Re-imagine! [Anglais] [Broché]

Before we take a step further, I have to come clean:

While managing my career, I have placed bets on Tom Peters.

There. I feel much better. And (Pete Rose's overdue confession aside) it's completely true. I have indeed gambled on Tom Peters. Not on Peters himself, but on his ideas and his advice.

His three little books from 1999--"The Brand You 50," "The Professional Service Firm 50" and "The Project 50"--played a powerful role in my decision to leave a truly dead-end job in 2000 and become a free agent. My career and my life are immeasurably richer today, thanks in part to Peters' passionate and sometimes bombastic ideas.

Given that, you'd be right to guess that I snapped up his latest work, "Re-Imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age" in the blink of an eye. I'm glad I did, though I'm not saying that Re-Imagine! is flawless. It's not. But it is eminently worthy of your time and especially so if you have never read Peters before.

Let's start with the book itself--not its contents, but its design. In jumping from his longtime publisher Knopf to design-driven DK (Dorling Kindersley), Peters takes a big chug of his own medicine. In previous books (and continuing in Re-Imagine), he has argued that design is critical to success. And this book's design is indeed a departure from "traditional" business books. It doesn't look like management book nor act like a management book. It's chockful of vivid photos, bold colors (especially Peters' trademark red), icons and imaginative screening. Marginal callouts are not fluff, but vital expressions of the soul of the book, linked to corresponding paragraphs by soft-colored swoops and lines.

It's a great experiment. I'm just not sure it how well it works. For example, many of the photos have a stock, even clip-art, feel to them--and the credits indeed reveal their stock origins. Sometimes the screened words, colors and images behind the text make reading unnecessarily difficult. Yet I loved the way the marginal callouts drew and amplified key points--and the "Was/Is" comparisons at the end of each chapter are simply marvelous.

In short, the daring design is a mixed bag. It's taking a risk--something Peters himself preaches. He's fond of quoting Phil Daniels: "Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes." To this reader, Re-Imagine's design falls into the former category.

Fortunately, it's what Peters says that's most important. And Re-Imagine! is the single best work TP has produced, and a terrific summary of the ideas he has been spouting for umpteen years. If you haven't read Peters and wonder what all the noise is about, this is the best place to begin.

But hang tough. After an inspiring, even startling, introduction, Re-Imagine! starts slowly. Those used to Peter's histrionics and fireworks might feel disappointed. I certainly was--until I realized what was happening. Like a great litigator, TP builds his case quietly and firmly, building a bedrock that can handle the bomb bursts of his later frenzies. Momentum builds as Peters steadily presents his theme: We're in a new business climate and we'd better make some big changes.

And what changes does Peters propose--or, shall I say, demand? Try these on for size:

* Basing all business (from the smallest department to the biggest megacorp) on projects and the professional service firm model, thus increasing value.

* Embracing branding and design--and providing experiences to Clients rather than just products and services.

* Charging after new markets: Boomers, seniors and--especially--women.

* Relentlessly pursuing talent, especially among (again) women.

* Rebuilding education to prepare young minds for the new world they will soon face.

Oh, that's all. It's typical of Peters to hold nothing back. And I think that's what makes him so invaluable. For too long, it has been "business as usual" with most "management gurus" spouting the party line. How many Enrons and MCIs--indeed, how many Californias and Iraqs--will we have to see before we get the message that some mighty BIG changes are in order, not just in business life but in life itself? How many once-impregnable giants must topple before someone catches a clue? We need more loud, boisterous, devil-may-care prophets like Peters stirring up trouble.

Is TP always right? Heck, no. He'd be the first to admit it--and does in one of my favorite chapters, a look back at his seminal work (with Bob Waterman), 1982's "In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies." But being correct isn't at issue. We need new ideas, new practices, new ways of working before hell arrives in the proverbial handbasket--and the more ideas we can try, the better. We all need to enjoy some excellent failures.

After all this, I've sold Peters short. Only a reader (not a reviewer) can experience TP's manic punctuation, capitalization and sometimes stream-of-consciousness phrases--and grapple with his profound understanding of our challenging business climate.

Take a gamble. Read Re-Imagine!

If you have never read any of Tom Peters' books, you can skip the earlier ones and just read this one.

If you have read all of his earlier books, you can skip this one.

If you have read some of the earlier books, you can just read the topics in this one that are skipped in the earlier ones you have read. I suspect that that won't be too many.

Tom Peters is our most passionate management guru. He explodes all over his audience in anger, annoyance, passion and rapture. It's a marvelous show . . . and I highly recommend it.

He's also open to new ideas. This book, for instance, gratefully acknowledges contributions from dozens of other authors, CEOs, business thinkers and members of his own family (especially his wife). If you don't read very many business books, I was impressed to see that he cited a very high percentage of the best management books of the last dozen years or so. So if you have read very little on the subject, this book will serve you well.

As intriguing as the book is, it has important limitations. First, the format can be all but impossible to read (especially where text is printed over grey images) in places.

Second, he has blind spots in several areas that make the advice come out somewhat jaundiced. For instance, he hates anything to do with eliminating errors (such as the quality movement and Six Sigma) as though using those methods destroy any chance for innovation in any other area. In my research, I've seen innovation in every dimension of a company exist just fine side-by-side with efforts to eliminate errors and improve quality, whenever different people worked on different aspects of innovation from those working on quality improvement and error elimination.

He correctly points out that women are underestimated and under-served as customers. But in big companies, men still run the show (except at a few bellwethers like Avon Products) . . . and he just ignores the question of how to market to influential men as though it were irrelevant.

Finally, he's been traveling in the exalted circles of the biggest, most influential people and companies for so long that he doesn't have any new examples from the top up-and-coming performers or any new guidance for start-ups. So he's unfortunately dated in his illustrations. That makes the message one that seems to be tame . . . because it is aimed at those who can feel safe in ignoring it as they sit in their palatial suites in the largest companies.

The story is amazingly redundant in the book. There's a microcosm of virtually the whole message of the book in almost every chapter. The repetition is primarily helpful for persuasiveness. It is annoying though if you already get the message.

You can boil the book down to this message: Innovation rules. You need to get off-beat people to work on innovation to have a chance. Everyone's job is innovation. Passion drives successful innovation by creating beautiful, simple systems and wonderful emotional experiences for customers and employees. The leader's job is to create an environment for such innovation. Be ready to fall down, pick yourself up, and try again. Focus your innovation as much as possible on those areas where few others are looking.

The layout of this book is irritating. Colors, pictures, full pages with one sentence hopeful sound bites - the only thing missing was the crayon.

I wouldn't have minded the layout so much if the material were fresh or even well presented. If you read the following you can skip the book: "Smell the dream." "The internet will change everything." "Honor roll students will be working for the kids who didn't make the honor roll." "Companies have to re-imagine or reinvent themselves." "Women are wired differently than men because they would design washing machines on the second floor of homes near the kids room (perhaps because they do the laundry - Mr. Peters - an insight they'd trade for less drudgery and better pay any day)." "Women buy everything (unsupported by hard statistics for luxury automobiles, SUVs, other autos, VCR's, flat screen televisions, computers, and more)." "Incrementalism is bad; make big changes - followed by 'twenty women as head of Fortune 500 companies by 2020' (there are now eight)." "Harley Davidson doesn't sell motorcycles; it sells a lifestyle."

There you have it, old material with all of its consistencies. There is good work being done at major graduate business schools on this topic, but this isn't it.