Tom Peters Quotes

How do you achieve excellence?...Stop doing non-excellent stuff!

Learning is a matter of intensity not elapsed time.

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.

Organize as much as possible around teams, to achieve enhanced focus, task orientation, innovativeness, and individual commitment.

To meet the demands of the fast-changing competitive scene, we must simply learn to love change as much as we have hated it in the past.

If you love your company and love what you do, you will serve your customers better-period!

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.

Communication is everyone's panacea for everything.

If no one is pissed-off with you then you are dead but just haven't figured it out yet.

Skill at creating, exploiting, and exiting crucial alliances beats ownership of fixed assets

I find digital content much easier and more rewarding to interact with on screen than printed on paper.

A little (or more) boat burning would do many enterprises a world of good.

If your company has a clean-desk policy, the company is nuts and you're nuts to stay there.

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.

Execution Excellence! (Show up on time! Leave last!)

Success requires a persistent misreading of the odds.

A passive approach to professional growth will leave you by the wayside.

If the person you delegated to does the job twice as well as you would have done it, consider yourself a leader.

Organizations exist to serve. Period. Leaders live to serve. Period.

Leadership is about tapping the wellsprings of human motivation - and about fundamental relations with one's fellows.

There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity

Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.

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.

You are your projects!

Train everyone lavishly. You can't overspend on training.

Progress is mostly the product of rogues.

Hire attitude train skills.

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.

Do it, fix it, try it.

Innovation comes only from readily and seamlessly sharing information rather than hoarding it.

It doesn't matter what product or service you're offering; there is unlimited ability to improve the quality of anything.

In McKinsey's world, all of life is one of two things: strategy or organization.

The 'value added' for most any company, tiny or enormous, comes from the Quality of Experience provided.

Leaders understand the ultimate power of relationships.

Everyone has a chance to learn, improve, and build up their skills.

Design is so critical it should be on the agenda of every meeting in every single department.

Good managers have a bias for action.

Vision is dandy, but sustainable company excellence comes from a huge stable of able managers.

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 while you can, so that you can lead when you must.

Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.

Don't settle for less than is possible.

You can't think your way out of a box; you've got to act.

Swipe from the best, then adapt.

What gets measured gets done.

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 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.

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.

Hire disrespectful people.

The widespread availability of information is the only basis for effective day-to-day problem solving, which abets continuous improvement programs.