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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.

Tom Peters

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.
TOM PETERS

Business Dull Lunch
The principal reason, invariably, most “successful” giant companies rather quickly become also-rans, or just amorphous blobs on the competitive landscape, is their failure to re-tool in anything like a fundamental way. In fact,
TOM PETERS

Anything Change Fact Successful Worse Yesterday
Lists simplify, clarify, edify.
TOM PETERS

Edify Lists Simplify
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.
TOM PETERS

Asking Important People
If no one is pissed-off with you then you are dead but just haven’t figured it out yet.
TOM PETERS

Knowledge Learning Off Pissed
Leadership is about tapping the wellsprings of human motivation – and about fundamental relations with one’s fellows.
TOM PETERS

Fundamentals Leadership Motivation
The whole secret to our success is being able to con ourselves into believing that we’re going to change the world because statistically we are unlikely to do it.
TOM PETERS

Believe Secret Statistically World
David Ogilvy contends that the greatest ad copywriters are marked by an insatiable curiosity ‘about every subject under the sun.’
TOM PETERS

Copywriters Curiosity Subject Sun
Listen while you can, so that you can lead when you must.
TOM PETERS

Deliver Formula Success
You can’t think your way out of a box; you’ve got to act.
TOM PETERS

Boxes Thinking Way
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!
TOM PETERS

Column Impact Labels Make Tables
Leaders trust their guts. “Intuition” is one of those good words that has gotten a bad rap. For some reason, intuition has become a “soft” notion.
TOM PETERS

Decision Leader Rap
I find digital content much easier and more rewarding to interact with on screen than printed on paper.
TOM PETERS

Digital Easier Paper
If there is a single tragic flaw that mars our biggest enterprises, it is conservatism – the failure to fail, and fail big, in an era of unprecedented volatility and ambiguity.
TOM PETERS

Ambiguity Era Flaws Mars Unprecedented Volatility
Success requires a persistent misreading of the odds.
TOM PETERS

Misreading Odds Persistent
The company’s most urgent task is to learn to welcome, beg for, demand – innovation from everyone.
TOM PETERS

Demand Innovation Tasks

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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