Tom Peters at his best? Decide for yourself!

November 7th, 2003 by Hal

By now many of your know I love Tom Peters. I'm not saying he's the best writer, or the best consultant. Who knows. What I love about Peters is he lives his life fully for all of us to see. And with that he always let's us know what he's thinking. Take this passage from his new book Re-imagine!:

MORE COLLINS, MORE CLAPTRAP
  In Jim Collins' latest, Good to Great, the author celebrates "self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy" leaders who bring about the big transformations. Examples included.
  Fine, Jim.
  Psychologist-management expert Michael Maccoby and I have frequently clashed. Not this time.
  Michael recently wrote of "larger than life leaders" … e.g.: "egoists, charmers, risktakers with big visions." Exemplars he cites: Carnegie. Rockefeller. Edison. Ford. Welch. Jobs. Gates.
  He, of course, could have added Messier and Middelhoff and Ebbers and Lay. Nonetheless, I'll still take Michael's list over Jim's.
  While flying across the U.S. a while back, I got so agitated about "quiet" and "even shy" that I started scribbling madly on the inside back cover of the spy novel I was reading. Here's what I was able to subsequently decipher from my hen scratches:
  T. Paine/P. Henry/A. Hamilton/B. Franklin/A. Lincoln/U. S. Grant/W. T. Sherman/M. L. King, JR./M. Gandhi/G. Steinem/W. S. Churchill/M. Thatcher/Picasso/Mozart/Copernicus/Newton/J. Welch/L. Gerstner/L. Ellison/B. Gates/S. Ballmer/S. Jobs/S. McNealy.

Jim Collins book is a must read for executives, leaders, and wanna-be leaders everywhere. I won't argue with that. I don't think Peters would either. But I've had the same feeling about the book and Collins' views that Peters' has. I just never had the guts to call it "claptrap".

I try to operate to the principle "become unconditionally constructive." As such, I am not fully expressed. I'm not saying I can't be fully expressed while operating to that principle. I'm just saying I'm not. (Peters doesn't seem to have my problem.) My dilemma: How do I say I differ with Collins without calling his writing claptrap? Here goes: Collins' "shy, self-effacing, reserved" leaders are operating at a level that is not fully expressed. They and their companies suffer in some way for that. How do I know? Because I operate that way too often myself.

Get a taste of Peters' latest work. And if you want more, Peters is online and on the phone on Monday, Nov. 10th, at noon EST. It's free. I won't miss it. How about you?

Tom Peters…Blogger

Where in the World is Tom Peters?

Tom Peters Unabashed, Master or Geezer?

Cherish Great Listening Skills

Get Concrete! Fast!

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3 Responses to “Tom Peters at his best? Decide for yourself!”

Hal Says:
November 8th, 2003 at 1:32 am
David,

While Peters may be overcompensating, shy self-effacing leaders don’t get the job done. I don’t mean that to be a truism, only the general case. As a society, people are living their lives just below what would be remarkable. It’s time to change that. I love Peters because he has no regard for what others think of him. Or maybe he’s crafting the whole thing! Either way, bug things will get done.
Claude Emond Says:
November 8th, 2003 at 4:50 pm
Hello Hal,

Tom Peters is one of my favorite irreverent writers too. I even named him the ‘project mage’ by excellence in a so-called ‘evolving’ web site I started (but did not get to evolve)a couple of years ago (www.theprojectpage.com). For those interested about a six point summary of Peter’s thousands of pages, I include one in this ‘non-evolving’ web site that is still relevant, as far as I know. Here is the address of this ‘mega-small’ summary : www.theprojectpage.com/id26.htm . I even got an appreciation for it and encouragements by e-mail from Tom’s own outfit PR manager.

As for ’shy, self-effacing, reserved’ leaders they do not inspire me any confidence as often the shyness-reserve hides devious and not-so-clean political savvy. Just the gut feel here of the very extroverted, big mouth and very direct me-myself-and-I.

Cheers,

Claude
Brian Branagan Says:
November 8th, 2003 at 5:48 pm
Hal,

I couldn’t hit the reply button fast enough after reading this post. I think you’re onto something really big here (at least for me!) as it relates to the difference between being a project managers and project leaders.

Project managers who are more administrators and coordinators–directing efforts through compliance to milestones–probably take too much comfort in the Collins approach. But who gets motivated by an approaching milestone? What pride of accomplishment can be declared in percent complete.

There’s something more to explore around Peters’ concepts especially for those who want to be Project leaders.

Brian

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