Tom Peters

Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.

Vision is dandy, but sustainable company excellence comes from a huge stable of able managers.

Good managers have a bias for action.

I know it sounds crazy, but you've got to let what you're going to do find you, rather than you pursuing it.

Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me, Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.

I don't read many business books. I read good fiction. Business is about people, so my favorite business books are anything by Dickens.

Business book writing for me is when some set of ideas gets stuck in my mind, I write a book about it. I haven't got a theory and I haven't got a framework.

As far as I'm concerned, the first business leader who was able to establish a cult of personality around his tenure was Lee Iacocca.

If your company has a clean-desk policy, the company is nuts and you're nuts to stay there.

The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.

Community organizing is all about building grassroots support. It's about identifying the people around you with whom you can create a common, passionate cause. And it's about ignoring the conventional wisdom of company politics and instead playing the game by very different rules.

We found that the most exciting environments, that treated people very well, are also tough as nails. There is no bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo... excellent companies provide two things simultaneously: tough environments and very supportive environments.