management blog

Tom Peters made his name as a management guru by analysing what made big US companies successful.

In Search of Excellence - the hugely influential 1982 bestseller he co-authored with Robert Waterman - scrutinised Caterpillar, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and 40 other businesses the pair had deemed to be “excellent”.

Now, in an audio interview with the FT Management Blog, he says their focus on the largest beasts was a “guru gaffe” that helped to create a lingering misconception that the global economy is merely a division of General Electric.

These days, the companies that get him excited tend to be small- to medium-sized enterprises operating in dull industries: companies like Jim’s Group, an Australian franchiser whose activities range from lawn mowing to dog washing, or members of the German Mittelstand.

“There are actually more companies than GE in the world,” he says. And that goes for Google too.

You can listen to Mr Peters discuss these themes in part one of the audio interview, conducted at the FT’s London headquarters, by clicking here.

In part two, he talks about “internal customers” – vital colleagues who might need to be wooed even more assiduously than the external customers that were the focus of his early work. He also discusses the controversial legacy of In Search of Excellence.

In part three, he suggests that some good will still come of the reckless innovation that caused the credit crunch and declares that those who watch The Apprentice to learn about management “deserve their sorry fate”.

All of these files – plus previous Management Blog audio interviews – can now be downloaded as podcasts. Just click here and follow the on-screen instructions to add them to your regular podcast subscriptions in iTunes or similar software.

Further reading: begin with a 2003 FT interview with Mr Peters, followed by the notorious Fast Company article suggesting that the data for In Search of Excellence was faked, then check out Mr Peters’ current slideshow.

Unfortunately, there is no online access to the 1984 Business Week cover story that, under the memorable headline ”Oops”, criticised the performance of some of In Search of Excellence’s star companies in the two years following the book’s publication.

However, a Forbes piece from 2002 suggested that the cohort’s longer-term performance actually turned out to be rather good (Mr Peters accidentally refers to it as a Fortune article in part two of the audio interview).

Photo by Charlie Bibby.