Tom Peters Quotes

I don't read many business books. I read good fiction. Business is about people, so my favorite business books are anything by Dickens.

I think management is about just that - managing people via man-to-man skills.

Few people would doubt that Mark Zuckerberg would build a great product. But I, at least, would never have expected him to become so great at hiring, motivating, managing, and ultimately getting whatever it is his company needs from people.

I am somewhat surprised to have employees.

Getting results through people is a skill that cannot be learned in the classroom.

If you want your people to be responsible, be responsive to their needs.

I learned quickly that motivating people would be the most important responsibility of my career.

Start with good people, lay out the rules, communicate with your employees, motivate them and reward them. If you do all those things effectively, you can't miss.

Do you have a real interest in people who work for you? Most good leaders have that - it's hard to get someone to follow you if they feel like you hate 'em.

I used to think business was 50 percent having the right people. Now I think it's 80 percent.

Know what your people are like, and make sure they do their jobs excellently.

And I'd say one of the great lessons I've learned over the past couple of decades, from a management perspective, is that really when you come down to it, it really is all about people and all about leadership.

If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don't have to manage them.

I always run inclusive and successful organisations.

And people is the most important part of my job. I spend one third of my time on people.

You manage things, you lead people. We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership.

Good customer service begins at the top. If your senior people don't get it, even the strongest links further down the line can become compromised.

Leadership is all about people … and getting the most out of people.

Most founders have not managed people before, and they certainly haven't managed managers.

Some of the most successful people managers are also the best listeners.

Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.

The more seriously you take your growth, the more seriously your people will take you.

We will have to learn to lead people rather then to contain them.

The most important role of managers is to create environment in which people are passionately dedicated to winning in marketplace.

Managers have traditionally developed the skills in finance, planning, marketing and production techniques. Too often the relations with their people have been assigned a secondary role. This is too important a subject not to receive first-line attention. In this regard we could learn much from the Japanese. We must reinvest in the human side of management.