Tom Peters is an American businessman and author, best known for his 1997 best-selling book In Search of Excellence. He has written 18 books, including A Passion for Excellence, The Pursuit of Wow!, and Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age. He is a leading advocate for the re-invention of organizations and the elevation of leadership to a higher level.
What is the most famous quote by Tom Peters ?
Mastery is great,but even that is not enough. You have to be able to change course without a bead of sweat, or remorse.
— Tom Peters
What can you learn from Tom Peters (Life Lessons)
- Tom Peters emphasizes the importance of creating a strong and lasting brand identity in order to be successful. He also stresses the need to constantly innovate and stay ahead of the competition. Lastly, he emphasizes the importance of having a clear vision and mission for your business and staying true to it.
The most famous Tom Peters quotes that will activate your inner potential
Following is a list of the best Tom Peters quotes, including various Tom Peters inspirational quotes, and other famous sayings by Tom Peters.
The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget old ideas.
The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say 'I'.
They don't think 'I'. They think 'we'; they think 'team'.
Life is winging it. To suggest otherwise is delusional.
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.
Leaders cannot afford to hate.
Excellence is not an aspiration. Excellence is what you do in the next five minutes.
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.
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.
Respect is the most powerful motivator of them all.
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.
Excellent firms don't believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change.
Inspiring quotes by Tom Peters
The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.
Personal impact: Out work em. Out read em. Out last em. Show up.
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.
If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.
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.
If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade.
Smile if it kills you. The physiology of smiling diffuses a lot of anger and angst. It makes your body and soul feel better.
Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.
There are few things that will take you further in life, than your ability to make a good presentation.
Never, ever rest on your laurels. Today's laurels are tomorrow's compost.
Quotations by Tom Peters that are innovative and visionary
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.
The best leaders are the best notetakers, best askers, and best learners.
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.
Winners must learn to relish change with the same enthusiasm and energy that we have resisted it in the past.
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.
Have you set high standards in the past that make it clear what level of performance you demand?
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
Organize as much as possible around teams, to achieve enhanced focus, task orientation, innovativeness, and individual commitment.
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.
Execution Excellence! (Show up on time! Leave last!)
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 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.
In McKinsey's world, all of life is one of two things: strategy or organization.
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.
Leadership is about tapping the wellsprings of human motivation - and about fundamental relations with one's fellows.
Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.
There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity
Progress is mostly the product of rogues.
Organizations exist to serve. Period. Leaders live to serve. Period.
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.
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.
Success requires a persistent misreading of the odds.
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.
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.
Design is so critical it should be on the agenda of every meeting in every single department.
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.
Leaders understand the ultimate power of relationships.