Tom Peters Quotes - Page 5

I urge you to set a tough, quantitative target for adding "differentiators" as I call them, to every service you provide.

Inspiring visions rarely (I'm tempted to say never) include numbers.

Creating in all employees the awareness that their best efforts are essential and that they will share in the rewards of the company's success.

A while back, I came across a line attributed to IBM founder Thomas Watson. If you want to achieve excellence, he said, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.

Success requires a persistent misreading of the odds.

I don't want an epitaph on my gravestone that says, 'He would have pursued some big dreams in his life, but other people wouldn't let him.

Execution Excellence! (Show up on time! Leave last!)

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. Now that I have adopted into my own daily life a device that makes music and spoken-word files easy to access from anywhere, I have tempered my skepticism.

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.

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

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

Companies have got to learn to eat change for breakfast.

I don't read many business books. I read good fiction. Business is about people, so my favorite business books are anything by Dickens.

A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand.

We are all Michaelangelos.

For the blue-collar worker, the driving force behind change was factory automation using programmable machine tools. For the office worker, it's office automation using computer technology: enterprise-resource-planning systems, groupware, intranets, extranets, expert systems, the Web, and e-commerce.

Design is so critical it should be on the agenda of every meeting in every single department.

Winston Churchill said that appetite was the most important thing about education. Leadership guru Warren Bennis says he wants to be remembered as 'curious to the end.' David Ogilvy contends that the greatest ad copywriters are marked by an insatiable curiosity 'about every subject under the sun.'

Nothing good or great can be done in the absence of enthusiasm.

The little people will get even, which is one of a thousand reasons why they are not little people at all. If you're a jerk as a leader, you will be torpedoed. And usually it won't be by your vice presidents; it will be on the loading dock at 3am when no supervisors are around.

Ready, fire, aim. Do it! Make it happen! Action counts. No one ever sat their way to success.

Do it, fix it, try it.

Obviously, despite hard work and heroic efforts, many dreams don't come true. But if we don't dare to dream and then throw muscle, heart, and soul into making the dream come true, then WoW Projects-and all of the emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and financial riches that they bring will surely NOT be our lot in life!

Don't settle for less than is possible.

You can't think your way out of a box; you've got to act.