Tom Peters
Born in Baltimore in 1942 "with a lacrosse stick in one hand and oars over my shoulder," Peters resided in California, mainly Silicon Valley (where he was on a list of "100 most powerful people in Silicon Valley"), from 1965–2000. Today, Peters and his wife Susan Sargent live on a 1,600-acre working farm, "always under construction," in Vermont. His two stepsons, Max and Ben Cooper, are "busy changing the world" in Telluride and Brooklyn respectively.
Peters is a civil engineering graduate of Cornell (B.C.E., M.C.E.), where he is included in the book The 100 Most Notable Cornellians and earned an MBA and Ph.D. in business at Stanford; he holds honorary doctorates from institutions that range from the University of San Francisco to the State University of Management in Moscow—and has been honored by dozens of associations in content areas such as management, leadership, quality, human resources, customer service, innovation, marketing, and design. In the U.S. Navy from 1966–1970, he made two deployments to Vietnam (as a combat engineer in the fabled Navy Seabees) and "survived a tour in the Pentagon." He was a White House drug-abuse advisor in 1973–74 and then worked at McKinsey & Co. from 1974–1981, becoming a Partner in 1979; he also co-founded McKinsey's now gargantuan Organization Effectiveness practice. Peters' chief avocations are "brushcutting in the summer, hiking in New Zealand in the winter, reading history books by the hundredweight, collecting weird friends, talking to cab drivers, visiting Venice and racing George Clooney in accumulating frequent flyer miles."
“Branding is about everything.”
“The “Excellence Standard” is not about Grand Outcomes. In Zenlike terms, all we have is today. If the day’s work cannot be assessed as Excellent, then the oceanic overall goal of Excellence has not been advanced. Period.”
“The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.”
“The little people will get even, which is one of a thousand reasons why they are not little people at all. If you're a jerk as a leader, you will be torpedoed. And usually it won't be by your vice presidents; it will be on the loading dock at 3am when no supervisors are around.”
“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.”
“There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity”
“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.”
“Underpromise;overdeliver.”
“If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.”