We found that the most exciting environments, that treated people very well, are also tough as nails. There is no bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo... excellent companies provide two things simultaneously: tough environments and very supportive environments.
Interpretation
Great companies can be both supportive and demanding, fostering excellence in their employees.
This quote by Tom Peters emphasizes that the best work environments are those that strike a balance between being challenging and supportive. Such workplaces create a culture that pushes employees to excel while simultaneously providing the backing and resources they need to succeed, thus fostering a dynamic and productive atmosphere.
In practice
This quote could be used in a leadership seminar to emphasize the need for balance in company culture.
My half-baked reading of history is that we continue to go through these waves of entrepreneurial explosion followed by merger mania and consolidation. Out of that come big sluggish companies that eventually collapse under the weight of what they've created, and are killed off by the next wave of entrepreneurs.
The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.
Nearly 100% of innovation-from business to politics-is inspired not by "market analysis" but by people who are supremely pissed off by the way things are.
Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders.
The little people will get even, which is one of a thousand reasons why they are not little people at all. If you're a jerk as a leader, you will be torpedoed. And usually it won't be by your vice presidents; it will be on the loading dock at 3am when no supervisors are around.
Champions are pioneers, and pioneers get shot at. The companies that get the most from champions, therefore, are those that have rich support network so their pioneers will flourish. This point is so important it's hard to overstress. No support systems, no champions. No champions, no innovations.
Define excellence vividly, quantitatively. Paint a picture for your most talented employees of what excellence looks like. Keep everyone pushing and pushing toward the right-hand edge of the bell curve.
It's not that there are no masters, but that there are many. And the job of the solicitor general is to balance those masters and to accommodate them all, each in their proper places, wisely and well and in so doing to represent the people of the United States.
I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life
Leaders is the new organisation do not lack motivational tools, but the tools are different from those of traditional corporate bureaucrats. The new rewards are based not on status but on contribution, and they consist not of regular promotion and automatic pay rises, but of excitement about the mission and a share of the glory of success.
There is nothing fast or easy about diplomacy. I have no illusions about that.
The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error.
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