strategy+business, July 10, 2018
by Theodore Kinni
A couple of years ago, prior to an interview with Tom Peters, I visited his website to see what he was up to. I found the answer in a gargantuan 4,000-slide PowerPoint deck that Peters titled, with his trademark typographic hyperbole, “THE WORKS.” By way of introduction to the deck, he wrote, “Make no mistake…THIS IS A 17-CHAPTER BOOK…which happens to be in PowerPoint format.”
The Excellence Dividend punctuates that claim almost as well as the ! that Peters adopted as his corporate logo after two years of noodling 25 years ago. The paperback is an annotated version of “The Works” — a fleshed-out outline that frequently depends on fonts to make its points.
The CEO’s first commandment, per Peters?
“CEO Job #1 is setting — and micro-nourishing, one day, one hour, one minute at a time — an effective people-truly-first, innovate-or-die, excellence-or-bust corporate culture.
The key words in my declaration are…
one day, one hour, one minute at a time.”
The best way to keep up in a fast-changing world?
“READ! READ!! READ!!! READ!!!!”
The world’s most underserved market?
“W = >2 x (C + I) = $28T
Women’s Market Size = More Than Two Times China Plus India Combined = $28 Trillion”
Swallowing such a book whole is exhausting, mainly because it is delivered with such brio and packed with enough insight and advice to keep you busy for the next 50 years. When I review a book, I fold page corners, underline in ink, and scrawl marginalia. I folded so many pages in The Excellence Dividend that its top right corner is half again as thick as the rest of the book. I ran a new pen dry while reading it; at first I thought the pen was defective.
The Excellence Dividend punctuates that claim almost as well as the ! that Peters adopted as his corporate logo after two years of noodling 25 years ago. The paperback is an annotated version of “The Works” — a fleshed-out outline that frequently depends on fonts to make its points.
The CEO’s first commandment, per Peters?
“CEO Job #1 is setting — and micro-nourishing, one day, one hour, one minute at a time — an effective people-truly-first, innovate-or-die, excellence-or-bust corporate culture.
The key words in my declaration are…
one day, one hour, one minute at a time.”
The best way to keep up in a fast-changing world?
“READ! READ!! READ!!! READ!!!!”
The world’s most underserved market?
“W = >2 x (C + I) = $28T
Women’s Market Size = More Than Two Times China Plus India Combined = $28 Trillion”
Swallowing such a book whole is exhausting, mainly because it is delivered with such brio and packed with enough insight and advice to keep you busy for the next 50 years. When I review a book, I fold page corners, underline in ink, and scrawl marginalia. I folded so many pages in The Excellence Dividend that its top right corner is half again as thick as the rest of the book. I ran a new pen dry while reading it; at first I thought the pen was defective.
As you may be starting to suspect, The Excellence Dividend is a 450-page boldbardment of ideas, facts, figures, memes, and manifestos. Peters calls it the sum total of his 50-year career, more than half of which he’s spent as a leading light of management thought. Read the rest here.
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