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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

The best leaders are the best notetakers, best askers, and best learners.
TOM PETERS

Best Leader Leader Learners
Accept change as a friend. And don’t take yourself too seriously.
TOM PETERS

Accepting Change
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
Rewards should go to teams as a whole.
TOM PETERS

Rewards Should Teamwork
Winners must learn to relish change with the same enthusiasm and energy that we have resisted it in the past.
TOM PETERS

Change Learning Past
How do you achieve excellence?…Stop doing non-excellent stuff!
TOM PETERS

Achieve Excellence Stuff
One simply cannot pay tribute to Stephen Covey without saying at the outset that he was a lovely human being.
TOM PETERS

Human Lovely Pay Tribute
I don’t want the 35-year-olds in my audience to think of me as as ‘pops’ giving the kind of advice that only 65-year-olds can understand.
TOM PETERS

Giving Thinking Understand Years
Passion. The life of an entrepreneur is occasionally exhilarating, and almost always exhausting. Only unbridled passion for the concept is likely to see you through the 17-hour days (month after month) and the painful mistakes that are part and parcel of the start-up process.
TOM PETERS

Concept Exhilarating Mistake Occasionally Passion Peace
The good news – and it is largely good news – is that everyone has a chance to stand out. Everyone has a chance to learn, improve, and build up their skills. Everyone has a chance to be a brand worthy of remark
TOM PETERS

Builds Chance Everyone News Skills
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
Integrity may be about little things as much or more than big ones.
TOM PETERS

Integrity Littles May
The company’s most urgent task is to learn to welcome, beg for, demand – innovation from everyone.
TOM PETERS

Demand Innovation Tasks
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
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 simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.
TOM PETERS

Positive Productive Work Simple
If the person you delegated to does the job twice as well as you would have done it, consider yourself a leader.
TOM PETERS

Consider Deligated Jobs Leader
Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence – only in constant improvement and constant change.
TOM PETERS

Educational Inspirational Loyalty
Listen to Everyone. Ideas come from everywhere
TOM PETERS

Everyone Everywhere Ideas Listen
Learning is a matter of intensity not elapsed time.
TOM PETERS

Learning Matter Teaching
Leaders’ careers will usually be determined by their handling of one or two critical events that no one could possibly anticipate or plan for.
TOM PETERS

Careers Leadership Two
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
I find digital content much easier and more rewarding to interact with on screen than printed on paper.
TOM PETERS

Digital Easier Paper
Portability of lots of information should not be underestimated.
TOM PETERS

Information Portability Should
Mistakes are life. Mistakes are not to be tolerated…they are to be encouraged. The bigger the better.
TOM PETERS

Bigger Encouraged Mistake
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
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Tom Peters Quotes