Tom Peters Quotes

I've never isolated role models based on gender. I have more male role models due to the mere fact that I've done business with more of them and they're leaders within the verticals I work. Of those, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, is an entrepreneur and personal friend that I have a great deal of respect for.

People have asked me, 'Is it about Apple or is it about Jobs?' and I say it's about how a man becomes his company and the company becomes the man. That has only happened a few times, like it happened with Ford, I think, they became inextricably linked together.

Somebody we never talk about is Stephanie McMahon. She is such a huge power influence in our company. She is always pushing us to go the limit, and she doesn't take much credit for what she's done.

Even though I am Chairman of Dole Food Company, I do most of my own grocery shopping.

We would rather have our employees running our business.

I think the greatest CEOs in the United States, business, anyway, are the ones you don't hear too much about.

Had anyone told me that I was going to have a career in business, I would have said, 'No way.'

I actually do think you're seeing this trend towards organizations just caring more about their brand and engaging. And so I think Home Depot will want to humanize itself. I think that's a lot of why companies are starting blogs, are just giving more insight into what's going on with them.

The cult of individuality and personality, which promotes painters and poets only to promote itself, is really a business. The greater the 'genius' of the personage, the greater the profit.

I once said, 'Steve Jobs is the American Xavier Niel,' but that was humour.

I like entrepreneurial people; I like people who take risks.

Steve Jobs had something like a 90% approval rating from his employees. You hear stories about him being this short-tempered, aggressive person, which he was. But he was in the pursuit of making people around him better, so the product they created would be better.

I am a very hands-on person, and I like to be involved in driving my business.

In China, you have to have a strong leader for a business to get anything done.

Some of our stuff ends up looking too corporate. I'm going to be a lot stricter from now on.

The public may admire a corporation for its impressive size. Who in the United States doesn't? But when a business, however gigantic, gets smug enough to believe that it is sufficient only to match competition on trivial points instead of leading competition in valid matters, that business is becoming vulnerable to public disfavor.

My favorite magazine is the 'Harvard Business Review.' If someone sat across from me in a restaurant and didn't know me, that might surprise them.

I followed someone who had very large shoes. He had very large shoes. Mr. J. R. D. Tata. He was a legend in the Indian business community. He had been at the helm of the Tata organization for 50 years. You were almost starting to think he was going to be there forever.

I learned a lot from Jack Welch about how to run a business.

Konosuke Matsushita was a visionary entrepreneur. He started working very young as a teenager, and he eventually created Panasonic to become a truly global company.

The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style.

If you can run one business well, you can run any business well.

There is a difference between hiring a CEO and turning over control of the business.

The average member of the public thinks of 'business' as an impersonal corporate entity, owned by the very rich and managed by over-paid executives.

When the finance or marketing people run a company, innovation stops.