Books

It all began when In Search of Excellence was published in 1982. Tom hasn’t put down his pen (well, okay, keyboard) since. Here’s a complete list of his published work as well as where you can find them in whatever form you choose.



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In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies (with Robert H. Waterman, Jr.)

1982 | Ranked as the “greatest business book of all time” in a 2002 poll by Britain’s Bloomsbury Publishing, this best-selling business book has long been a must-have for the boardroom, business school, and bedside table. You’ve read it before, perhaps. We suggest you read it again now!

Profiling 43 companies, In Search of Excellence describes 8 basic principles that made these organizations successful. Though many of the profiled companies have since lost their edge (or gone under completely), these 8 principles have shown themselves to be timeless: 1) A bias for action, 2) Staying close to the customer, 3) Autonomy and entrepreneurship, 4) Productivity through people, 5) Hands-on, value driven, 6) Stick to the knitting, 7) Simple form, lean staff, and 8) Simultaneous loose-tight properties.

According to the Wall Street Journal, In Search of Excellence is “One of those rare books on management that is both consistently thought-provoking and fun to read.”

Although out of print, a limited number are available new in paperback. The audio cd, read by Tom, is also available. To celebrate 30 years of striving for Excellence, the ebook version was released in November 2012.

Available at amazon.com Available at barnesandnoble.com Available at worldcat.org Other retail options.

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A Passion for Excellence: The Leadership Difference (with Nancy Austin)

1984 | Cutting through traditional data-based dogmas about management, A Passion for Excellence champions the innovative, commonsense, people-oriented spirit of In Search of Excellence. Through hundreds of concrete, real world examples, Tom and Nancy Austin focus in on the key areas of competence that add up to excellence, offering scores of anecdotes and practical insights to help all businesspeople on the road to leadership, success, and most of all … excellence.

Available at amazon.com Available at barnesandnoble.com Available at worldcat.org
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Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution

1987 | Published the same day as the October 19, 1987, stockmarket crash, Thriving on Chaos is focused on the turmoil requiring nothing short of a management revolution. In Thriving on Chaos, Tom declares that everything known “for sure” about management 15 years earlier is being challenged, and he forecasts (correctly) that the next 15 years would show even more change. The relatively predictable environment of the past was vanishing, requiring organizations and managers to embrace flexibility and a total love of change. Chaos and rapid change were becoming inevitable, and Tom claims that the winners of the future would deal proactively with chaos, seeing it as a source of market advantage, not a problem to be ignored.

This book is out of print, however, used copies can be found through the booksellers below. An audio version read by Tom is also available.

Available at amazon.com Available at barnesandnoble.com Available at worldcat.org
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Liberation Management: Necessary Disorganization for the Nanosecond Nineties

1992 | Published in 1992, almost 10 years to the day after In Search of Excellence, Liberation Management focuses largely on how the inflexible, hierarchical, bureaucratic, organizational structures of the past were being consigned to the shredder and replaced with semi-permanent networks of small, autonomous, project-oriented teams. While evolving the flexibility theme of Thriving on Chaos to deal with the accelerating pace of business change in the early ’90s, Liberation Management shows the genesis of Tom’s thinking on some of his most important concepts in 1999: Project work and the professional service firm as the model organization for the new economy, along with the self as brand.

This book is out of print, however, used copies can be found through the booksellers below. Audio versions are also available (cassette or download, both read by Tom).

Available at amazon.com Available at worldcat.org
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The Tom Peters Seminar: Crazy Times Call for Crazy Organizations

1994 | Tom isn’t only the best selling business author of all time, he’s one of the business world’s engaging and challenging speakers. After requests from thousands of his seminar participants for paper copies of the visual aids used in his seminars, Tom published The Tom Peters Seminar as his answer. The book contains the contents of a two-day Tom Peters seminar in early 1994. It’s loaded with “how-to’s,” and it challenges its readers to reach beyond reengineering, total quality management, and empowerment, towards reinvention and revolution.

Available in paperback, ebook, and audio (cassette or download, both read by Tom).

Available at amazon.com Available at barnesandnoble.com Available at worldcat.org
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The Pursuit of WOW!: Every Person’s Guide to Topsy-Turvy Times

1994 | Published in 1994, The Pursuit of WOW! was served up as “a practical guide to impractical times.” It’s built on 210 numbered observations, all with a common bond of stepping out and standing out from the growing crowd of look-alikes. Along with the best of his columns, Peters includes questions and rebuttals that come from readers and listeners, as well as his own candid responses. Tom writes that The Pursuit of WOW! is “a clarion call for more personal and organizational spiciness in a world that will tolerate nothing less.”

Available in paperback, ebook, and audio (cassette or download, both read by Tom).

Available at amazon.com Available at barnesandnoble.com Available at worldcat.org
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The Circle of Innovation

1997 | Called “the first piece of postmodern management literature” by the Los Angeles Times, The Circle of Innovation boldly claims that “you can’t shrink your way to greatness.” It’s about one BIG idea—innovation—that our fast-moving times (and customers) demand. With bold graphics and chapter titles such as “We are all Michelangelos,” “Create waves of lust,” and “You can’t live life without an eraser,” The Circle of Innovation challenges us all to transform our organizations, our careers, and ourselves.

Available in paperback, ebook, and audio (cassette or download, both read by Tom).

Available at amazon.com Available at barnesandnoble.com Available at worldcat.org

The Reinventing Work Series 50List Books

1999 | With the White Collar Revolution upon us, and 90 percent of jobs in danger of major reconfiguration—or extinction—Tom wrote this groundbreaking series aimed at nothing less than a total reinvention of work (how we think about it, undertake it, bring ourselves to it). The books are in the form of “50 lists”: The Brand You50, The Project50, and The Professional Service Firm50. Each contains 50 essential ideas for making this revolution an opportunity for dramatic change in our own working lives. These three books are as relevant today, if not more relevant, than they were when published.

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The Brand You50: Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an ‘Employee’ into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion!

Brand You … is the worker herself.

Michael Goldhaber, writing in Wired, said, “If there is nothing very special about your work, no matter how hard you apply yourself you won’t get noticed, and that increasingly means you won’t get paid much either. In times past you could be obscure yet secure—now that’s much harder.”

Again: The white collar job as now configured is doomed. Soon. (“Downsizing” in the ’90s will look like small change.) So what’s the trick? There’s only one: DISTINCTION.

Or as we call it … turning yourself into a brand … Brand You.

Available in hardcover and as an ebook.

Available at amazon.com Available at barnesandnoble.com Available at worldcat.org
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The Project50: Fifty Ways to Transform Every “Task” into a Project That Matters!

Funny thing … the work itself always seems missing in most discussions of “management.” (Maybe it’s because we’ve expended so little energy studying white collar work.)

This is what we call the WOW Project. It’s obvious … in retrospect. The common denominator-bottom line for both the professional service firm/PSF and the individual/Brand You … is the project. And for the cool individual in the cool professional service firm there is only one answer: the cool project.

THE PROJECT IS IT. I HAVE SPENT MY LIFE IN PROFESSIONAL SERVICE FIRMS. I AM MY PROJECTS. I AM AS COOL—OR UNCOOL—AS MY PROJECTS. PERIOD. MY PROJECTS ARE MY LIFE. MY PROJECTS ARE MY LEGACY. PERIOD.

Available in hardcover and as an ebook.

Available at amazon.com Available at barnesandnoble.com Available at worldcat.org
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The Professional Service Firm50: Fifty Ways to Transform Your “Department” into a Professional Service Firm Whose Trademarks are Passion and Innovation!

You are boss of a 23-person finance department in a division of a big company. Or, rather, you were boss of the finance department. Now, per our suggestion-model, you are Managing Partner, Finance Inc., a full-fledged professional service firm that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of your division.

Goal: Learn from the best professional service firms! Transform your unit! Today, even after re-engineering done well, the “department” doesn’t look much like McKinsey, IDEO, or Chiat\Day. (And that’s an understatement!)

The aim, in short: Cool People working on Cool Projects with Cool Clients. The aim redux: A COOL Finance—Purchasing, IS, HR—Department. Why not?

The cool professional service firm is just that: cool talent, a portfolio of cool projects, cool clients. Period. Its only asset—literally—is brains. Its only product is projects. Its only aim is truly memorable client service.

This book is out of print, however, used copies or ebook versions can be found through the booksellers below.

Available at amazon.com Available at barnesandnoble.com Available at worldcat.org

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Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age

2003 | Tom teamed up with publisher Dorling Kindersley to present a departure in business books. Visually exciting and compelling to read, Re-imagine! presents reasons why COOL BUSINESS is NOT OPTIONAL.

More than just a how-to book for the 21st Century, Re-imagine! is a call to arms—a passionate wake-up call for the business world, educators, and society as a whole. Focusing on how the business climate has changed, this inspirational book outlines how the new world of business works, explores radical ways of overcoming outdated, traditional company values, and embraces an aggressive strategy that empowers talent and brand-driven organizations where everyone has a voice.

This book is out of print, but an audio version, read by Tom, is available.

Available at amazon.com Available at barnesandnoble.com Available at worldcat.org
sixty

Sixty

2005 | A limited-edition compendium of Tom’s tenets. Sixty years of experience. Sixty articles of belief. Sixty TIBs (TIB=This I Believe). The ideas have been offered in other formats, but this fresh, new presentation has them leaping off the page. Lavish full color (Technicolor Rules!) and striking design (Design Matters!) in a coffee-table-sized collector’s edition. Though the Wow!Store is closed, we still have copies of this beautiful book. You can write to tom at tompeters.com with inquiries.


The Essentials Series

2005 | We took the content from Re-imagine! and put it into four smaller, plane-friendly books. Convenient for pocket or purse, these books each contain a sub-set of the chapters from Re-imagine! re-worked and updated, along with some relevant Cool Friends interviews. Upon publication of the larger book, many readers reported that a more portable format would be welcome. The Essentials Series is the response to that feedback.

The detailed source notes for the Essentials Series can be found here.

leadership

Essentials: Leadership

A key—perhaps THE key—to leadership is the effective communication of a story. Instead of looking for things that have gone wrong in your organization and trying to fix them … look for things that went right and try to build on them. Make work matter and give the WOW! factor free reign in your organization. Discover passion, persistence, and imagination to get results. Think weird and learn how to thrive in a disruptive age.

This book is out of print, however, used copies can be found through the booksellers below.

Available at amazon.com Available at worldcat.org
talent

Essentials: Talent

Don’t pay lip-service to People-Power—make your organization truly talent-attractive. Your business can become an Awesome Place to Work—a place where Talent rules. Discover why the office slave is dead and the age of the Free Agent is now. Ensure that talent doesn’t just support the brand—but IS the brand. Use quirky, energetic, and disobedient talent to create your Primary Competitive Advantage.

This book is out of print, however, used copies can be found through the booksellers below.

Available at amazon.com Available at worldcat.org
design

Essentials: Design

Think designers are odd ducks who should be confined to their desks? Wrong! They should sit at the CEO’s immediate right at the boardroom table. Create a whole new experience for your customers and turn what you provide into an experience. Discover why design is the Number 1 determinant of whether a product or service stands out—or doesn’t. Learn how we are all designers at heart. See why branding is about nothing more, or less, than heart: What is your organization, why is it here, and how is it unique?

This book is out of print, however, used copies can be found through the booksellers below.

Available at amazon.com Available at worldcat.org
trends

Essentials: Trends (with Martha Barletta)

Women are where it’s at! And Boomers and Geezers are where damn near ALL the loot is! How you respond to emerging trends and exploit their potential is key to the success of your organization. Create a strategic vision for the future with revolutionary new ideas from Tom Peters and Martha Barletta. Discover how marketing to women is “the biggest trend in the world.” Find out how you can target the aging population. Think about making that strategic realignment.

This book is out of print, however, used copies can be found through the booksellers below.

Available at amazon.com Available at worldcat.org

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The Little BIG Things: 163 Ways to Pursue EXCELLENCE

2010 | The Little BIG Things is a compendium of 163 ways to pursue Excellence—with tips ranging from the blatantly obvious, “Design Is … Everywhere!” and “It’s All About … the Quality of the Workforce,” to the wildly counterintuitive, “Boring Is Beautiful” and “‘Failure’—Celebrate It!” to the often repeated, “The Customer Is ‘She.'” Begun as a repackaging of the Success Tips from our blog, this book became so much more as Tom worked and reworked its contents. Now, its main message is that EXCELLENCE is the result of many small tasks, all of which can be practiced and mastered.

Click here for more information about The Little BIG Things, including free audio recordings of Tom reading the book.

Available in hardcover, paperback, and as an ebook (through Apple Books, or for the Kindle). The audio version is also available via download.

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The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last

2018 | While writing The Excellence Dividend, Tom called it by various names, all of which suggested that the book contains everything he’s learned in his 35-plus years of writing and speaking on the best practices for businesses and their leaders. In those 35 years, he never stopped studying what’s new and making his best predictions for what’s to come next. This book focuses all Tom’s knowledge on how to manage your business in this time of exponentially accelerating change. Not surprisingly, he has a great deal to say about how you treat your people, and that your focus should be on striving for Excellence.

Click here for more information about The Excellence Dividend.

Available in paperback, ebook, and audio (read by Tom).

Available at amazon.com Available at barnesandnoble.com Available at worldcat.org

Excellence Now: Extreme Humanism

2021 | Given the state of our world today Tom sets an even higher bar and will show how excellence in leadership is achieved by an obsessive focus on the growth of those you are leading.

Click here for more information about Excellence Now: Extreme Humanism.

Available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook.

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Tom Peters’ Compact Guide to Excellence (with Nancye Green)

2022 | Full of inspiration for anyone aged 20 to 80, from cashiers to CEOs. This inspiring little book is packed with exhilarating quotes that will urge you to recognize what truly matters at work. Over the decades, Tom has gathered these gems of wisdom from those creating extraordinary places to work, thrilling customers, and contributing to their communities.

Click here for more information about Tom Peters’ Compact Guide to Excellence.

Available in paperback and ebook.
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