Het woord ’Excellence’ werd lang gelden door TomPeters op de kaart gezet en los van de wat opdringerige stijl van Tom Peters zelf, blijven een aantal quotes van hem hangen: ’Fail fast, Learn Fast’, is één van mijn favorieten. Weinig mensen, bedrijven kijken zo tegen ’mislukken’ aan. Recent was hij in de buurt en nu staan zijn sheets online; ze zijn in dezelfde schreeuwerige stijl, maar ook hier zitten prachtige tussen. Wat zou het zijn om hem op ons volgende netwerk-event te hebben!

Tags: TomPeters

Ooit had Bert Visscher de 3 E’s (zie hier) van adviseren; Tom Peters zou niet zichzelf zijn als hij er niet 19 (een beetje veel) wist te produceren! Hier de 19 E’s van Excellence:

• Enthusiasm. (Be an irresistible force of nature!)
• Energy. (Be fire! Light fires!)
• Exuberance. (Vibrate—cause earthquakes!)
• Execution. (Do it! Now! Get it done! Barriers are baloney! Excuses are for wimps! Accountability is gospel! Adhere to the Bill Parcells doctrine: "Blame nobody! Expect nothing! Do something!")
• Empowerment. (Respect and appreciation rule! Always ask, "What do you think?" Then listen! Then let go and liberate! Then celebrate!)
• Edginess. (Perpetually dancing at the frontier, and a little or a lot beyond.)
• Enraged. (Determined to challenge & change the status quo!)
  
• Engaged. (Addicted to MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around. In touch. Always.)
  
• Electronic. (Partners with the world 60/60/24/7 via electronic community building and entanglement of every sort. Crowdsourcing rules!)
  
• Encompassing. (Relentlessly pursue diverse opinions—the more diversity the merrier! Diversity per se "works"!)
  
• Emotion. (The alpha. The omega. The essence of leadership. The essence of sales. The essence of marketing. The essence. Period. Acknowledge it.)
  
• Empathy. (Connect, connect, connect with others' reality and aspirations! "Walk in the other person’s shoes"—until the soles have holes!)
  
• Experience. (Life is theater! Make every activity-contact memorable! Standard: "Insanely Great"/Steve Jobs; "Radically Thrilling"/BMW.)
  
• Eliminate. (Keep it simple!)
  
• Errorprone. (Ready! Fire! Aim! Try a lot of stuff and make a lot of booboos and then try some more stuff and make some more booboos—all of it at the speed of light!)
  
• Evenhanded. (Straight as an arrow! Fair to a fault! Honest as Abe!)
  
• Expectations. (Michelangelo: "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." Amen!)
  
• Eudaimonia. (Pursue the highest of human moral purpose—the core of Aristotle's philosophy. Be of service. Always.)
  
• Excellence. (The only standard! Never an exception! Start now! No excuses! If not Excellence, what? If not Excellence now, when?)

Tags: TomPeters | Excellence

Tom Peters publiceerde hier zijn lijst met de 114 wetten van Innovatie; deze (vanaf 102) vond ik het mooist:

Commitment to Excellence in Innovation. Or Bust.
102. Innovation is fun.
103. Innovation is a glorious way of life.
104. Innovation is scary. (But what is life without risk? Living death!)
105. Innovation is enthusiasm.
106. Innovation is passion.
107. Innovation is a matchless source of pride.
108. Innovation is life at the speed of light.
109. ..... 114. Excellence in innovation.
We can’t all be Apple or Cirque du Soleil or Basement Systems Inc.
But we can damn well die trying.

Tags: TomPeters | Innovatie

Met dank aan OneTrickPony.

Tags: TomPeters | Gedachten

Een aardig boek is zojuist verschenen, The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't), van Professor Alvin S. Felzenberg (Universiteit van Pennsylvania). In dit boek gaat Felzenberg niet simpel de rijtjes af van grootste successen (Lincoln?) en mislukkingen (Bush Jr.?), maar onderzocht de kwaliteit van alle Amerikaanse presidenten in een aantal categorien: karakter, visie, competentie, buitenlands beleid, economische politiek, mensenrechten en 'nalatenschap'. En wat blijkt? Degenen die het best overall scoren blinken op de volgende aspecten uit:

• Een helder doel voor ogen hebben ('Purpose'): “Nearly all presidents who earned a rating of great or near great articulated specific goals that they wanted to achieve as president.”

• Tegenslag is een leermoment: “All of he great and near great presidents emerged from conflicts and disappointments they encountered stronger and more resilient ten they had before. This is what made their previous ordeals transformative. All regarded these adversities as learning experiences, however painful. None emerged from such setbacks regarding themselves as victims. None were known to complain or whine—at least out loud or in public—about their private misfortunes.”

• Brede levenservaring: “Most great and near great presidents had multiple occupations, not all of them in politics, before coming president. Through the depth and breadth of their experiences, successful presidents learned how to relate to people in all walks of life.”

• Een natuurlijke nieuwsgierigheid: “Great of near great presidents remained curious all their lives about the world around them and about the cause of the problems they were called upon to solve.”

• Sterk gevoel voor integriteit: "Look for honesty (“doing what one said he would do, or explaining why unforeseen circumstances necessitated a different course”), courage (‘meeting adversity head-on, often at political or personal risk”), and integrity (“placing the interests of one’s office and one’s country ahead of personal convenience or interests, or those of one’s associates”)."

• Bescheidenheid: “Although confident in their abilities, successful presidents held their egos in check. All great and near great presidents understood that they would receive the credit for the achievements of their subordinates. For this reason they strove to find outstanding ones…including on occasion, former rivals and members of the opposition party.”

Klinkt als Mourkogiannis (Purpose) meets Collins (Good to Great) meets Peters (In search of Excellence). Is het dan toch waar?

Tags: Leiderschap | Purpose | GoodtoGreat | TomPeters | JFK

Tom Peters (nee ik heb geen hotline) publiceert tegelijkertijd met mijn verhaal over de Napoleon-passie zijn verhaal over 'passion' waarin hij stelt:

The real soft stuff is the numbers in the plan. The real hard stuff, passion, energy, values, character, enthusiasm.

Zijn hele verhaal is:

I’ve talked about passion until I was blue in the face for 25 or 30 years. I was in Switzerland, Interlaken, a couple of years ago. And I gave a speech, and I was interviewed by a member of the press—and yes go on with your Swiss jokes—but at any rate, she said to me—she was a young woman—and she said, “Why do you go on about all these things like passion?”

And I said, “Okay.” I said, “I’m not sure I know how to explain something like that, but let’s try it this way.” I said, “Let’s put 15 years onto your life. Let’s subtract 15 years from my life. You and I have had a dream. And that dream was to create a restaurant. Well, we have decided to take the plunge. Each of us somehow or other has managed to accumulate 100,000 dollars in our bank account. And we are going to do a restaurant. We’re able to find a reasonable piece of property to build it on. We’re actually able to find ourselves a great chef. And now the time comes to hire the waiters, the waitresses, the bus boys, the dishes people, and so on. And this afternoon we’re hiring a waiter. And we interview two people. And one of the people comes in, and he’s worked in a restaurant for 14 years, and he knows a fork from a knife. There is no issue about that. The other one is a woman who has not, maybe even been to a restaurant. But here’s the deal. He comes up with an absolute recitation about how he understands the restaurant business; she comes in—you’ve seen it, I’ve seen it—she lights up the room. Now here’s the deal. You and I are betting the table, we’re betting the money that we have accumulated with incredibly hard work over a 15 year period, and we’ve got to make a choice. Who do we hire? Mr. I Understand Knives and Forks, or Ms. I Light Up the Room. And this is not a sexiest thing. He can light up the room, and she could be the person who knows the difference between knives and forks. And to me it’s as obvious as the end of your nose. Whether it’s a waiter or a waitress, it is a person with energy, passion, enthusiasm. And now I want you to understand it’s the same thing in a finance department. Because the definition of a finance department that works is when the people in the finance department are helping the people that they serve, in fact, become better businesswomen or businessmen.”

What kind of a world— The soft stuff. Waterman and I said it—Bob Waterman and I said it—in In Search of Excellence 26 years ago. We said, “Hard is soft; soft is hard.” The real soft stuff is the numbers in the plan. The real hard stuff, passion, energy, values, character, enthusiasm.

Tags: People | Passie | TomPeters

Tom Peters (wat ouder en dunner geworden) geeft nog eens aan waar het allemaal om gaat:

Toen Robert Altman zijn Oscar kreeg vatte die het wellicht het mooist samen: "The director allows an actor to become more than they've ever dreamed of being" (director = leider en actor = medewerker).

Tags: Quotes | TomPeters | Leiderschap

Tom Peters zei ooit; 'Failure is good; no fast screw-ups, no fast learning, no big screw-ups, no big learning'. Kijk maar eens waar dat toe kan leiden:

Tags: TomPeters

De wereldberoemde ‘loudmouth’ Tom Peters (In search of Excellence) gaat even los over managers, die zonder energie en passie met hun onderneming aan de slag gaan. Of zoals hij Leonardo da Vinci aanhaalt: ‘het grootste risico is niet om hoog te mikken en het niet te halen, maar om laag te mikken en het wel te halen’. Even smullen!

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