In Search of Excellence – by Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman Jr

In Search of Excellence is widely regarded as one of the very FIRST popular business and management books, the book that created the entire category and brought these ideas from the exclusive academic journals to the masses.

Tom Peters and Bob Waterman worked in management consulting at McKinsey and wanted to find out what made an ‘excellent’ company. They found 8 common traits the excellent organizations focused on that average business neglected. This book was written in the early 1980s, but most of the lessons and recommendations are still applicable today.

‘Lessons from America’s best run companies’

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Lessons from America’s best run companies

• Main clues to corporate excellence has come to be just incidents of unusual effort on the behalf of ordinary employees

What the company can offer

Ernest Becker psychologist about the needs of man, ‘dualism’

• Needs to be a conforming member of a winning team and be a star in his own right
• Society is a vehicle to Earthly heroism… Man transcends death by finding meaning for his life.. It Is the burning desire for the creature to count
• What man really fears is not so much extinction, but extinction with insignificance
• Men fashion unfreedom (conformity) as a bribe for self perpetuation
• In other words, men will shackle themselves for the 9-5 if only the cause is perceived to be something great
• The company can provide the same resonance as an exclusive club or honorary society