Summary: Re-Imagine!

Review and Analysis of Peter's Book

BusinessNews Publishing

• Publisher: Must Read Summaries
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9782511021361
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Development
• Index: Business

The must-read summary of Tom Peters' book: `Re-Imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age`.

This complete summary of the ideas from Tom Peters' book `Re-Imagine!` shows that in order to take advantage of all that the changing world offers, you must be willing to reinvent and update your business model. In his book, the author explains that this level of reinvention will be necessary as more change is imminent and it will not be sufficient to follow upgrades of models that worked in the past. This summary presents the reader with the concept of `virtual organisations`, which will become the foundation of the business model of the future.

Added-value of this summary:
• Save time
• Understand key concepts
• Expand your business knowledge

To learn more, read `Re-Imagine!` and discover the key to staying ahead in the business future.

Summary of Re-Imagine! (Tom Peters)

Context

All bets are off when it comes to looking to the future

“We act as if the dot com crash signaled the end of the New Economy. But we are, in fact, on the verge of the biggest and most profound wave of economic change in a thousand years.”

– Tom Peters

The business world is currently at a critical crossroad as technology advances are making everyone rethink what they do and how they add value. This is a very messy process with many false starts and spurts, but the underlying dynamic is that a new breed of business enterprise is beginning to emerge. Since it is too early yet to say definitively how things will pan out, the smart approach at present is:

• Be willing to make a few failures while figuring out what works – because each failure will be a valuable learning experience and provide some clues about the future.
• Be prepared to break some of the old rules of business – and take some risks. If you’re bold enough, you may get onto an uptrend early enough to profit from it.
• Put aside your current business practices – like strategic planning, total quality management or sustainable competitive advantage – and try new things and approaches.

Embrace destruction of the old to make way for the new

“There’s going to be a fundamental change in the global economy unlike anything we’ve had since cavemen began bartering.”

– Arnold Baker, economist, Sandia National Laboratories

In times of rapid change, our first instinct is to attempt some “incrementalism” – that is, to alter our existing business structures to take into account changes in the business environment. That simply won’t work in the current circumstances. Instead, what we need to be doing is actively participating in the destruction of our old corporate structures to make way for new structures better suited to the circumstances.

So how can you do that? Some ideas:

1. Specify a “sell by” date for every business unit.
2. Acquire an R&D company and merge with it.
3. Recruit some world-class performers and pay them very well.
4. Change every executive’s assignment every 36-months.
5. Start a substantial venture capital fund.
6. Build a skunk works in every business unit.
7. Appoint weird people to your board of directors.
8. Hire strange instructors for your in-house training.
9. Have an “Up or Out” philosophy in career advancement.
10. Seek unusual customers and unconventional suppliers.
11. Be happy with tension and avoid consensus.
12. Replace yourself with someone completely opposite.
13. Honor results, not impressive presentations.
14. Bring in people from outside your industry.
15. Diversify your talent pool.
16. Sell a minority shareholding to outsiders.
17. Move divisions to new and more energetic locations.
18. Bring international people into management.
19. Cut your middle management by 90-percent.
20. Start up new wholly owned subsidiaries.

Technology

White collar jobs will be replaced by technology

“At least 80-percent of white-collar jobs, as we know them today, will either disappear entirely or be reconfigured beyond recognition in just the next fifteen years.”

– Tom Peters

At one time, it was widely assumed that technology would replace blue-collar workers only. That’s no longer the case. Today, dramatic and permanent change is coming to the world of white collar workers, making most of them irrelevant and unnecessary. Or put differently, a $239 microprocessor is now capable of doing the work that a $135,000-a-year middle manager was previously doing. It also has become feasible to have a $30,000-a-year worker in India doing the same thing using modern communication technology.

There’s no point trying to fight these changes or delay them, so a better approach is to work with them and enjoy the ride. Rather than bemoaning the loss of jobs, think about what new opportunities these changes open up, because they are a reality.

InfoTech changes everything in the marketplace

“We aim to ‘take advantage’ of the Web in our ‘proven business model’. Instead, we must re-imagine that business model so that it is driven – internally and externally- by the Web and the power of total connectivity.”

– Tom Peters

The availability of the Internet has dramatically and permanently changed customer expectations and will continue to do so in the future. Why? Because the Internet:

• Is bureaucracy free – allowing flat organizations to function where everyone can talk to everyone else without going through gatekeepers like secretaries or assistants.
• Offers impressive operational efficiency – as more and mor...

Table of contents

• Title page
• Book Presentation
• Summary of Re-Imagine! (Tom Peters)
• About the Summary Publisher
• Copyright