Everyone has a chance to learn, improve, and build up their skills.Collection: Chance
Celebrate what you want to see more of.Collection: New
Community organizing is all about building grassroots support. It's about identifying the people around you with whom you can create a common, passionate cause. And it's about ignoring the conventional wisdom of company politics and instead playing the game by very different rules.Collection: Politics
Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.Collection: Business
If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade.Collection: Leadership
All business success rests on something labeled a sale, which at least momentarily weds company and customer.Collection: Success
Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.Collection: Business
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.Collection: Technology
The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.Collection: Positive
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.Collection: Business
Business is about people. It's about passion. It's about bold ideas, bold small ideas or bold large ideas.Collection: Business
Design is so critical it should be on the agenda of every meeting in every single department.Collection: Design
Excellent firms don't believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change.Collection: Change
Stop being conned by the old mantra that says, 'Leaders are cool, managers are dweebs.' Instead, follow the Peters Principle: Leaders are cool. Managers are cool too!Collection: Cool
Communication is everyone's panacea for everything.Collection: Communication
Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.Collection: Leadership
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.
I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote 'Search.' There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove.
Mastery is great, but even that is not enough. You have to be able to change course without a bead of sweat, or remorse.
'In Search of Excellence' - even the title - is a reminder that business isn't dry, dreary, boring, or by the numbers. Life at work can be cool - and work that's cool isn't confined to Tiger Woods, Yo-Yo Ma, or Tom Hanks. It's available to all of us and any of us.
The best leaders... almost without exception and at every level, are master users of stories and symbols.
The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.
Winners must learn to relish change with the same enthusiasm and energy that we have resisted it in the past.
South Africa has all the tools to compete in the new global village - an eager workforce, ready to take on any challenge.
All white-collar work is project work. The single salient fact that touches all of our lives is that work is being reinvented.
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.
The workplace revolution that transformed the lives of blue-collar workers in the 1970s and 1980s is finally reaching the offices and cubicles of the white-collar workers.
We found that the most exciting environments, that treated people very well, are also tough as nails. There is no bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo... excellent companies provide two things simultaneously: tough environments and very supportive environments.
One simply cannot pay tribute to Stephen Covey without saying at the outset that he was a lovely human being.
I know it sounds crazy, but you've got to let what you're going to do find you, rather than you pursuing it.
Statistically and emotionally, I believe that the way I can be of help to society is by doing what I know and what I've been good at.
I don't want the 35-year-olds in my audience to think of me as as 'pops' giving the kind of advice that only 65-year-olds can understand.
The whole secret to our success is being able to con ourselves into believing that we're going to change the world because statistically we are unlikely to do it.
As far as I'm concerned, the first business leader who was able to establish a cult of personality around his tenure was Lee Iacocca.
As a consumer, you want to associate with brands whose powerful presence creates a halo effect that rubs off on you.
The top athletes are consummate pros who work obsessively at their craft. Approach yours the same way.
One of the biggest problems of 'In Search of Excellence' is that it focused on giant, publicly-traded companies. There are thousands upon thousands of excellent companies. Some of them are two-person accountancies in a community of three thousand people.
Business book writing for me is when some set of ideas gets stuck in my mind, I write a book about it. I haven't got a theory and I haven't got a framework.