“Kindness equals Repeat Business equals Profitability”

Tom Peters, Author of “In Search of Excellence”.

Published in the 1980’s, “In Search of Excellence” by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, remains one of the best business books of all time and which incidentally, significantly influenced my own career direction. In a recent podcast interview with Guy Kawasaki, Tom Peters talks about the continued relevance of the 8 principles from the book and in particular, the importance of soft skills in organisations. Another top rated business book is “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. Its conclusion, that enlightened leadership is the key ingredient to sustaining high performance, was based on robust empirical research and reinforces the themes from Tom Peters. In a recently republished podcast interview with Tim Ferriss, Jim talks about this research and also his more recent monograph “Turning the Flywheel”. Both authors provide some really valuable lessons on how to successfully lead digital transformation today.

Postscipt: The Drucker Institute have just announced their 2022 Top 250 company list for 2022 which ranks corporate effectiveness across five areas: customer satisfaction, employee engagement, innovation, social responsibility and financial strength. While Microsoft topped the list overall, there were only 7 companies which scored over 60 on all five measures: Apple, MasterCard, Proctor & Gamble, HP, Pfizer, Accenture and Visa. Proctor and Gamble and HP were the only two companies featured in “In Search of Excellence” to make it into this group of seven. Source: Wall Street Journal “The 7 Companies That Do It All Well in the Rankings of Best-Managed Companies” 12 December 2022.