On March 31, American Tom Peters retired. Peters, one of the best-known management gurus of the past forty years, turned eighty in November. „That’s old, bro!”, he writes on his site.
In 1978, Dr. Thomas Peters was asked by his employer McKinsey to conduct research with colleague Robert Waterman into the success factors of high-performing companies.
Together they wrote the book about it In Search of Excellence – Excellent companies in Dutch – which became an instant bestseller in 1982 and is still being reprinted.
Waterman continued his career as a consultant and director. But Peters became an international star.
Until then, most business speakers were calm men who could speech a room to sleep fluently. Peters, however, raged across the stage, challenging the audience and grossing self-mockery.
His creative and provocative presentation style led – according to Peters’ own count – to more than 2,500 lectures in 63 countries.
A few key ideas from his work.
Excellency. This means that ordinary people perform fantastically on an average day, Peters and Waterman stated in their debut. Twenty years later, Peters summed up the book: “In Search of Excellence revolves around three words: employees, customers and action. Before that it was: numbers, bureaucracy and control. It’s about soft things, because soft is hard. That was a revolutionary message. And we got away with it because we came from McKinsey and wore suits.” According to Peters, employees must be able to behave like entrepreneurs. Constantly interacting with the customer. Acting independently, without being hindered by all kinds of ‘Mickey Mouse rules’.Innovation. According to Peters, the core of entrepreneurship. “You do a few things. Most fail. Some things work. You will do more of that. If something works really well, it will be copied by others. And then you do something else. The trick is in the latter: doing something different.” The speed at which you innovate is essential. How much time is there between your idea and the first prototype of your new service or product, something you can try out in the market? Innovation is also about modesty, according to Peters. You have to realize that all the great things you come up with today will be obsolete tomorrow.People. Not the managers or the shareholders, but the people who do the work, are central to Peters. Only when those people flourish does the business flourish. Moreover, every person simply deserves respect and fun work. In his recent publications, Peters also argues for what he ‘extreme humanism‘ calls. Kindness and compassion are more important than efficiency and targets.
According to him, an essential question is who you appoint as a manager in an organization. Never make the best salesperson the boss of the other salespeople, says Peters. The people you want as a leader are people who love people. That is the secret of truly successful organizations.
Have forty years of writing and speaking changed the world? Peters himself is skeptical. In a recent podcast, he said, “If I give a speech in front of a thousand people and three people go home and say, holy shit, I’m going to do a few things differently, I’ll have a great day.”
Ben Tiggelaar writes weekly about personal leadership, work and management.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of April 15, 2023.