What Leaders Know but are yet to Embrace

“The Excellence Dividend” is an interesting new book from well known author and leadership guru Tom Peters. In a recent interview with with Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, Peters bullishly claims that nothing has changed in leadership in 50 years. A bold statement. On reading his points though I must say I agree with much of what he says.

Peters finds it “maddening that all too often a business strategy is inspiring, but the execution mania is largely AWOL”.  He believes “managers fail to capitalize on immediate excellence – how we connect, listen, inspire, and admit mistakes on a human level to employees or customers”. He believes the most critical thing is to develop “an effective people-truly-first, innovate-or-die, excellence-or-bust corporate culture”. When consulting, it is inspiring to see those businesses with great corporate culture and how much more their people are engaged and achieving.

In the area of customers, he states “excellent customer experiences rely entirely on excellent employee experiences because it’s the employee who makes or breaks the customer connection”. This means leaders must see extreme value in them and pour into their career growth and development. “Training is any firm’s single most important capital investment“, adds Peters. Of course I couldn’t agree more with that statement.

If we value our people – staff and customers – listen to what they need and want, our people and our businesses will grow.

Read the full interview with Tom Peters here