Page 139 - merged.pdf

•Six Greatest Management Thinkers 119

Ask yourself

Think of a key person you need to influence right now. Are you obeying all of
the Carnegie principles as you seek to persuade?

Idea 67 – Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, authors of In
Search of Excellence

It is unfortunate that this book is often remembered most for the fact that the excel-
lent businesses that Peters and Waterman chose almost all made substantial mis-
takes later and lost their image as role models. However, the lessons drawn in this
book have stood the test of time and it has sold more than six million copies.

The authors took research carried out when they were with McKinsey into
what was different about excellent and successful companies. They got the list down
to 62 including a number that you would expect to be there – IBM, Hewlett Packard
and so on. They only examined big companies, but the messages and lessons they
derived can act as a template for smaller organisations too.

The characteristics that they discovered in the chosen company were summa-
rised into eight areas:

• A bias for action. Being proactive and looking for what needs to be done.
• Close to the customer. ‘The excellent companies really are close to their custom-

ers. That’s it. Other companies talk about it; excellent companies do it,’ they
say. They also have a suspicion of the too-smart managers. These are often
MBAs who write impressive plans, develop and get their brains round huge
spreadsheets (Idea 48) and have to hand 500-page market requirement docu-
ments. Sometimes such people are too clever for their own good. ‘Our dumber