In this compelling presentation, Peters revisits and boldly extends the ideas that helped make In Search of Excellence a watershed event in both business and publishing—and launched the now mammoth “management guru industry.” Admitting that “the older I get, the less boring these ‘basics’ such as ‘people first’ become,” Peters says that these same ideas “that led us to take a gamble on Wal*Mart in 1982 animate the likes of Google, Starbucks and Commerce Bank today. In fact, the 100% implementation of these ideas is far more important—for survival’s sake—than it was 25 years ago.”

“Excellence: Continuing the Search” celebrates the enduring and unsurpassed value of a head and heart commitment to excellence, while being fully attuned to the realities of 2007. This presentation promises to inspire audiences of any type, anywhere. Tom Peters’ own passion and intensity, audiences around the world report, has only grown with the passage of time.

Re-imagine: Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age
Background: All bets are off … a brief tour of dramatic forces at work, from changing technologies and demographics to the rise of China and India and the profound effects of a new corporate risk profile. Strategies and tactics are laid out for accomplishing necessary, radical enterprise change. Plus: A “how to” for creating perpetually adaptive enterprises—ready for anything, prepared to turn on a dime. “The very ‘metabolism’ of the enterprise must be altered,” Peters says. In that vein, Re-Imagine! discusses:

· Wildly altered context (technology, China-India, global terrorism, etc)
· Only answer: adaptive skills and bold-breathtaking innovation (top-line focus rather than cost-cutting focus)
· Race way, way up the value-added curve (implemented “game-altering solutions” rather than “services,” “experiences” rather than “transactions,” and much more)
· As part of value-added exercise, pursue Ripe & Enormous “new” markets—Women, Boomers & Geezers
· Radical (!!!) use of IS-IT
· A “Roster” of Weird & Wondrous & Entrepreneurial “Talent” engaged in “Wow Projects”
· “Metabolic Leadership” (Passionate-Radical Leaders who instill a Discipline of Execution, a Quick Tempo-Adaptive Culture and an appetite to “Eat Radical Change for Breakfast”)

Building an “Innovation Machine.”
In uncertain times like ours, innovation is inarguably top management’s Job One. Strategies and tactics and cases are offered to abet creation of an abiding “Culture of Innovation.”

The Pursuit of Excellence in Health and Health Care
Tom Peters' urgent vision for a health care future devoted to excellence? Nothing short of a necessary revolution in the U.S.’s largest industry. Peters has poured his characteristic energy and passion into a wholesale re-imagining of today's creaky “repair” model, which he argues must be transformed into one that emphasizes the “health” over the “care”— shifting the direction of the industry radically toward prevention, wellness, chronic care, home care and related “monster issues” that stretch from childhood obesity to the concerns of the enormous U.S. boomer population and a dramatically aging population in much of the world. Peters’ overall approach involves giving patients far greater control over their health and wellness. Also, health care providers must simultaneously embrace a vast array of new technologies—and come to grips with staggering quality-of-care issues and opportunities. Upending the status quo, audiences learn, means that immediate, game-changing innovation and “risky entrepreneurial behaviors” are the only ways to put this behemoth industry, responsible for the lion’s share of job creation, ahead of the curve of change. In a presentation honed around the globe and emblematic of the kind of foresight that's made him one of the singular management and organizational development visionaries in business history, Peters shoves aside today's health care model, offering audiences at once an idealistic and pragmatic presentation that forces health care onto the path towards excellence.

Embracing New Bases for Creating Value
Companies such as IBM and UPS and GE are frantically re-tooling to move far beyond “products” and simple “services” and toward the provision of encompassing “solutions” (“What Can Brown Do for You?”) and compelling experiences. Strategies and tactics and cases are described aimed at fundamentally re-inventing the enterprise-supply chain “value-added equation.” (Special topics such as the paramount importance of Design in executing a high value-added strategy are emphasized.)

Talent Time!
It’s the people, stupid! Well, of course, it’s always been the people; but with a new value equation that puts dramatically more emphasis on innovation and creativity and NASA-like “to the moon” projects and multi-enterprise co-operation, talent (big word!) is more important than ever. Strategies and tactics are offered for taking a fresh, radical re-look at the “people (talent!) dimension.” Addenda: Tom also comes at this “bottom up,” focusing on what he calls “Brand You”—instilling an entrepreneurial attitude and penchant for excellence in every employee.

New Markets: Two Trends Worth Trillion$$$
There can be too much micro-slicing and dicing of markets, according to Peters. In the process we often overlook huge opportunities. Tom has identified what he labels “the two most glaring deficits in the markets/marketing portfolio.” They are the need to pay far more attention to women as purchasers of consumer and commercial goods and services; and leaping on the boomer-geezer express. Compelling evidence, along with strategies and tactics and cases, are discussed. Brief mention is also made of the huge Hispanic market, and the big, underserved markets for Green products and for Wellness products and services.

Getting Things Done
In 1977 Peters wrote what his advisor called the first Ph.D. dissertation at the Stanford Business School on “implementation” per se. He declared that we spent too much time planning, not enough time-thought on execution. He still believes that—and will address implementation (per se) as a stand-alone topic or part of any of the above effective strategies and tactics for getting things done. (In 1999, he added a book on “Wow Projects” to his portfolio; these are projects that potentially “make a dent in the universe,” to use Steve Jobs’ wonderfully extreme term; a discussion of Tom’s unconventional approach to project management is a mainstay of this presentation.)

A Passion for Passion
Peters calls this his “motivation speech.” “My passion is for passion,” he declares, “for energy and enthusiasm and boldness and guts and the willingness to screw up and then get up. This is part and parcel of all I present, but also a stand-alone topic. The idea is not, ‘This is cool.’ The idea is, ‘This is requisite in wildly gyrating times like ours.’ ”

Leadership (Or: Leading in Totally Screwed-up Times!)
Developed a couple of years ago and honed ever since, Peters calls it The Leadership50, 50 strategies and tactics for vigorous leadership in times of uncertainty. (Special topics such as Women’s underutilized leadership potential are emphasized.)

A New World Order for Enterprise. Or: Re-imagine Everything!
This is to an extent re-statement. Tom Peters’ abiding theme-passion is energizing execs, in the public and private sectors, to attempt the bold leaps which he insists are survival requisites in 2004. (Jack Welch: “You can’t behave in a calm, rational manner. You’ve got to be out there on the lunatic fringe.”) “I hope the view and approach I present is encompassing and original,” Peters says. “I know it is necessary.”

Surviving and Even Thriving Amidst the “Perfect Storm”
While many businesses will fail amidst the current economic crisis through no fault of their own, some will survive in spite of the odds—and a few will surprise everyone by turning a messy situation into economic-competitive advantage. The requisite winner’s attitude is expressed by former Ritz Carlton chief Horst Schulze, commenting on his decision to launch his new high-end hotel business, Capella, despite the market madness: “I do not accept the explanation of a recession negatively affecting the [new] business. There are still people traveling. We just have to get them to stay in our hotel.” And, indeed, getting an “unfair share” of what’s left is near the heart of the matter. Schulze’s remarks also remind us that instant, mindless cutting of R&D, training, or sales force travel in the face of a downturn is often counterproductive or, rather, downright stupid. Tough times are, in fact, golden opportunities to get the drop—and the long-term drop at that—on those who respond to bad news by panicky across-the-board slash and burn tactics and moves that de-motivate and alienate the workforce at exactly the wrong moment.

Tough times, indeed, require tough decisions—but thriving, not just surviving, is an option for those who mix the wisdom and boldness of leadership along with transparency and maximized employee involvement and engagement. Without suggesting that there is anything humorous about the pain that bad times cause, one could say that “this is when it gets fun” for truly talented and imaginative leaders at all levels and in businesses of every sort and size.

(Tom’s aptly-named book, Thriving on Chaos, published on the day the stock market crashed in 1987, suggests his extensive familiarity with the possibility of success in uncertain times.)

The Basics Are the Basics Are the Basics Are the Basics: The Worse the Times, the Better They Work
The “engine” of the current economic mess is losing total touch with the basics: that is, lending money to people, by the millions in the end, who “obviously” couldn’t pay it back. In many ways, that is the whole story—at the bottom of the bottom of the bottom of the pile of derivatives of derivatives of derivatives are truly stupid loans that any fool would say should never have been made.

We get in trouble when we forget the basics.
We get out of trouble when we remember the basics.
We stay out of trouble when we become perpetually “insane” about the basics.

When “times are tough,” the payoff—survival—comes from what?

Survival—even growth—in bad times comes from having “over invested” in relationships, training, service, and employee/customer/vendor loyalty in good times.

Well, “Duh.”

I’m allowed out in public in 2008, in effect, because I wrote a book with Bob Waterman in 1982 (called In Search of Excellence) that said that Americans were in dee-e-e-p trouble—vis-à-vis Japan at the time—because we failed to put people and service and listening to customers and making stuff that worked at the top of our business agendas. We had placed too much emphasis on sophisticated “MBA thinking” and not enough emphasis on the stuff that led over a thousand people to show up for my grandfather Owen Snow’s funeral in little Wicomico Church, Virginia, over a quarter of a century ago.

Grandfather Owen had run a country store and he’d been counselor, banker, and friend, as well as shopkeeper, to thousands over the years. He was a math whiz (he passed a bit of that on to me), but those thousands showed up at his funeral because he never forgot the basics of taking the time to listen and putting people first!

The great news for fall 2008: The worst of the worst can be managed if we remember, and assiduously apply, my grandfather’s Course 101 in the Business Basics.

Does that sound simplistic?
Perhaps.
But remember: We’re deep in doggy doo-doo because of nothing more than lending money to people who obviously (!!!) couldn’t pay it back.

********

A CEO of a mid-sized bank attended a seminar of mine in Northern California many years ago—but I remember the following as if it were yesterday. I’ve forgotten the specific context, but I recall him saying to me, “Tom, let me tell you the definition of the good lending officer. After church on Sunday, on the way home with the family, he takes a little detour to drive by the factory he just lent money to. Doesn’t go in or any such thing, just drives by and takes a look.”

Amen.

Visit tompeters.com
At tompeters.com, you will find, for free downloading, the PowerPoint slide sets Tom has used in his presentations over the last five years. You’ll also find a Master Presentation and a couple dozen “Special Presentations” on narrow slices of subject matter, such as the new market trends mentioned above.


About Tom Peters

Twenty-six years after launching a management revolution, business iconoclast Tom Peters remains an irreverent, forceful voice—inspiring people to change the face of business.

Business Iconoclast: Fortune calls Tom Peters the ur-guru of management and compares him to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and H.L. Mencken. His unconventional views led BusinessWeek to describe him as "business' best friend and worst nightmare." Constantly railing against the status quo, Peters dares audiences to declare war on rules, organizational barriers and bureaucracies. He turns audiences into champions for change and reinvention.

Change Agent: Peters shows audiences how to transform their organizations by putting the passion back into the workplace, by replacing apathy and whining with enthusiasm and commitment, and most importantly, by reinvigorating employees. Recognizing that leadership is now tougher than ever, Peters' bolder-than-life presentation brings audiences the ideal that has made him world-renowned — living out loud is the key to success.

Speak Up: Knowing that the needs of effective leadership change as rapidly as the volatile marketplace it supports, Peters offers audiences the inspiration to take risks and provides them with an innovator's survival guide. His principles include keeping a limber mind and becoming a leader of change, not a follower of the same old, tired traditions.

Executive Session Add-On: Peters has a passion for making a difference to those he addresses. After his talk, and at no additional cost, he offers your executives and top-level managers the chance to meet in a special face-to-face leadership chat. Providing them an interactive, informal "no-need-to-prepare" forum in which to pose their questions and give voice to their challenges, Peters helps them discover new strategies towards leadership success.

The Peters Library: Besides Peters’ seminal In Search of Excellence, he has penned several other volumes, including A Passion for Excellence, Liberation Management, Thriving on Chaos, and The Circle of Innovation, Re-imagine! – Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age.

Beyond the Keynote:
Reinforce Peters’ message and effect real change with the following Beyond the Keynote services:

· WSBInsights: Free, pre-designed, professional e-mail templates that build interest and capture momentum around your event.
· WSBWebEvents: Bring the speaker’s expertise to your audience’s desktop with live video and digital question-and-answer sessions conducted by Peters.
· WSBOnlineLearning: Interactive web page featuring a video greeting from your keynote speaker that builds interest and momentum around your event.