If your company has a clean-desk policy, the company is nuts and you’re nuts to stay there.
TOM PETERSPrint-based libraries developed in an age of scarce printed resources.
More Tom Peters Quotes
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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.
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Authority never matches responsibility. That’s one of the great myths and delusions of all times. Winning managers and individual performers at all levels know that effectiveness means building your own network and creating your own authority.
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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.
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Don’t let the vision be shot through with holes, but be damn sure some of your best and brightest are shooting at it — with bazookas as well as sniper’s rifles.
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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.
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Hire attitude train skills.
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Smile if it kills you. The physiology of smiling diffuses a lot of anger and angst. It makes your body and soul feel better.
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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.
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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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A completely free library is as rare as a truly free lunch.
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Rewards should go to teams as a whole.
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Forget loyalty. Or at least loyalty to one’s corporation. Try loyalty to your Rolodex-your network-instead.
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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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Now that I have adopted into my own daily life a device that makes music and spoken-word files easy to access from anywhere, I have tempered my skepticism.
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Confidence means non-paralysis, a willingness to act, and act decisively, to start new things and cut failing ventures off.
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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.
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Winners must learn to relish change with the same enthusiasm and energy that we have resisted it in the past.
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It may be primarily property taxes in the case of a public library, or state taxes and tuition in the case of an academic library at a public university, but the funding sources of most libraries continue to have a strong geographic component.
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The workplace revolution that transformed the lives of blue-collar workers in the 1970s and 1980s is finally reaching the offices and cubicles of the white-collar workers.
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Swipe from the best, then adapt.
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Leadership is about tapping the wellsprings of human motivation – and about fundamental relations with one’s fellows.
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Organizations exist to serve. Period. Leaders live to serve. Period.
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Execution Excellence! (Show up on time! Leave last!)
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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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All business success rests on something labeled a sale, which at least momentarily weds company and customer.
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Community. A friend started a real estate brokerage a few years ago. By the time she’d added her second employee, she was a pillar of her 35,000-person community.
TOM PETERS