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For me, reading is reading.

Tom Peters

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
Swipe from the best, then adapt.
TOM PETERS

Business Innovation Innovative
Leadership is about tapping the wellsprings of human motivation – and about fundamental relations with one’s fellows.
TOM PETERS

Fundamentals Leadership Motivation
Execution Excellence! (Show up on time! Leave last!)
TOM PETERS

Entrepreneur Excellence Lasts
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
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.
TOM PETERS

Coffee Kids Passion
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
Gandhi and Mandela and Churchill and JFK and Reagan and Thatcher and Sarkozy and Franklin and Washington set the tone to an incredible degree-their “personal style” was their “brand.” (“It” starts with personal style of the tip-top leadership team.
TOM PETERS

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

Faster Moving Race
The difference between great and average is, mostly, having the imagination and zeal to re-create yourself daily.
TOM PETERS

Average Differences Imagination
Develop a respect and reverence for the principle of variation: the idea that the message ain’t in the mean, the mode or the median – it’s in the differences that occur throughout a population.
TOM PETERS

Differences Educational Ideas Mean Occur
Some people have argued that listening to a work of literature does not really promote literacy in the same way that reading does.
TOM PETERS

Challenges People Reading
Forget loyalty. Or at least loyalty to one’s corporation. Try loyalty to your Rolodex-your network-instead.
TOM PETERS

Corporations Loyalty Trying
What is my personal strategy for the next 10 hours? Who can I talk with or what can I volunteer for to learn something new?
TOM PETERS

Next Strategy Volunteer
Bold botches are to be cherished.
TOM PETERS

Botches Cherished Country People
Excellence is not an aspiration. Excellence is what you do in the next five minutes.
TOM PETERS

Excellence Minutes Next
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
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
If your company has a clean-desk policy, the company is nuts and you’re nuts to stay there.
TOM PETERS

Clean Desk Company Nuts Office Policy
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
Knowing when to take your losses is an essential part of eventual success.
TOM PETERS

Essentials Knowing Loss
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
The thing that keeps a business ahead of the competition is excellence in execution.
TOM PETERS

Business Competition Excellence
Listen to Everyone. Ideas come from everywhere
TOM PETERS

Everyone Everywhere Ideas Listen
Treat the customer as an appreciating asset.
TOM PETERS

Appreciate Assets Business
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

For me, reading is reading.

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For me, reading is reading.

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