43. Tom Peters searching for small business excellence in tough times No 5
Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s fourth precept for successful businesses in In Search of Excellence was people productivity. Peters was very interested in the tendency of large corporations to focus heavily on and invest significantly in equipment in their search for improved performance and competitiveness, but to rarely give a similar focus on people. Automating […]
42. Tom Peters searching for small business excellence in tough times No 4
Tom Peter’s & Robert Waterman’s third precept from In Search of Excellence was focusing on Autonomy and Entrepreneurship, where he believed that many large US corporations at the time of the book were failing. For Peters this was about giving product or market champions their head, with a degree of authority and responsibility. Within policy guidelines […]
41. Tom Peters searching for small business excellence in tough times No 3
Tom Peters’ and Robert Waterman’s second precept for successful US businesses was: Stay Close to the Customer. Rocket-science it definitely is not, but it is very important and quite easy for large businesses to lose sight of, as Peters well knew. In large and mid-size businesses sometimes the senior executives insulate themselves from the customer. […]
40. Tom Peters searching for small business excellence in tough times No 2
Peters & Waterman’s first theme which characterised successful businesses from their study of 43 ‘successful’ US businesses was: A bias for action. What they meant by this was that they were companies that did not generally feel the need to spend years studying any development and months contemplating any action. They tended to get on with it, and […]
34. Peter Drucker in his own words interpreted for small business 6
“We will not be limited by the information, but we will be limited by our ability to process that information” The information overload age is with us with a vengeance but Drucker predicted it over a generation ago. How can you cope? The basic research you have done and continue to do on your market […]
1. The Apprentice Hullaballoo
This blog was written after the end of a series of the TV show: The Apprentice, and it started me thinking about the relevance of large business experience to small business, and started a series of blogs that provide a round-up of classic business thinking but applied to small business. So everyone has had their say on […]
