Lessons from A Passion for Excellence

I have read some parts of a superb book titled "A Passion for Excellence. The Leadership Difference" co-authored by Tom Peters and Nancy Austin. Written after the best-selling "In Search of Excellence" in 1985, it can be considered a classic book on management. Albeit I found many principles which are still relevant to any present and future institution that strives for excellency. Few of them I'll write here.

• The brand we propose has a simple base of MBWA (Managing by Wandering Around). To "wander", with customers and vendors and our own people, is to be in touch with the first vibrations of the new. The topic of MBWA is at once about common sense, leadership, customers, innovation and people. Simple wandering - listening, emphatizing, staying in touch - is an ideal starting point.
  
• The surviving organization is the adaptive organization. The adaptive organization is one that is in touch with the outside world via living data. All four of our variables - two that you would expect (customers and innovation) and two that are novel (people and leadership) - are focused on sensing changes and adapting to it, not via great leaps and genius paper plans, but via constant contact with and reaction to people on the part of every person in the organization.
• Consumers are statistics. Customers are people. (from Stanley Marcus, chairman emeritus of Neiman-Marcus)
• ...in fact this entire book is about quality. Because quality, above all, is about care, people, passion, consistency, eyeball contact and gut reaction. Quality is not a technique, no matter how good. (p. 98)
  
• The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. (from George Bernard Shaw)
• When you have a true passion of excellence, and when you act on it, you will stand straighter. You will look people in the eye. You will see things happen. You will see heroes created, watch ideas unfold and take shape. You'll walk with a springier step. You'll have something to fight for, to care about, to share, scary as it is, with other people. There will be times when you swing from dedicated to obsessed. We don't pretend that it's easy. It takes real courage to step out and stake your claim. But we think the renewed sense of purpose, of making a difference, of recovered self-respect, is well worth the price of admission. (p. 419)

I'd like to buy and own the book later since it deserves a place in my private library. Just buy the books that can serve as your references and advisors. A masterpiece.

Source:
A Passion of Excellence
by Tom Peters and Nancy Austin
Random House New York 1985