Tells how to reexamine projects, include design from the start, use business plans as a guideline, involve customers in the development, and attract the best team members

A simple and handy guide that provides 50 easy steps to help the modern businessperson choose the right project, find the right team, develop strategies for success, and ultimately know when it's time to move on. The common denominator/bottom line for both the professional service firm/PSF and the individual/Brand You is: the project. And for the cool individual in the cool professional service firm there is only one answer: the cool project. A seminar participant said: "Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes." So, how many of you are at work—right now—on "mediocre successes"? At work on projects that won't be recalled, let alone recalled with fondness and glee, a year from now? We don't study professional service firms. (Mistake.) And we don't study WOW Projects. (Worse mistake.) There is, of course, a project management literature. But it's awful. Or, at least, misleading. It focuses almost exclusively on the details of planning and tracking progress and totally ignores the important stuff like: Is it cool? Is it beautiful? Will it make a difference? My No.1 epithet: "On time ... on budget ... who cares?" I.e., does it matter? Will you be bragging about it two—or ten—years from now? Is it a WOW project? So, then: Step #1 ... the organization ... the professional service firm/PSF 1.0. Step 2 ... the individual ... the pursuit of distinction/Brand You. And: Step #3 ... the work itself ... the memorable project/WOW Projects. See also the other 50List titles in the Reinventing Work series by Tom Peters—The Brand You50 and The Professional Service Firm50—for additional information on how to make an impact in the professional world.

'Carol Kennedy's The Next Big Idea should be on the desk of every consultant.' Accountancy Age'Written with a freshness and sparkle that belie a considerable amount of research, and provides new insights on almost every page.' Innovation MagazineThe book that outlines the next big idea in business - whether Larry Ellison's business strategy at Oracle or the next hot management theory. Covers US and European figures, concepts and ideas. Management in the 20th century was perpetually driven by the hunt for the Big Idea - the breakthrough that would bring greater efficiency, performance, productivity and profits to the business organisation and greater motivation to its employees. This book investigates where business will take its next big idea from, whether from new kinds of gurus, research institutions studying the lessons of natural science, practical industrialists working out problems on the factory floor, or the best brains of Silicon Valley.

A hands-on introduction to the fields of business and management, this comprehensive text unveils the theories behind management and organization via a practice-led, international approach. In this fourth edition, the book expands with six new chapters on digital business transformation, internationalization, corporate social responsibility, the future of work, human resource management, and culture. In addition, the book contains new, topical practical examples, and features a fully modernized layout. This comprehensive, practice-led text will be valuable for students of business, management and organisation globally. A companion website offers students multiple choice questions, practical cases, and assignments, whilst instructors can assess exams, cases, and college sheets.

David Collins, a well respected scholar of management gurus proves a critical reappraisal of the very influential work of Tom Peters. This volume examines his key works and reviews his detractors, offering an analysis of his contributions to the field of management that goes beyond the simple chronological model that has previously been used. Colli

Twenty first century, flexible capitalism creates new demands for those who work to acknowledge that all aspects of their lives have come to be seen as performance related, and consequently of interest to those who employ them (or fire them). At the start of the 21st century we can identify, borrowing from Max Weber, new work ethics that provide novel ethically slanted maxims for the conduct of a life, and which suggest that the cultivation of the self as an enterprise is the life-long activity that should give meaning, purpose and direction to a life. The book provides an innovative theoretical and methodological approach that draws on the problematising critique of Michel Foucault, the sociological imagination of Zygmunt Bauman and the work influenced by these authors in social theory and social research in the last three decades. The author takes seriously the ambivalence and irony that marks many people’s experience of their working lives, and the demands of work at the start of the 21st century. The book makes an important contribution to the continuing debate about the nature of work related identities and the consequences of the intensification of the work regimes in which these identities are performed and regulated. In a post global financial crisis (GFC) world of sovereign debt, austerity and recession the author’s analysis focuses academic and professional interest on neo-liberal injunctions to imagine ourselves as an enterprise, and to reap the rewards and carry the costs of the conduct of this enterprise.

Michael Goldhaber, writing in Wired, said, "If there is nothing very special about your work, no matter how hard you apply yourself you won't get noticed and that increasingly means you won't get paid much either. In times past you could be obscure yet secure -- now that's much harder." Again: the white collar job as now configured is doomed. Soon. ("Downsizing" in the nineties will look like small change.) So what's the trick? There's only one: distinction. Or as we call it, turning yourself into a brand . . . Brand You. A brand is nothing more than a sign of distinction. Right? Nike. Starbucks. Martha Stewart. The point (again): that's not the way we've thought about white collar workers--ourselves--over the past century. The "bureaucrat" on the finance staff is de facto faceless, plugging away, passing papers. But now, in our view, she is born again, transformed from bureaucrat to the new star. She works in a professional service firm and works on projects that she'll be able to brag about years from now. I call her/him the New American Professional, CEO of Me Inc. (even if Me Inc. is currently on someone's payroll) and, of course, of Brand You. Step #1 in the model was the organization . . .a department turned into PSF 1.0. Step #2 is the individual . . .reborn as Brand You. In 50 essential points, Tom Peters shows how to be committed to your craft, choose the right projects, how to improve networking, why you need to think fun is cool, and why it's important to piss some people off. He will enable you to turn yourself into an important and distinctive commodity. In short, he will show you how to turn yourself into . . . Brand You. See also the other 50List titles in the Reinventing Work series by Tom Peters -- The Project50 and The Professional Service Firm50 -- for additional information on how to make an impact in the professional world.