Tom Peters - The Pursuit of Wow!

Also by Tom Peters

In Search of Excellence
(with Robert H. Waterman, Jr.)

A Passion for Excellence
(with Nancy Austin)

Thriving on Chaos

Liberation Management

The Tom Peters Seminar

for
Robert and Sarah

What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery. It does not clasp its hands and pray to Jupiter.

Henry David Thoreau

This book is about generating yeasty responsespersonal and corporateto these very yeasty, and frequently frightening, times. Ive called it The Pursuit of Wow!

Wow might sound a bit frizzy. I think not. Im repeatedly struck by the parade of new cars that look like every other car, by how many newly opened French restaurants or just-launched PCs or software packages fail to zap you, by how one Big Six audit service resembles all the others. And Im also struck by how timid most people are in fending off staleness. Then they wonder why they become a statistic in the continuing middle management and senior professional blood bath.

In preparing this book Ive looked back on my ten years of writing syndicated columns, had lengthy conversations with dozens of successful entrepreneursand convened a session of FedEx employees to talk about diversity. But mostly Ive let my daily exposure to business over the last 25 years lead my mind where it will: I wondered why I feel compelled to go to London to buy chubby Ball Pentel Fine Point R50 pens. Wondered why thank you notes are always appreciated. Why success (personal, business) invariably leads to hardening of the arteries. Thought about why certain delis (and churches), in a world full of delis (and churches), reach out and suck you in instantaneouslywhile so many others only give you a case of the blahs. And why any employee would put up with mistrustful firms that practice random drug testing, unannounced call monitoring, and the like.

All in all, youll find 210 numbered observations, from one line to several pages in length and loosely collected by topic in 13 more-or-less chapters.

The common bond is WOW: stepping out (individuals at all levels in a firm and independent contractors) and standing out (corporations and other organizations) from the growing crowd of look-alikes.

Being average has never had much appeal. Better to fail with flair in pursuit of something neat. While I think thats an idea for the ages, right now it takes on great urgency.

India, China, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesiaand moreare coming online. Theyre chock-a-block with hundreds of millions of talented, well-educated workersand already producing sophisticated, high-quality goods that are often the equal of the best from the monster U.S., Japanese and German economies.

To stay on top of this fermenting global brew will require people and companies to paddle like never before; will requireagainpersonal and corporate WOW. (And the renewal thereofin perpetuity.) I hope the ideas from these pages will help you strip off the blinders (the crazy past is soon going to look like mellow prelude) and move yourself toward bold and daring action.

Ive had a ball pulling all this together. And now I hope youll have a ball reading it. I say had a ball on purpose and without apology. I think work and business can be creative and exciting. A hoot. A growth experience. A journey of lifelong learning and constant surprise. But, to be honest, I think such rewards will only be yours if you learn to approach your career and enterprise with the strategy I call

THE PURSUIT OF WOW!

One-minute excellence. I can sense the curling of your lips. While such a catchphrase makes me shudder, too, it contains a gem waiting to be discovered.

How do you go on an effective diet? How do you stop smoking? How do you stop drinking?

In short, you do it and its done. Then you work like hell for the rest of your life to stay on the weight-maintenance, nonsmoking, or booze-free wagon.

A while back, I came across a line attributed to IBM founder Thomas Watson. If you want to achieve excellence, he said, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.

The idea is profound.

Suppose youre a waiter and, for your own futures sake (not because of pressure from the clowns who run the restaurant), you decide to set a matchless standard for service. How? You do it. Now.

Sure, youll be clumsy at first. Youll get a lot of it wrong. Youll need to read up, listen to audiotapes, take classes, tune in to on-line electronic chat rooms, visit other restaurants to collect clues. And youll need to keep doing such things to maintain your edge (as an opera singer or professional athlete does) until the day you hang up your corkscrew.

Nonetheless, you can become excellent in a nanosecond, starting with your first guest tonight. Simply picture yourself, even if its a very fuzzy picture, as the greatest waiter everand start acting accordingly. Put yourself in lights on Broadway, as a galaxy-class waiter; then perform your script with derring-do.

Does it sound wild? Silly? Naive? Maybe, but it isnt. The first 99.9 percent of getting from here to there is the determination to do it and not to compromise, no matter what sort of roadblocks those around you (including peers) erect.

Nordstrom it. Motorola it.

The last 99.9 percent (I know it adds up to more than 100 percentthats life) is working like the devil to (1) keep your spirits up through the inevitable storms, (2) learn something new every day, and (3) practice that something, awkward or not and no matter what, until its become part of your nature.

What holds for the waiter also holds for the manager of the six-person department or the chief executive of the 16,000-person firm.

How long does it take you, as boss, to achieve world-class quality? Less than a nanosecond to attain it, a lifetime of passionate pursuit to maintain it.

Once the fire is lit, assume youve arrivedand never, ever look back or do anything, no matter how trivial, thats inconsistent with your newfound quality persona.

Suppose you commit to achieving new heights in quality or service here and now. In your own mind, youre an instant Nordstrom (retail) or Motorola (manufacturing). But your next taskdad-blamed real worldis to go through your boring in-basket.

What an opportunity! Respond to the first item that turns up as you imagine a Nordstrom or Motorola exec would.

A memo from a frontline worker complaining about a silly impediment to improvement? A request to change office-supply vendors? An irate note from a customer or distributor? Nordstrom it. Motorola it. Act out, in a small way, your Nordstrom-Motorola fantasy of matchless quality.

Sure, if you keep it up for even a few hours, people all over the organization will start looking at you oddly. You want them to, because youve achieved your first tiny victory. You, Ms. Planet-class Quality, are living a new life. Their misfortune is that they havent figured it out for themselves yet.