Gurus On Marketing

SIX
Tom Peters
In terms of ‘guru’ ranking Tom Peters must rank second to Peter
Drucker. In terms of popularity he leads the conference platform.
According to Charles Handy, himself a guru:
‘Tom Peters is not a philosopher or a social historian like Peter
Drucker. He no longer has any all-embracing theories of the world
of organisations or any formulas for change but he gets under the
skin of an organisation.’
The book ‘The Witch Doctors’ 28 describes him in the following terms:
‘…he has an intimate knowledge of corporate life, not just in the
United States but also in Europe and around the Pacific rim; not
just in the boardroom, but in the marketing department and in the
machine shop; not just in the giants like Sony and IBM but in countless
small companies that nobody seems able to track down. He
cannot book into a hotel, fly in an aircraft or park his car without
finding an interesting management angle...’
Peter’s first book, ‘In Search of Excellence’ which he co-authored with
his colleague Robert Waterman was a landmark book in that it was
a launching pad for his way to become a business guru. The book
looked at 43 successful companies and analysed the critical factors
that contributed to their success. According to Peter Drucker, as quoted
in ‘The Witch Doctors’:
‘When Aunt Mary has to give that nephew of hers a high school
graduation present and she gives him ‘In Search of Excellence’, you
know that management has become part of the general culture.’ 29
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