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Tom Peters: American Writer on Business Management Practices

Tom Peters is not a philosopher or a social historian like Peter Drucker. He no longer has any all-embracing theories of the world of organisations nor any formulas for change but he gets under the skin of an organisation.

Tom Peters is not a philosopher or a social historian like Peter Drucker. He no longer has any all-embracing theories of the world of organisations nor any formulas for change but he gets under the skin of an organisation.

His first big book, 'In Search Of Excellence' came out in 1982 and made Tom a fashionable guru. The book looked at 43 successful companies and analysed the reasons for their success over twenty years. Peters and Waterman came up with:

eight characteristics of excellence:

- they were do-ers
- they understood their clients' needs
- they were independent and innovative
- they believed in productivity through people
- they were hands-on and value-driven
- they only did what they did best
- had a simple form and lean staff
- and had a tight-loose structure

and

seven checkpoints for analysis, the Seven S Framework:

Strategy, Structure and Systems, the so-called hard S's
and
Staff, Style, Shared Values and Skills, the so-called soft S's

The trouble was that the 43 excellent companies did not stay excellent for long. Many, including the star of the book, the computer company IBM, faltered soon after. Peters apologised in his later books.

The whole world of work, he realised, was changing. Ninety per cent of jobs, were likely to be completely transformed or eliminated in the next ten to twenty years and each of us would have to take control of our own destiny and look after ourselves. Peters predicted that women would be more and more important to organisations because they were better at the softer S factors in Peters' S Framework.

Biography:

Tom Peters was born in 1942 in Baltimore, USA. He studied engineering at Cornell University and is a graduate of Stanford (M.B.A., Ph.D.).

He served on active duty in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam and Washington from 1966 to 1970, was a senior White House drug abuse advisor in 1973-74 and worked at McKinsey & Co. from 1974 to 1981, becoming a partner in 1977. He left the firm to work independently prior to the publication of 'In Search of Excellence'.

What distinguishes Peters is that he is not tied to a particular perspective. If there is a consistent strand through his work, Peters believes it is 'a bias for action'. Forget the theorising, get on with the job.

He gives over 100 lectures a year and travels so much that he called his first horse Frequent Flyer.

When Tom is not in an airplane, he divides his time between Silicon Valley (Palo Alto) and Vermont, where he and his wife Susan Sargent live on a farm.

Works:

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