In Search of Excellence Quotes

“Many of the innovative companies got their best product ideas from customers. That comes from listening, intently and regularly.”
― Thomas J. Peters, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies

“An effective leader must be the master of two ends of the spectrum: ideas at the highest level of abstraction and actions at the most mundane level of detail.”
― Thomas J. Peters, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies

“Most corporations fail to tolerate the creative fanatic who has been the driving force behind most major innovations. Innovations, being far removed from the mainstream of the business, show little promise in the early stages of development. Moreover, the champion is obnoxious, impatient, egotistic, and perhaps a bit irrational in organizational terms. As a consequence, he is not hired. If hired, he is not promoted or rewarded. He is regarded as “not a serious person,” “embarrassing,” or”
― Thomas J. Peters, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies

“Far too many managers have lost sight of the basics, in our opinion: quick action, service to customers, practical innovation, and the fact that you can’t get any of these without virtually everyone’s commitment.”
― Thomas J. Peters, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies

“The art of creative leadership is the art of institution building, the reworking of human and technological materials to fashion an organism that embodies new and enduring values.”
― Thomas J. Peters, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies

“The trick, and it’s a tough one, is a common cultural understanding of what kind of failure is okay and what kind leads to disaster. But”
― Thomas J. Peters, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies

“Harvard’s Theodore Levitt states the case as well as anyone else: The trouble with much of the advice business gets today about the need to be more vigorously creative is that its advocates often fail to distinguish between creativity and innovation. Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things…. A powerful new idea can kick around unused in a company for years, not because its merits are not recognized, but because nobody has assumed the responsibility for converting it from words into action. Ideas are useless unless used. The proof of their value is only in their implementation. Until then, they are in limbo. If you talk to the people who work for you, you’ll discover that there is no shortage of creativity or creative people in American business. The shortage is of innovators. All too often, people believe that creativity automatically leads to innovation. It doesn’t. Creative people tend to pass the responsibility for getting down to brass tacks to others. They are the bottleneck. They make none of the right kind of effort to help their ideas get a hearing and a try…. The fact that you can put a dozen inexperienced people in a room and conduct a brainstorming session that produces exciting new ideas shows how little relative importance ideas themselves have…. Idea men constantly pepper everybody with proposals and memorandums that are just brief enough to get attention, to intrigue and sustain interest — but too short to include any responsible suggestions for implementation. The scarce people are the ones who have the know-how, energy, daring, and staying power to implement ideas…. Since business is a “get-things-done” institution, creativity without action-oriented follow-through is a barren form of behavior. In a sense, it is irresponsible.”
― Thomas J. Peters, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies

“In some organizations, they can succeed if they are simply good at making presentations to the board of directors or writing strategies or plans. The tragedy is that these talents mask real deficiencies in overall management capabilities. These talented performers run for cover when grubby operating decisions must be made and often fail miserably when they are charged with earning a profit, getting things done and moving an organization forward.”
― Thomas J. Peters, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies