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Tom Peters Quotes

Tom Peters

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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
Collection: Kings
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If not excellence, what? If not excellence now, when?
- Tom Peters
Collection: What If
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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.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Mistake
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Formula for success: Underpromise and overachieve.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Business
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The 'value added' for most any company, tiny or enormous, comes from the Quality of Experience provided.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Quality
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The market may never coalesce around one basic design, or even around two or three dominant devices.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Two
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An era similar to the one in which the black rotary phone dominated its product category may not recur anytime soon.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Phones
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Books were rare,expensive, time-consuming to create and copy, and difficult to transport. That is why collections ofprint-based books developed around centers of religious belief, learning, and wealth. It was cheaper andeasier for people to come to the collection than for the collection, or parts of the collection, to go to thepeople.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Religious
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Hire attitude train skills.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Attitude
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You can't live life without an eraser.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Live Life
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OLD: Be No.1 or No.2 in Your Market. NEW: Find a Niche, Create Something New.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Entrepreneur
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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.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Change
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If you love your company and love what you do, you will serve your customers better-period!
- Tom Peters
Collection: Business
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The difference between great and average is, mostly, having the imagination and zeal to re-create yourself daily.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Average
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WORK ON YOUR STORY! He/she who has the best story wins! In life! In business! The White House!
- Tom Peters
Collection: Business
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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.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Trying
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Mistakes are life. Mistakes are not to be tolerated...they are to be encouraged. The bigger the better.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Mistake
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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.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Important
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Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Rewards
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Integrity may be about little things as much or more than big ones.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Integrity
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You have to stand out if you want to move up.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Moving
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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.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Book
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Progress is mostly the product of rogues.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Progress
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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.
- Tom Peters
Collection: War
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Organizations exist to serve. Period. Leaders live to serve. Period.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Organization
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Only pissed-off people change the world.
- Tom Peters
Collection: People
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OPPORTUNITY is not "knocking." It is pounding on your door.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Opportunity
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Innovation comes only from readily and seamlessly sharing information rather than hoarding it.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Information Sharing
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TRUST, not technology, is the issue of the decade.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Technology
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Customers perceive service in their own unique, idiosyncratic, emotional, irrational, end-of-the-day, and totally human terms. Perception is all there is!
- Tom Peters
Collection: Funny
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Unless you walk out into the unknown, the odds of making a profound difference in your life are pretty low.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Success
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Never, ever rest on your laurels. Today's laurels are tomorrow's compost.
- Tom Peters
Collection: History
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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.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Change
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It doesn't matter what product or service you're offering; there is unlimited ability to improve the quality of anything.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Offering
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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.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Phones
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There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity
- Tom Peters
Collection: Integrity
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Only those who constantly retool themselves stand a chance of staying employed in the years ahead.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Years
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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.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Simple
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The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say 'I'. They don't think 'I'. They think 'we'; they think 'team'.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Leadership
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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.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Creativity
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They say plan it. I say do it.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Plans
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Appreciation, applause, approval, respect - we all love it!
- Tom Peters
Collection: Appreciation
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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.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Running
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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.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Home
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Advantage comes not from the spectacular or the technical. Advantage comes from a persistent seeking of the mundane edge.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Motivational
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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
Collection: Educational
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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. Yes, it can be - and often is - abused, in business as in all arenas of endeavor. But it can also be used to do great good for great numbers. And as a career-building tool, the slow and steady (and subtle) amassing of power is the surest road to success.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Business
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In the great city of San Francisco, where I used to live, at 2 in the morning every other Victorian house has somebody who is writing the great American novel. And the city is not loaded with James Joyces or Virginia Woolfs. But entrepreneurship is about distorted views of reality.
- Tom Peters
Collection: Morning
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Are Your Customers saying WOW?
- Tom Peters
Collection: Wow

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