Tom peters quotes

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

Mistakes are life. Mistakes are not to be tolerated...they are to be encouraged. The bigger the better.

It's this simple: You are a brand. You are in charge of your brand. There is no single path to success. And there is no one right way to create the brand called You. Except this: Start today. Or else.

Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.

Customers perceive service in their own unique, idiosyncratic, emotional, irrational, end-of-the-day, and totally human terms. Perception is all there is!

Don't 'tolerate' mistakes. Embrace them!

Brand inside is more important than brand outside for sustained success.

Do it, fix it, try it.

With most competitors moving ever faster, the race will go to those who listen (and respond) most intently.

Nearly 100% of innovation-from business to politics-is inspired not by "market analysis" but by people who are supremely pissed off by the way things are.

If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.

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.

Only pissed-off people change the world.

Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders.

If you're a leader, your whole reason for living is to help human beings develop - to really develop people and make work a place that's energetic and exciting and a growth opportunity, whether you're running a Housekeeping Department or Google. I mean, this is not rocket science.

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.

And remember: Everything in business is a paradox. To be excellent, you have to be consistent. When you're consistent, you're vulnerable to attack. Yes, it's a paradox. Now deal with it!

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

We are all Michaelangelos.

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.

The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.

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.

Unless you walk out into the unknown, the odds of making a profound difference in your life are pretty low.

You can't live life without an eraser.

Perception is all there is. If the customer think he's right, he's right.

A passive approach to professional growth will leave you by the wayside.

If I read a book that cost me $20 and I get one good idea, I've gotten one of the greatest bargains of all time.

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

TRUST, not technology, is the issue of the decade.

OLD: Be No.1 or No.2 in Your Market. NEW: Find a Niche, Create Something New.

The thing that keeps a business ahead of the competition is excellence in execution.

Treat the customer as an appreciating asset.

Lavish credit on anyone and everyone who helped you the least bit.

Formula for success: Underpromise and overachieve.

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.

Smile if it kills you. The physiology of smiling diffuses a lot of anger and angst. It makes your body and soul feel better.

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

The winners stun us not by their cleverness, but by the fact that every tiny aspect of the business is just a touch better than the norm.

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.

Have you set high standards in the past that make it clear what level of performance you demand?

Effective listening is a professional achievement-achieved only through hard work.

Vision is dandy, but sustainable company excellence comes from a huge stable of able managers.

Today brands are everything, and all kinds of products and services - from accounting firms to sneaker makers to restaurants - are figuring out how to transcend the narrow boundaries of their categories and become a brand surrounded by a Tommy Hilfiger-like buzz.

If not excellence, what? If not excellence now, when?

If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade.

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.

OPPORTUNITY is not "knocking." It is pounding on your door.

How do you achieve excellence?...Stop doing non-excellent stuff!

We're going to see leadership emerge as the most important element of business - the attribute that is highest in demand and shortest in supply.

Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.

You will be remembered, in the long haul, for the quality of your work, not the quantity of your work. No one evaluates Picasso based on the number of paintings he churned out.

To sell is above all to master the art and science of listening.

Innovation comes only from readily and seamlessly sharing information rather than hoarding it.

Excellence comes from human beings doing things of value that customers find memorable.

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.

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!

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

Remember my mantra: distinct... or extinct.

Don't settle for less than is possible.

Appreciation, applause, approval, respect - we all love it!

Companies have got to learn to eat change for breakfast.

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say 'I'. They don't think 'I'. They think 'we'; they think 'team'.

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

Hire attitude train skills.

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

Listen while you can, so that you can lead when you must.

One percent improvement in 1,000 things is better than 1,000% improvement in one thing.

Entrepreneurs have no memories. They take on the world with a completely fresh view.

As a consumer, you want to associate with brands whose powerful presence creates a halo effect that rubs off on you.

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

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.

It doesn't matter what product or service you're offering; there is unlimited ability to improve the quality of anything.

Are you placing enough interesting, freakish, long shot, weirdo bets?

If you love your company and love what you do, you will serve your customers better-period!

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

Organizations exist to serve. Period. Leaders live to serve. Period.

Excellent firms don't believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change.

There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity

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

WORK ON YOUR STORY! He/she who has the best story wins! In life! In business! The White House!

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.

The best leaders... almost without exception and at every level, are master users of stories and symbols.

Change is not so much about being the first one to embrace a new idea, but being the first to forget an old one

If no one is pissed-off with you then you are dead but just haven't figured it out yet.

Success requires a persistent misreading of the odds.

You can only improve what you measure.

There is no such thing as an insignificant improvement.

Progress is mostly the product of rogues.

Never, ever rest on your laurels. Today's laurels are tomorrow's compost.

Formula for success: under promise and over deliver.

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.'

Excellence is not an aspiration. Excellence is what you do in the next five minutes.

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.

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.

If the person you delegated to does the job twice as well as you would have done it, consider yourself a leader.

It's not enough to be close to the customer. You've got to be glued to the customer.

Learning is a matter of intensity not elapsed time.

The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.

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.

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

Hire for attitude. Train for skill... More

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.

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.

The 'value added' for most any company, tiny or enormous, comes from the Quality of Experience provided.

You have to stand out if you want to move up.

Listen to Everyone. Ideas come from everywhere

They say plan it. I say do it.

I imagine a school system that recognizes learning is natural, that a love of learning is normal, and that real learning is passionate learning. A school curriculum that values questions above answers...creativity above fact regurgitation...individuality above conformity.. and excellence above standardized performance..... And we must reject all notions of 'reform' that serve up more of the same: more testing, more 'standards', more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy.

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

The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget old ideas.

There are few things that will take you further in life, than your ability to make a good presentation.

Leadership is about tapping the wellsprings of human motivation - and about fundamental relations with one's fellows.

In today's economy there are no experts, no 'best and brightest' with all the answers. It's up to each one of us. The only way to screw up is to not try anything.

Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.

We cannot innovate without opening the door to havoc.

The trouble with much of the advice business gets today about the need to be more vigorously creative is that its advocates often fail to distinguish between creativity and innovation. Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things... The shortage is of innovators.

What gets measured gets done.

Only those who constantly retool themselves stand a chance of staying employed in the years ahead.

Leaders understand the ultimate power of relationships.

Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me, Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.

Integrity may be about little things as much or more than big ones.

Divas do it, golfers do it, pilots do it, violists do it, sprinters do it, soldiers do it, surgeons do it, astronauts do it...only business people think it isn't necessary to train.

Celebrate what you want to see more of.

The top athletes are consummate pros who work obsessively at their craft. Approach yours the same way.

Cost does not equal value... and low cost parts decrease brand equity for a very long time.