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The Tom Peters Seminar: Crazy Times Call For Crazy Organizations
This volume brings together the best of the Tom Peters seminars—complete with visual materials.
The Tom Peters Seminar demonstrates Peters' unconventional analysis that challenges outdated corporate structures and demonstrates that "imagination is the source of value in the economy." Peters' bold ideas vault business thinking beyond change—toward invention and revolution.
The Tom Peters Seminar demonstrates Peters' unconventional analysis that challenges outdated corporate structures and demonstrates that "imagination is the source of value in the economy." Peters' bold ideas vault business thinking beyond change—toward invention and revolution.
336 pages, Paperback
First published July 12, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 19, 2014
I read this based on a recommendation by Seth Godin, which was on his list of the top 5 books for entrepreneurs. A quick read that still serves to blow the reader's mind, with revolutionary ideas and predictions about the future of business. I found it provocative, inspiring, and a little scary--but very much worth reading, which I will probably reread regularly.
June 26, 2017
What a book?
25 years old but reads like it could have been written yesterday.
The ideas here aren't new or revolutionary at this point, but they still have that zip because they are still needed in our current business environment.
If you need business ideas, read this book.
25 years old but reads like it could have been written yesterday.
The ideas here aren't new or revolutionary at this point, but they still have that zip because they are still needed in our current business environment.
If you need business ideas, read this book.
August 30, 2017
This is still an excellent book to shake up an organization, division or department that has grown stale and has lost the zing of thinking outside the box. It is similar, in spirit at least, to Robert Krieger’s 1991 If it ain’t broke... break it!. It deliberately challenges the reader to go beyond incremental improvements in quality and cost reduction and to create and develop more imaginative products and services -and the creative (dis)organization to enjoy doing so. A list of the chapter headings clearly shows what the author is up to:
Business administration seems to require periodic injections of this kind of thinking. However one must be careful, change for change’s sake does not necessarily lead to good things, and sometimes being crazy actually leads to an asylum -or in the case of companies, bankruptcy. Peters downplays this darker side of revolutions which claim everything must be destroyed before they can start to build heaven on earth -as even a cursory look at political history and business scandals show. Michael Hammer and James Champy’s 1998 Reengineering the Corporation was another stirring and exciting call to slash bureaucracy, radically simplify procedures, and empower employees. Applying many of the book’s recommendations effectively helped make life more exciting, put some color into a lot of pale cheeks and helped many organizations become more agile; however many corporations which simplistically and over-radically took this up, also got rid of key checks and balances, which led to more than a couple of disasters and high profile frauds.
Is the book still pertinent? In this 1994 book, Tom Peters speaks highly of, among others, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, ABB Asea Brown -with perfect 2017 hindsight, many of these companies’ crazier chicken eventually came home to roost: Silicon Graphics started to run into serious trouble by 1997, blindly ignoring improved PC graphics and first filed for bankruptcy in 2006 and was defunct a couple of years later; Sun Microsystems can be viewed as one of the most famous victims of the dot-com bubble which started in 1997 and which along with Sun certainly swept away several of the crazier organizations away; according to Wikipedia financial debt and lingering asbestos liabilities brought ABB Asea Brown to the brink of bankruptcy in the early 2000s, but it has since then bounced back. To me, a surprising number of companies Tom Peters speaks of highly have continued to thrive, among them Oticon, Walmart, Verifone, Ritz-Carlton, Kingston Technology, McKinsey and Apple (for all its ups and downs). So on balance, I think the book is still pertinent, and it is certainly still fun to read -just do not take it as gospel truth and temper some of its wilder ideas with sound business sense, ethics and corporate social responsibility.
1. Beyond change: Towards the abandonment of everythingIt is written in a zany, fun style very much in keeping with the book and includes a host of examples, briefly restates the main points of each chapter in a box titled “Lessons learned”, and a section titled “T.T.D. (Things to Do) and Q. T. R. (Questions to Answer). For example here are some of the lessons learned from chapter one:
2. Beyond decentralization: Disorganizing to unleash imagination
3. Beyond empowerment: Turning every job into a business
4. Beyond loyalty: Learning to think like an independent contractor
5. Beyond disintegration: The corporation as Rolodex [this chapter is about deepening and strengthening close relationships with customers and potential allies]
6. Beyond reengineering: Creating a corporate talk show [the importance of communicating!]
7. Beyond learning: Creating the curious corporation
8. Beyond TQM: Toward WOW!
9. Beyond change (redux): Toward perpetual revolution.
- Get rid of all formal structureThe book clearly appeals to the radical in excellent managers and employees, especially when we feel new ideas are stifled rather than encouraged and change means humongous efforts, probably leading back to the same old same old -Peters throws open all windows and hurls exciting what ifs to get hearts pumping again.
- Middle ranks destroy value [therefore radically flatten the organizational structure]
- Small-company soul [supposedly because small companies are nimbler in the face of change]
- Putting spunk into subordinate units
- Reinventing oneself
- Innovate, innovate, innovate (period)
- Embracing failure
Business administration seems to require periodic injections of this kind of thinking. However one must be careful, change for change’s sake does not necessarily lead to good things, and sometimes being crazy actually leads to an asylum -or in the case of companies, bankruptcy. Peters downplays this darker side of revolutions which claim everything must be destroyed before they can start to build heaven on earth -as even a cursory look at political history and business scandals show. Michael Hammer and James Champy’s 1998 Reengineering the Corporation was another stirring and exciting call to slash bureaucracy, radically simplify procedures, and empower employees. Applying many of the book’s recommendations effectively helped make life more exciting, put some color into a lot of pale cheeks and helped many organizations become more agile; however many corporations which simplistically and over-radically took this up, also got rid of key checks and balances, which led to more than a couple of disasters and high profile frauds.
Is the book still pertinent? In this 1994 book, Tom Peters speaks highly of, among others, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, ABB Asea Brown -with perfect 2017 hindsight, many of these companies’ crazier chicken eventually came home to roost: Silicon Graphics started to run into serious trouble by 1997, blindly ignoring improved PC graphics and first filed for bankruptcy in 2006 and was defunct a couple of years later; Sun Microsystems can be viewed as one of the most famous victims of the dot-com bubble which started in 1997 and which along with Sun certainly swept away several of the crazier organizations away; according to Wikipedia financial debt and lingering asbestos liabilities brought ABB Asea Brown to the brink of bankruptcy in the early 2000s, but it has since then bounced back. To me, a surprising number of companies Tom Peters speaks of highly have continued to thrive, among them Oticon, Walmart, Verifone, Ritz-Carlton, Kingston Technology, McKinsey and Apple (for all its ups and downs). So on balance, I think the book is still pertinent, and it is certainly still fun to read -just do not take it as gospel truth and temper some of its wilder ideas with sound business sense, ethics and corporate social responsibility.
December 9, 2018
Although this is an old book, it was full of good insights. Like others of its time, it failed to fully understand how the internet would change business, but it was better than many. Among the many good ideas in the book:
* companies should outsource many operations to other companies that specialize in that particular service or component, even to the extreme of where some companies are left with just the intellectual capital of ideas
* middle management is frequently negative value, sometimes giving an advantage to smaller companies that have no middle management
* update your resume every six months to confirm you are continuing to improve your value; avoid having the same experience year after year
* job security is gone, your loyalty should be to your self - don't stay in a job if you're not learning new things
* don't just make a product; add embedded intelligence, wraparound services, distribution, turnkey program management, and other services
* encourage curiosity and mental diversity to ensure an influx of new ideas
* the creative economy as the fourth wave (after the agricultural, industrial, and information economies)
* don't just track things gone wrong, also track things gone right
At other times the book was too focused on revolution and change for change's sake.
* companies should outsource many operations to other companies that specialize in that particular service or component, even to the extreme of where some companies are left with just the intellectual capital of ideas
* middle management is frequently negative value, sometimes giving an advantage to smaller companies that have no middle management
* update your resume every six months to confirm you are continuing to improve your value; avoid having the same experience year after year
* job security is gone, your loyalty should be to your self - don't stay in a job if you're not learning new things
* don't just make a product; add embedded intelligence, wraparound services, distribution, turnkey program management, and other services
* encourage curiosity and mental diversity to ensure an influx of new ideas
* the creative economy as the fourth wave (after the agricultural, industrial, and information economies)
* don't just track things gone wrong, also track things gone right
At other times the book was too focused on revolution and change for change's sake.
February 25, 2020
A warning against analysis paralysis and half way measures for change.
November 12, 2021
The wisdom in this book is timeless.
February 15, 2013
a must-have, fantastic guide for any business owner or entrepreneur
March 9, 2013
A myst read !
October 27, 2007
Pretty good but not nearly as insightful or helpful as his earlier works
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews