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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

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
Confidence means non-paralysis, a willingness to act, and act decisively, to start new things and cut failing ventures off.
TOM PETERS

Cutting Mean Motivational Ventures
Forget loyalty. Or at least loyalty to one’s corporation. Try loyalty to your Rolodex-your network-instead.
TOM PETERS

Corporations Loyalty Trying
Progress is mostly the product of rogues.
TOM PETERS

Products Progress Rogues
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.
TOM PETERS

Best Economy Home Secret Today
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
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
We often hear that the digital age has resulted in a devaluing of time, space, and place. But I wonder if theseclaims are exaggerated.
TOM PETERS

Age Digital Space
Hire attitude train skills.
TOM PETERS

Attitude Skills Train
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
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

Believe Friends Ideas
The difference between great and average is, mostly, having the imagination and zeal to re-create yourself daily.
TOM PETERS

Average Differences Imagination
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
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
You can’t think your way out of a box; you’ve got to act.
TOM PETERS

Boxes Thinking Way
Don’t ‘tolerate’ mistakes. Embrace them!
TOM PETERS

Business Mistake Training
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
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
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
Stop being conned by the old mantra that says, ‘Leaders are cool, managers are dweebs.’ Instead, follow the Peters Principle: Leaders are cool. Managers are cool too!
TOM PETERS

Leader Peter Principles
I’m fundamentally not interested in the Fortune 500 companies – in US, Mexico, anywhere. The real backbones of economic growth are small and medium businesses.
TOM PETERS

Business Country Growth Real
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
For me, reading is reading.
TOM PETERS

Good Knowledge Learn Read Reading
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
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
Listen while you can, so that you can lead when you must.
TOM PETERS

Deliver Formula Success
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

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

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

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