Tom Peters: "Don’t Stop Me Now"
This Week's Guest: Tom Peters
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
“What you remember is the people you helped and the people you developed.”
Tom Peters, best-selling business author, speaker, and “Red Bull of management thinking,” reaches back to Silicon Valley in the 1970s when problem-solving engineers ruled the day and personal computers got a first-class airplane ticket. From his start as a Cornell engineer, then as a consultant at Apple and partner at McKinsey, Tom reflects on how the Valley has evolved and what work still needs to be done to bring focus back to the people. Tom predicts that continued change is coming our way—especially for women—and that any company or industry’s success comes back to what he calls the “soft stuff.”
With his refreshingly straight-talking style, Tom reminisces about Silicon Valley leaders David Packard, Ron Daniel of McKinsey, and (not so fondly) Steve Jobs. Bonus: find out why Tom says that 19 out of 20 people who are going into finance are “pissing their lives away.”
Show Notes
BOOKS AND ARTICLES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last by Tom Peters
Tom’s latest paper, what he calls a “Sorta Manifesto” named Extreme Humanization/ Extreme Employee Engagement”
Brotopia: Breaking up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang
More About Tom Peters
Business Author, Speaker, and “Extreme Humanization” advocate
Tom Peters is co-author of In Search of Excellence—the book that changed the way the world does business, and often tagged as the best business book ever. Sixteen books and almost thirty years later, he’s still at the forefront of the "management guru industry” he single-handedly invented.
His latest endeavors are the work-ever-in-progress “Sorta Manifesto” paper, named Extreme Humanization/ Extreme Employee Engagement” and the 2018 book The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last. With his unparalleled expertise and inimitable charisma, Peters offers brilliantly simple, actionable guidelines for success that any business leader can immediately implement. He provides a roadmap for your organization and for you as an individual to thrive amidst the tech tsunami, and he has a lot of fun doing it.
In 2017 Tom received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Thinkers50 and the Jack Covert Award for Contribution to the Business Book Industry from 800-CEO-READ.
As CNN said, “While most business gurus milk the same mantra for all its worth, the one-man brand called Tom Peters is still re-inventing himself.” A mainstay on podcasts, lectures, and the ever-unpredictable Twitter, Tom’s bedrock belief is: “Execution is strategy—it’s all about the people and the doing, not the talking and the theory.”
