The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence

0.0

Years ago, I wrote about a retail store in the Palo Alto environs—a good one, which had a box of two-cent candies at the checkout. I subsequently remember that "little" parting gesture of the two-cent candy as a symbol of all that is Excellent at that store. Dozens of people who have attended seminars of mine—from retailers to bankers to plumbing-supply-house owners—have come up to remind me, sometimes 15 or 20 years later, of "the two-cent candy story," and to tell me how it had a sizable impact on how they did business, metaphorically and in fact. Well, the Two-Cent Candy Phenomenon has struck again—with oomph and in the most unlikely of places. For years Singapore's "brand" has more or less been Southeast Asia's "place that works." Its legendary operational efficiency in all it does has attracted businesses of all sorts to set up shop there. But as "the rest" in the geographic neighborhood closed the efficiency gap, and China continued to rise-race-soar, Singapore decided a couple of years ago to "rebrand" itself as not only a place that works but also as an exciting, "with it" city. (I was a participant in an early rebranding conference that also featured the likes of the late Anita Roddick, Deepak Chopra, and Infosys founder and superman N. R. Narayana Murthy.) Singapore's fabled operating efficiency starts, as indeed it should, at ports of entry—the airport being a prime example. From immigration to baggage claim to transportation downtown, the services are unmatched anywhere in the world for speed and efficiency.

0.0

Tom Peters has been credited with inventing the modern management guru industry. He is chairman of the Tom Peters Company. In Search of Excellence, Peters’ best-known book, was published in 1982 and became a publishing phenomenon. Written by Peters and Bob Waterman, at a time when America's competitiveness was being threatened by Japan, In Search of Excellence demonstrated that there were still many excellent American companies. A Passion for Excellence (1985) co-written with Nancy Austin, continued the excellence theme; while Thriving on Chaos (1987) and Liberation Management (1992), were among the first books to address the newly emerging business world. The Brand You 50 (1999) and Project 50 (1999), focused on the changing nature of careers. In 2003, Re-imagine: Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age returned to the theme of excellence and was extended in the Essentials series, which ran through the 2000s. Peter's most recent book is The Little BIG Things: 163 Ways to Pursue EXCELLENCE, (2010).