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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.

Tom Peters

Treat the customer as an appreciating asset.
TOM PETERS

Appreciate Assets Business
Dot the i’s, cross the t’s, answer the phones promptly, send out errorless invoices, and in general never forget that the devil is in the details.
TOM PETERS

Devil Entrepreneur Phones
A vibrant, rich, growing corpus of public-domain books is a vital public good – similar to parks, the infrastructure of basic services, and other hallmarks of any advanced society.
TOM PETERS

Book Growing Hallmark Parks
The company’s most urgent task is to learn to welcome, beg for, demand – innovation from everyone.
TOM PETERS

Demand Innovation Tasks
Execution Excellence! (Show up on time! Leave last!)
TOM PETERS

Entrepreneur Excellence Lasts
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!
TOM PETERS

Business Remembers Everything Vulnerable
Public Speaking is a skill that can be studied, polished, perfected. Not only can you get good at it, you can get damn good at it and it makes a heck of a difference.
TOM PETERS

Differences Public Speaking Skills
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.
TOM PETERS

People Teamwork Thinking
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
All white-collar work is project work. The single salient fact that touches all of our lives is that work is being reinvented.
TOM PETERS

Facts Life Reinvented White
You can’t think your way out of a box; you’ve got to act.
TOM PETERS

Boxes Thinking Way
Usage tends to be global, while funding tends tobe local. When we allow it to happen, usage of a digital library is remarkably diverse and widespread.
TOM PETERS

Digital Library Usage Widerspread
What gets measured gets done.
TOM PETERS

Done Inspirational Customer Service Measurement
Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence – only in constant improvement and constant change.
TOM PETERS

Educational Inspirational Loyalty
The day firing becomes easy is the day to fire yourself.
TOM PETERS

Easy Fire Wisdom Yourself
Be guided by the axiom: There are no limits to the ability to contribute on the part of a properly selected, well-trained, appropriately supported, and, above all, committed person.
TOM PETERS

Ability Appropriate Committed Limits
The widespread availability of information is the only basis for effective day-to-day problem solving, which abets continuous improvement programs.
TOM PETERS

Abet Availability Information
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.
TOM PETERS

Bazookas Rifles Vision
For me, reading is reading.
TOM PETERS

Good Knowledge Learn Read Reading
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
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
I think it’s wonderful to save the world, but you need to be part of the world, too.
TOM PETERS

Needs Thinking World
I used to be skeptical when educators and technologists predicted that we may be entering a new era of oral culture, in which audible information will be at least as important as visible information.
TOM PETERS

Entering Important May
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
Even a poor, out-of-datecollection reflects in its own way the values of the people who created it and the community it serves.
TOM PETERS

Community People Way
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.
TOM PETERS

Answer Anyone Profoundly Sorry Statics Upsetting
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

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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