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The worse things get, typically, the more they dig in their heels and defend yesterday’s turf.

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
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.
TOM PETERS

Decision Important Intuition More Practical Tough
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
Customers perceive service in their own unique, idiosyncratic, emotional, irrational, end-of-the-day, and totally human terms. Perception is all there is!
TOM PETERS

Educational Funny Leadership
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
With most competitors moving ever faster, the race will go to those who listen (and respond) most intently.
TOM PETERS

Faster Moving Race
Today brands are everything, and all kinds of products and services – from accounting firms to sneaker makers to restaurants – are figuring out how to transcend the narrow boundaries of their categories and become a brand surrounded by a Tommy Hilfiger-like buzz.
TOM PETERS

Buzz Figure Sneakers Today Transcend
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 simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.
TOM PETERS

Positive Productive Work Simple
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
Those who succeed always reach far beyond formal deputation, take initiatives, and take the heat when things go awry. That’s true in the military in times of war, true for 200 person manufacturing firms, and true at giant automakers or software companies.
TOM PETERS

Initiatives Manufacturing Reach Reputation
I find digital content much easier and more rewarding to interact with on screen than printed on paper.
TOM PETERS

Digital Easier Paper
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
Progress is mostly the product of rogues.
TOM PETERS

Products Progress Rogues
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.
TOM PETERS

Academic Library Strong Tuition
The dominant culture in most big companies demands punishment for a mistake, no matter how useful, small, invisible.
TOM PETERS

Culture Mistake Punishment

The worse things get, typically, the more they dig in their heels and defend yesterday’s turf.

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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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