Tom Peters

I confess I've probably read every Tom Peters book (up through 2003).

2020: his "tentative memoir title" https://twitter.com/tom_peters/status/1469735841396318216

Oct'2003: reading Re Imagine ISBN:078949647X (He associates its publisher, DK, with home/garden books, but I think of them as makers of big children's picture/info books.)

I'm getting rather annoyed that Tom's audience seems to be all BigCo Middle Management. His version of being an Entrepreneur is to make your HR department run like a Professional Service Firm.

Even his Brand You stuff seems targeted at someone who will jump from BigCo to BigCo in various slots.

But the New Economy transition seems to involve (musical) chairs being taken away at an accelerating rate. And the attitude of "Distinct or Extinct" doesn't seem like a reasonable Macro Economic model, even if it might be decent career advice. Perhaps it seems like too much of a Zero-Sum Game.

• but he does (p41) get explicit about Job Creation vs destruction: Between 1980 and 1998 the US economy created 29M net new jobs ("2/3 high-paying"); this was after counting the elimination of 44M jobs. So we created 73M gross new jobs. Compare to the European Union, which destroyed basically none, but thus created very few.
  • but did the group who got the new jobs include the people who had lost the old jobs? Or was there a shift (from old white males to females, or to immigrants, etc.)? I wonder if there's any good research of what happened?

Books

1982 – In Search of Excellence (co-written with Robert H. Waterman, Jr.)

1985 – A Passion for Excellence (co-written with Nancy Austin)

1987 – Thriving on Chaos

1992 – Liberation Management

1994 – The Tom Peters Seminar: Crazy Times Call for Crazy Organizations

1994 – The Pursuit of WOW!

1997 – The Circle of Innovation: You Can't Shrink Your Way to Greatness

1999 - The Reinventing Work Series 50List Books

• 1999 – The Brand You 50: Or: Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an "Employee" into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion! (Reinventing Work Series) ISBN:978-0375407727
• 1999 - The Project50: Fifty Ways to Transform Every "Task" into a Project That Matters! (Reinventing Work Series) ISBN:978-0375407734
• 1999 - The Professional Service Firm50: Fifty Ways to Transform Your "Department" into a Professional Service Firm Whose Trademarks are Passion and Innovation! (Reinventing Work Series) ISBN:978-0375407710

2003 – Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age

2005 – Essentials

• 2005 – Talent
• 2005 – Leadership
• 2005 – Design
• 2005 – Trends (co-written with Martha Barletta)

2010 – The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence

2018 - The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last