Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders.
Tom Peters
If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade.
Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.
Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.
Celebrate what you want to see more of.
Everyone has a chance to learn, improve, and build up their skills.
Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.
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.
Excellent firms don't believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change.
The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.
If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.
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.
Communication is everyone's panacea for everything.
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.
The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.
'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.
Good managers have a bias for action.
I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote 'Search.' There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove.
A passive approach to professional growth will leave you by the wayside.
Remember my mantra: distinct... or extinct.
If you really want to kill morale, have layoffs every two months for the next two years.
Give a lot, expect a lot, and if you don't get it, prune.
I know it sounds crazy, but you've got to let what you're going to do find you, rather than you pursuing it.
Mastery is great, but even that is not enough. You have to be able to change course without a bead of sweat, or remorse.
Business is about people. It's about passion. It's about bold ideas, bold small ideas or bold large ideas.
If your company has a clean-desk policy, the company is nuts and you're nuts to stay there.
'In Search of Excellence' was an afterthought, the runt of the McKinsey consulting litter, a hip-pocket project that was never supposed to amount to much.
All business success rests on something labeled a sale, which at least momentarily weds company and customer.
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.
The top athletes are consummate pros who work obsessively at their craft. Approach yours the same way.
Leaders understand the ultimate power of relationships.
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.
Vision is dandy, but sustainable company excellence comes from a huge stable of able managers.
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.
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.
As a consumer, you want to associate with brands whose powerful presence creates a halo effect that rubs off on you.
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!
I don't read many business books. I read good fiction. Business is about people, so my favorite business books are anything by Dickens.
Anybody who is an entrepreneur is a person who essentially has impaired judgment. The odds of success are zilch.
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.
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.
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.
My problem is not that I see all 17 sides of any issue, but I'm equally passionate about all 17 sides simultaneously.
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.
South Africa has all the tools to compete in the new global village - an eager workforce, ready to take on any challenge.
All white-collar work is project work. The single salient fact that touches all of our lives is that work is being reinvented.
Mittelstand companies are incredibly focused and almost always family-run. The young men and women go through the apprenticeship system and learn that the goal is excellence.
Design is so critical it should be on the agenda of every meeting in every single department.
Winners must learn to relish change with the same enthusiasm and energy that we have resisted it in the past.
One of the biggest problems of 'In Search of Excellence' is that it focused on giant, publicly-traded companies. There are thousands upon thousands of excellent companies. Some of them are two-person accountancies in a community of three thousand people.
