Re-Imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age

I love Tom Peters. I love his enthusiasm, his positive outlook, and his motivating ideas on how to excel in our dynamic, ever changing workplace. This book is pure Tom, wonderfully insightful and covering most of his current themes. Once you get into (or past) his slightly frantic magazine-like format you'll be well rewarded as he hip-hops from topic to topic covering everything White-Collar Cataclysm (and how to survive it) to bringing Weird and Wow to the workplace. If you're going to be in the workplace for the next 10+ years, I strongly recommend you pick it up! Some of my favorite quips from the book: * Innovation comes from pissed off people. * Embrace failure! We avoid failures but we must embrace it. We must glory in the murk and muss that yields true innovation. * It's easier to kill then change. It's easier to make Walmart then change Sears. * "Good" management was the most powerful reason that leading firms failed to stay atop their industries. * For 2 decades we have outsourced blue-collar jobs, now comes white-collar jobs. * Culture isn't just 1 aspect of the game - it is the game! (Lou Gerstner) * Design is the #1 determinant on whether a product-service-experience stands out, or not. * Engage your folks. Make things that are cool and that work. Stick your neck out. * No body gives you power. You just take it. Obeying the rules is obeying their rules. Astonish me. Build something great. Make it immortal. * Getting Things done is ultimately not about power or rank. It's about passion and imagination and persistence. * Never accept an assignment as it is given. You are never so powerful as when you're "powerless". * Every "small" project contains the DNA of the entire enterprise. * Fail, Forward, Fast. Fail sooner, succeed sooner. * Find Heroes. Do Demos. Tell Stories. * Know Your Product - Have true, deep knowledge of your product. * Success = Sales Success! Everywhere. Period. We're All in Sales. All the Time. * Blame No One! Expect Nothing! Do Something! (NY Jets Locker Room by then-coach Bill Parcells) * Meet the New Boss: Women Rule! * Think Weird: The High Value-Added Bedrock * Be Performance oriented - to a fault. Collect the Best Dammed Group Of Talent possible and then convince them to go where they never imagined they could [...]

And mad he is. This book is far from academic but is has a good sarcastic and sometimes humoristic tone. I am sure that Tom (if he ever reads this) will deny EVER being humoristic in this book - but I choose to read it like this. I am a light-headed fellow. It has a very disturbing design - it reminds me of early web pages on the Internet. Structure and colour and yet no structure and what are those colours for? Reading it the 3rd time the design makes sense. You will see your favourite quotes pup out from the text and then it gets useful. Tom says the same as he have said for quite some years now. He has become surer of himself as it seems he is often right in many of his predictions. He is a great source of inspiration but don't expect to get respect from your boss if he sees this book on your desk. Either he has read it himself and will make a joke about it - or he will be afraid what changes you will propose to his strategy and management style during the near future. Just for this one reason - go get a copy and learn how Al Qaida can inspire you in how to organize your company (Sorry Tom - I couldn't help it). And more importantly - get yourself brushed off before you fall asleep in your corner office or cubicle.

Tom Peters explodes back to the spotlight with his latest tome on management. This book it Tom Peters at his loudest, Tom Peters at his most outlandish, and perhaps Tom Peters at his most insightful. Rather than traditional black and white text, the layout reads like a website, with color, graphics and quasi-hyperlinks to sidebars on every page. Some of the topics that he tackles head on:1 - The gross neglect of women in the marketplace. (Why don't we market better to the people controlling the $$$?)2 - The gross neglect of the emerging active elederly in the marketplace. (Similar comments)3 - The continuing need to fight a war for talent.4 - The growing importance of design.5 - The movement to automate and outsource all routine work.6 - Given the above, the need to rewire and rethink the enterprise.The overall premise is that these aren't times of incremental change, these are times for drastic change. While much of corporate America is hunkering down, this book shouts that we need to be looking broadly. What can we do that is unique that can't be replaced by a $50 microprocesser? And of what's left, what can be uniquely be done in the US versus India? With this knowledge, how do we manage our careers and organizations? It certainly forces a hard look at our current reality.There are a lot of negatives that can be heaped on this book:1 - He's too over the top.2 - He just doesn't get the realities of the workplace.3 - It's not internally consistent.4 - The layout is just too "in your face".Net - If you're looking for a calm book that will help you do your current job better, this isn't it. (Think "the Effective Executive" by Drucker for a great work on that line.) If you're looking to get some "Ahas" about how to rethink about the world, this is it. Nobody will agree with everything, but everyone will come away thinking about something.When I first read this book, I thought, "He's off his rocker. Again!" Then I looked back to the last time I thought that - when he wrote "Liberation Management" It turned into one of the most influential books of my career. Based on that gut feel, I believe that this book trumps much of what Tom has written in the past several years (in fact, it includes much of what was written in his last 3 mini-books) and ranks with "Liberation Management" and "In Search of Excellence" as his masterpieces.More than anything else, the book made me think. I hope it does the same for you.

Tom Peters is the father of everything we know about work. And this book is the ultimate expression of his selfless quest to get us to WAKE UP, to innovate, to see what's unseen and do what needs to be done.The book is noisy, busy, brilliant, loud, insightful... a visual and verbal riot that can't be read on just one shuttle flight. Sort of a cross between a coffee table book and a Freudian analysis session...Hey--if traditional business books haven't been powerful enough, remarkable enough or in-our-face enough to have the right impact, this is the next tool of choice.I love Tom. You will too.Seth Godin

Okay, so there's not much new here; it's a lot of vintage Tom albeit expanded, revised, refuted, and re-packaged in an awesome (and mold-breaking) design. Worth the price of admission? Absolutely. Even though Tom's been making some of these points for decades, there's clearly a need for reiteration and re-amplification. Tom's ample side commentaries together with the new design transform this material into a kick-your-ass experience. On a BOS to ATL flight, I jotted a dozen pages of notes and ideas even though I'd read/seen/heard Tom present all of these topics a dozen or more times in twenty years. Still, Tom only hints at what I'd hoped he'd turn his prodigious talent to exploring, namely, the nobility of work that's possible if you let it happen. You sense that undergirding all these ideas is a unifying call to purpose, meaning, and (of course) excellence ... "work that matters". It's right there, but somehow Tom never quite brings it to the surface. Perhaps it's the civil engineer in him. Rarely do bridges or tunnels reveal the engineering separating us from a watery grave. So, there remain even greater questions for Tom to help us explore next time. Thanks again, Tom.