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Quite simply, no matter how hard you try, no matter how “open” you are, you’ll end up surrounded by “yes people.” It’s hard not to believe people who are repeating your own ideas. Resist the temptation.

Tom Peters

Your calendar never lies. All we have is our time. The way we spend our time is our priorities, is our strategy. Your calendar knows what you really care about. Do you?
TOM PETERS

Calendar Care Lying Priorities
If you love your company and love what you do, you will serve your customers better-period!
TOM PETERS

Better Business Love Passion Period
Entrepreneurs have no memories. They take on the world with a completely fresh view.
TOM PETERS

Entrepreneur Memories Views
Have you set high standards in the past that make it clear what level of performance you demand?
TOM PETERS

High Levels Past Standards
Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing… layout, processes, and procedures.
TOM PETERS

Business Design Poor Process Quality
…high end does not necessarily equal high price. It’s a matter of attitude.
TOM PETERS

Attitide Attitude Matter
The top athletes are consummate pros who work obsessively at their craft. Approach yours the same way.
TOM PETERS

Athlete Crafts Way
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.
TOM PETERS

Miserable Stuff Trying Way
The worse things get, typically, the more they dig in their heels and defend yesterday’s turf.
TOM PETERS

Defend Thing Worse Yesterday
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.
TOM PETERS

Individual Levels Mean Military War
The difference between great and average is, mostly, having the imagination and zeal to re-create yourself daily.
TOM PETERS

Average Differences Imagination
Ultimately, I think that the growth and sustainability of the e-book movement depends on authors and end-users (readers).
TOM PETERS

Book Growth Thinking
Mastery is great, but even that is not enough. You have to be able to change course without a bead of sweat, or remorse.
TOM PETERS

Able Mastery Remorse Sweat
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
TOM PETERS

Connections Littles Mind
Like it or not – and often we don’t – power is a pervasive phenomenon. From midnight decisions in the Oval Office that risk the lives of young Americans to quarrels over the kitchen table, power is part of every human equation.
TOM PETERS

Business Country Numbers Power Risk
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

Business Person Real School Second
Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.
TOM PETERS

Inspirational Inspiring Life
He who makes the quickest, coolest prototypes reigns!
TOM PETERS

Prototype Reign Work
Who comes first? Don’t be silly, says King Hal; it’s employees. That is – and this dear Watson, is elementary – if you genuinely want to put customers first, you must put employees more first.
TOM PETERS

Business Customer Genuine Kings Silly
Appreciation, applause, approval, respect – we all love it!
TOM PETERS

Applause Appreciation Approval
The dominant culture in most big companies demands punishment for a mistake, no matter how useful, small, invisible.
TOM PETERS

Culture Mistake Punishment
Celebrate what you want to see more of.
TOM PETERS

Inspirational Life Motivational
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.
TOM PETERS

Blue Office Revolution White
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.
TOM PETERS

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

Improvement Pursuit Support
The day firing becomes easy is the day to fire yourself.
TOM PETERS

Easy Fire Wisdom Yourself
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

Quite simply, no matter how hard you try, no matter how “open” you are, you’ll end up surrounded by “yes people.” It’s hard not to believe people who are repeating your own ideas. Resist the temptation.

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Popular Authors

Quite simply, no matter how hard you try, no matter how “open” you are, you’ll end up surrounded by “yes people.” It’s hard not to believe people who are repeating your own ideas. Resist the temptation.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Tom Peters Quotes