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The Tom Peters Phenomenon: Corporate Man to Corporate Skunk ReviewIn Search of Tom Peters Corporate Man to Corporate Skunk by Stuart Crainer
Few people can lay claim to having created an industry. Tom Peters can.
Tom Peters is widely credited with having created the management guru industry. Before him it is said that "management thinkers wrote articles in academic journals, gave the occasional seminar, and worked as consultants for a few large corporations". The biggest blockbusters sold under five hundred thousand books.
Tom Peters first book, `In Search of Excellence' co-authored, with Bob Waterman sold over 6 million. Its success surprised their colleagues at McKinsey, who had laughed at the idea that Peters and Waterman would keep the royalties, "should the book sell 50 000 copies".
Two decades later, `In Search of Excellence' is still one of the most readable management books. The eight characteristics of excellent companies, a bias for action, close to the customer, autonomy and entrepreneurship, productivity through people, hands-on values driven, stick to the knitting, simple form and lean staff, simultaneous loose-tight properties are all still relevant and still ignored today. It is written clearly, painting vivid pictures with anecdotes and examples from real companies, in contrast to the staid academic texts of the time.
Peters went on to become a megastar in the field of management entertainers, able to charge up to $80 000 for a one day show. The management guru industry is estimated to exceed a billion dollars and management books, including several by Peters himself, now regularly find their way into the best seller list. His later writings and teachings have sometimes inspired and sometimes puzzled a new generation of managers.
Much has been written about Tom Peters' success. More than once he appears to have been lucky with his timing. `In search of excellence' is a case in point. With its feel good factor, it came out when America's unemployment reached an all time high. There is more to his success story than luck. Stuart Crainer's book lets us glimpse Peters' almost unlimited energy and enthusiasm. In the period after the book came out Peters was doing over 150 seminars a year, often speeches in different cities on the same day. Peters and Waterman distributed over 15 000 copies of the draft book, a practice then unheard of, giving the book a cult status, even before it was released.
Stuart Crainer traces the career and thinking of Peters. He looks at his early career, his time with McKinsey, the gestation of his first book, how he broke away to set up on his own leading to his management guru business and his subsequent writing. It is a critical analysis quoting both supporters and critics. The book gets beneath the Tom Peters myth and tackles the issues with which Peters was grappling.
Micklethwait and Wooldridge of The Economist conclude in `The Witch Doctors', that "Tom Peters faces the uncomfortable epitaph: what he did - launching, leading and defining the current management boom is more significant than what he actually said". This book is a fascinating, well written account of what Tom Peters did, but also a well reasoned and critical discussion of what he actually said.
Book Review: Corporate Man to Corporate Skunk - The Tom Peters Phenomenon, by Stuart Crainer. Capstone, 1997. Available locally from Struik book distributors, Sandton.
Dr Michale Gering, Director, Sediba Consulting, Gering@iafrica.com.
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