Tom Peters Quotes

Formula for success: Underpromise and overachieve.

We are all Michaelangelos.

Knowing when to take your losses is an essential part of eventual success.

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.

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.

We cannot innovate without opening the door to havoc.

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

Hire disrespectful people.

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.

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.

Good managers have a bias for action.

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!

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.

Bold botches are to be cherished.

All business success rests on something labeled a sale, which at least momentarily weds company and customer.

Every managerial act must be seen as an unequivocal support for urgency in pursuit of constant testing, change, and improvement.

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

Forget loyalty. Or at least loyalty to one's corporation. Try loyalty to your Rolodex-your network-instead.

Quality involves living the message of the possibility of perfection and infinite improvement, living it day in and day out, decade by decade.

"Old" is definitely not cool in America. Never has been.

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.

Perception is all there is. If the customer think he's right, he's right.

He who makes the quickest, coolest prototypes reigns!

Companies have got to learn to eat change for breakfast.

Make an extensive table of project 'deliverables'. Label one column 'as requested'. Create another column labeled 'could be'. Make each 'could be' wild and woolly!

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.

Print-based libraries developed in an age of scarce printed resources.

Accept change as a friend. And don't take yourself too seriously.

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.

Lists simplify, clarify, edify.

Leaders' careers will usually be determined by their handling of one or two critical events that no one could possibly anticipate or plan for.

We must reject all notions of 'reform' that serve up more of the same: more testing, more 'standards', more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy.

Mistakes are life. Mistakes are not to be tolerated...they are to be encouraged. The bigger the better.

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.

Only pissed-off people change the world.

OLD: Be No.1 or No.2 in Your Market. NEW: Find a Niche, Create Something New.

I don't read many business books. I read good fiction. Business is about people, so my favorite business books are anything by Dickens.

The race will go to the curious, the slightly mad, and those with an un-satiated passion for learning and dare-deviltry.

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.

Effective listening is a professional achievement-achieved only through hard work.

Effective visions are lived in details, not broad strokes.

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.

Give a lot, expect a lot, and if you don't get it, prune.

If silly things were not done, intelligent things would never happen.

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.

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.