As An Appreciating Asset.

Don't 'tolerate' Mistakes. Embrace Them!

Creating In All Employees The Awareness That Their Best Efforts Are Essential And That They Will Share In The Rewards Of The Company's Success.

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.

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

One Percent Improvement In 1,000 Things Is Better Than 1,000% Improvement In One Thing.

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!

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.

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