Liberation Management

Rating:
Summary: Well before its time.
Review: A fantastic book with mind-blowing detail and scope. Introduces (and complements with research!) many of the important 'management' topics that have gained popularity in the last few years. Which is impressive considering the book was written 8 years ago!

Topics include: Network Organisations and other non-hierarchy-based organizational models, Networked Markets, Knowledge Management, reduced 'mass'-marketing, etc, etc, etc...

It's impressive that he has been able to capture many of these trends BEFORE the proliferation of the World Wide Web.

Also preempts some of his own more recent movements, like the plain-English movement and the Wow! Project movement that advocate categorization in terms of 'wow!' and 'yuck' projects.

His latest '50List' books are much more digestible and prescriptive - if that is what you prefer.

Rating:
Summary: Well before its time.
Review: A fantastic book with mind-blowing detail and scope. Introduces (and complements with research!) many of the important 'management' topics that have gained popularity in the last few years. Which is impressive considering the book was written 8 years ago!

Topics include: Network Organisations and other non-hierarchy-based organizational models, Networked Markets, Knowledge Management, reduced 'mass'-marketing, etc, etc, etc...

It's impressive that he has been able to capture many of these trends BEFORE the proliferation of the World Wide Web.

Also preempts some of his own more recent movements, like the plain-English movement and the Wow! Project movement that advocate categorization in terms of 'wow!' and 'yuck' projects.

His latest '50List' books are much more digestible and prescriptive - if that is what you prefer.

Rating:
Summary: Ahead of it's time
Review: I liked "In Search of Excellence" but thought the concepts (& certainly companies) didn't stand the test of time. I read "Liberation Management" with some trepidation.

My initial reaction on this book was, "Tom's gone off the deep end, he's doing this just to be provocative" - that's a good enough reason to read this book, but I wouldn't have rated it well just based on that.

If you look at today's business environment, he really wasn't a radical. Ideas that he plugged (Turn all work into a project, outsource, turn everything into a profit center) don't really seem so crazy. His mantra of speed certainly fit the period we just went through. His companies (example: EDS) even did better than prior books.

I've read all of Tom's books - if you want one to guide how you manage and lead, this one is it...

Rating:
Summary: Ahead of it's time
Review: I liked "In Search of Excellence" but thought the concepts (& certainly companies) didn't stand the test of time. I read "Liberation Management" with some trepidation.

My initial reaction on this book was, "Tom's gone off the deep end, he's doing this just to be provocative" - that's a good enough reason to read this book, but I wouldn't have rated it well just based on that.

If you look at today's business environment, he really wasn't a radical. Ideas that he plugged (Turn all work into a project, outsource, turn everything into a profit center) don't really seem so crazy. His mantra of speed certainly fit the period we just went through. His companies (example: EDS) even did better than prior books.

I've read all of Tom's books - if you want one to guide how you manage and lead, this one is it...

Rating:
Summary: In search of curious behavior
Review: Tom Peters tells us that he can boil his entire management philosophy down to one sentence: "Crazy times call for crazy organizations."

The new marketplace in one word is "fashion." Every market is becoming a fashion market. "That means: fickle, fleeting, ephemeral, faddish, and unfair." Peters says you can thrive in the marketplace if you'll:

"Free the human imagination . . . Get close to and serve the customer. . . Customize products and services . . . Abandon everything; continuously reinvent yourself.. .Access the brainware around you. . . Know the front line . . . Demolish the monolith. . . Create teams that allow people to express their personalities."

Peters says a corporation today must be "curious." Don't expect the personnel in the personnel department to hire curious people. Peters says HR people operate by this unwritten rule:

"Thou shalt not hire a person who has an unexplained nanosecond in their life past the age of three."

They want the person who maintained a 4.0 grade average through graduate school and "has not had an interesting thought in their entire life."

They don't want any people who drop out of college, spend a year and a half in Europe, and offer no explanation. That, says Peters, is just the kind of behavior to look for when you're ready to hire curious people. He adds: "Hire a few genuine off-the-wall types. Collect weirdoes."

Peters says he is totally serious about this: "This is coldly logical stuff." Nobody disagrees that markets are weird, "but how are you going to conquer weird markets with stuffed shirts?"

Rating:
Summary: In search of curious behavior
Review: Tom Peters tells us that he can boil his entire management philosophy down to one sentence: "Crazy times call for crazy organizations."

The new marketplace in one word is "fashion." Every market is becoming a fashion market. "That means: fickle, fleeting, ephemeral, faddish, and unfair." Peters says you can thrive in the marketplace if you'll:

"Free the human imagination . . . Get close to and serve the customer. . . Customize products and services . . . Abandon everything; continuously reinvent yourself.. .Access the brainware around you. . . Know the front line . . . Demolish the monolith. . . Create teams that allow people to express their personalities."

Peters says a corporation today must be "curious." Don't expect the personnel in the personnel department to hire curious people. Peters says HR people operate by this unwritten rule:

"Thou shalt not hire a person who has an unexplained nanosecond in their life past the age of three."

They want the person who maintained a 4.0 grade average through graduate school and "has not had an interesting thought in their entire life."

They don't want any people who drop out of college, spend a year and a half in Europe, and offer no explanation. That, says Peters, is just the kind of behavior to look for when you're ready to hire curious people. He adds: "Hire a few genuine off-the-wall types. Collect weirdoes."

Peters says he is totally serious about this: "This is coldly logical stuff." Nobody disagrees that markets are weird, "but how are you going to conquer weird markets with stuffed shirts?"