Listen while you can, so that you can lead when you must.
TOM PETERSMake an extensive table of project ‘deliverables’. Label one column ‘as requested’. Create another column labeled ‘could be’. Make each ‘could be’ wild and woolly!
More Tom Peters Quotes
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What have you done lately – this week – to make yourself stand out? What would your colleagues or your customers say is your greatest and clearest strength? Your most noteworthy (as in, worthy of note) personal trait?
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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.
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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.
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The best leaders are the best notetakers, best askers, and best learners.
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The race will go to the curious, the slightly mad, and those with an un-satiated passion for learning and dare-deviltry.
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Even a poor, out-of-datecollection reflects in its own way the values of the people who created it and the community it serves.
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Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing… layout, processes, and procedures.
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You can’t live life without an eraser.
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A completely free library is as rare as a truly free lunch.
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The day firing becomes easy is the day to fire yourself.
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Excellence is not an aspiration. Excellence is what you do in the next five minutes.
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Cost does not equal value… and low cost parts decrease brand equity for a very long time.
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David Ogilvy contends that the greatest ad copywriters are marked by an insatiable curiosity ‘about every subject under the sun.’
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Garbage! Intuition is the new physics. It’s an Einsteinian, seven-sense, practical way to make tough decisions. Bottom line, circa 2001 to 2010: The crazier the times are, the more important it is for leaders to develop and to trust their intuition.
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One simply cannot pay tribute to Stephen Covey without saying at the outset that he was a lovely human being.
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We often hear that the digital age has resulted in a devaluing of time, space, and place. But I wonder if theseclaims are exaggerated.
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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.
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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.
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The worse things get, typically, the more they dig in their heels and defend yesterday’s turf.
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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.
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For me, reading is reading.
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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!
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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!
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Organizations exist to serve. Period. Leaders live to serve. Period.
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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
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TRUST, not technology, is the issue of the decade.
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