BOOK REVIEW

The Excellence Dividend

Meeting The Tech Tide With Work That Wows And Jobs That Last
Author: Tom Peters
Publisher: -
Pages: 496
Price: Rs 371

'Tom Peters' new book is a bundle of beautiful dynamite. While I've been a CEO for 30 years, I still learned much worth knowing from The Excellence Dividend. You will too.’
--John C. Bogle, founder, Vanguard

For decades Tom Peters has been preaching the gospel of putting people first, and in today’s rapidly changing business environment, this message is more important than ever. With his unparalleled expertise and inimitable charisma, Peters offers brilliantly simple, actionable guidelines for success that any business leader can immediately implement. He provides a roadmap for your organisation and for you as an individual to thrive amidst the tech tsunami, and he has a lot of fun doing it. The Excellence Dividend is an important new book from one of today’s greatest business thinkers.

The ‘Meeting the Tech Tide’ part of the subtitle undersells the scope of The Excellence Dividend. The book is a 496-page knowledge bomb, written in a frank, unfiltered style. Peters covers a huge swath of territory, which isn't surprising after you read his introduction. In the intro, Peters explains that the book is based on a massive 4,094 slide PowerPoint presentation he calls ‘The Works.’ The book is a distillation of years of accumulated wisdom.

Peters does deal with the coming disruption from AI and machine learning, and his outlook is optimistic. Even though some jobs will go away or be changed, he says, businesses that focus on excellence and great customer experience will thrive. He provides numerous examples of businesses in no-growth industries that achieved sales and profit growth by outshining their competition.

One key point Peters emphasises is that businesses need to emphasise top line revenue growth. Cost cutting, he says, is a death spiral. He gives the example of TD Bank, known, among other things, for encouraging customers to bring their dogs with them. While most banks are cutting back branches and staff, TD has aggressively opened new branches and focused on catering to the customer, resulting in them taking a million new accounts from their competitors.

Much of the advice Peters has to offer deals with people – how to hire them, develop them, and treat them every day. He points out, for example, that annual employee turnover in retail averages 65 per cent. Publix, the grocery chain, experiences just 5 per cent. It’s no coincidence that Publix leads most customer satisfaction surveys. Peters emphasises that to focus on the customer, you first have to focus on your people.

There are far too many topics to mention here, and Peters covers them all in his straight-talk, common-sense style. If you are ready to drink from a fire-hose of wisdom, pick up a copy of The Excellence Dividend.