Wednesday, October 10, 2007

In Search of Excellence: Tom Peters Reduxed

Unfortunately, Tom Peters’ book, In Search of Excellence, is now 25 years old. We say unfortunately because we aged with the book as well. Peters claims that essentially all of the concepts he espoused at that time held up well over the past 25 years. One issue that he addressed in the original text was that women were overly ignored in business. He said, “They buy everything and control the wealth.” In a recent interview with USA Today, when asked about how that issue fared over the years, Peters indicated that nothing has changed. “[Women] buy everything and control the wealth, but constitute 2% of Fortune 500 chief executive officers. They are on the short end of the leadership stick. It’s a missed opportunity. You take a different approach to financial advisory services if women are your customer [sic] than you do if men are. It’s the same in many industries, and it’s stupidity not seeing the opportunity.” One concept from the original book that we have used repeatedly over the years is his “well-managed companies” designation. We have suggested, and stand by our original application, that “well-managed companies” have aggressive, state-of-the-art disability management programs in place. That was true 25 years ago, and it is true today.