The dumbest mistake is viewing design as something you do at the end of the process to ‘tidy up’ the mess, as opposed to understanding it’s a ‘day one’ issue and part of everything.
TOM PETERSWho 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.
More Tom Peters Quotes
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Leaders win through logistics. Vision, sure. Strategy, yes. But when you go to war, you need to have both toilet paper and bullets at the right place at the right time. In other words, you must win through superior logistics.
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What you decide not to do is probably more important that what you decide to do.
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To meet the demands of the fast-changing competitive scene, we must simply learn to love change as much as we have hated it in the past.
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Smile if it kills you. The physiology of smiling diffuses a lot of anger and angst. It makes your body and soul feel better.
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Formula for success: under promise and over deliver.
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A completely free library is as rare as a truly free lunch.
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The thing that keeps a business ahead of the competition is excellence in execution.
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Mistakes are life. Mistakes are not to be tolerated…they are to be encouraged. The bigger the better.
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Customers perceive service in their own unique, idiosyncratic, emotional, irrational, end-of-the-day, and totally human terms. Perception is all there is!
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Vision is dandy, but sustainable company excellence comes from a huge stable of able managers.
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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
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Business ceases to be work when you’re chasing a dream that has engorged you. (“Work should be more fun than fun” – Noel Coward.) And if the passion isn’t there. then biotech and plumbing will be equal drags.
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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.
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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.
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Winners must learn to relish change with the same enthusiasm and energy that we have resisted it in the past.
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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.
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I still read quite a few printed books, but if something is available in digital format I do not print it before I read it.
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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!
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You can’t live life without an eraser.
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I believe in the age of the Internet, Facebook and Twitter, that relationships are everything.
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Momentum is a fragile force. Its worst enemy: procrastination. Its best friend: a deadline (think Election Day). Implication no. 1 (and there is no no. 2): Get to work! NOW!
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Bold botches are to be cherished.
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I think economics is about passion. Economic progress, whether it is a two-person coffee shop or whether it is Netscape, is about people with brave ideas. Because it is brave to mortgage the house, when you’ve got two kids, to start a coffee shop.
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Progress is mostly the product of rogues.
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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.
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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