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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.

-Tom Peters

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Like It Or Not

Tom Peters

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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.

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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.

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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!

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

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.

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.

Take Someone New And Weird To Lunch Today

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.

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

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

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

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

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, 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.

Forget Loyalty. Or At Least Loyalty To One's Corporation. Try Loyalty To Your Rolodex-your Network-instead.

Bold Botches Are To Be Cherished.

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

Progress Is Mostly The Product Of Rogues.

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

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.

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

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 Timing Ain't Everything, It's Damn Close

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

Do It, Fix It, Try It.

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

Only Pissed-off People Change The World.

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

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

Swipe From The Best, Then Adapt.

Innovation And Business

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There Is No Such Thing As A Minor Lapse Of Integrity

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.

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.

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.

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.

Listen To Everyone. Ideas Come From Everywhere

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.

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.

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

Fact Is, The Work Place To A Great Extent Is "where We Live." We Need Star Accountants. Boffo Saleswomen. Over-the-top Creatives In Marketing And New Product Development. And So On. But, Since We're Effectively Talking About "where We Live," Good Sense And Good Business And "good" Engagement Throughout The "supply Chain," From Vendor's Vendor To Customer's Customer, We Would Benefit Mightily-including On The P & L-if We Insisted (!) On: "pleasant." "caring." "engaged."

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

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

Remember My Mantra: Distinct... Or Extinct.

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

Communication Is Everyone's Panacea For Everything.

Good Communication

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

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

Nothing Good Or Great Can Be Done In The Absence Of Enthusiasm.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Life Is Pretty Simple: You Do Some Stuff. Most Fails. Some Works. You Do More Of What Works. If It Works Big, Others Quickly Copy It. Then You Do Something Else. The Trick Is The Doing Something Else.

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

They Say Plan It. I Say Do It.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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!

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

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

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

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

It Boils Down To Studenthood-in-perpetuity / Curiosity-in-perpetuity / Applied Fanatic Restlessness. That Is, A Belief That Life Is One Big Learning Experience. 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. The Results: An Exponentially Increased Ability To Tune Up / Reinvent / Wow-ize Today's Project At Work.

Learning Is A Matter Of Intensity Not Elapsed Time.

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

Stop Being Conned By The Old Mantra That Says, 'leaders Are Cool, Managers Are Dweebs.' Instead, Follow The Peters Principle: Leaders Are Cool. Managers Are Cool Too!

Companies Have Got To Learn To Eat Change For Breakfast.

Formula For Success: Under Promise And Over Deliver.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Information Sharing

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.

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

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

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?

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

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

Effective Listening

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

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

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

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

Formula For Success: Underpromise And Overachieve.

Inspirational Business

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Don't Let The Vision Be Shot Through With Holes, But Be Damn Sure Some Of Your Best And Brightest Are Shooting At It -- With Bazookas As Well As Sniper's Rifles.

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

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

Don't 'tolerate' Mistakes. Embrace Them!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ultimately, I Think That The Growth And Sustainability Of The E-book Movement Depends On Authors And End-users (readers).

We Cannot Innovate Without Opening The Door To Havoc.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Lists Simplify, Clarify, Edify.

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

Think About The Market, Think About The Design, And Think About Who Is Going To Design For That Market. Hit The Mark.

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

There Is No Such Thing As An Insignificant Improvement.

Self Improvement

Self Discipline

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

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.

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

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

What Gets Measured Gets Done.

Inspirational Customer Service

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!

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

Screw-ups Are The Mark Of Excellence.

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

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.

Success Requires A Persistent Misreading Of The Odds.

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.

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

Congratulations

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.

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.

Rewards Should Go To Teams As A Whole.

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

We Are All Michaelangelos.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Good Managers Have A Bias For Action.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Portability Of Lots Of Information Should Not Be Underestimated.

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

You Are Your Projects!

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.

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.

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

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

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

Treat The Customer As An Appreciating Asset.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.'

Test Fast, Fail Fast, Adjust Fast.

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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