Rating: 
Summary: Useful, if (in appearence) banal and silly
Review: We are in the age of manufactured enthusiasm. How anyone can imagine that regular work in a business should be stimulating to the point of being really really cool is simply beyond me. Yet year in and year out, Tom Peters (and an immense cohort of lesser talents) continue to tell us that yes, work can be fun and cool, etc etc. And he continues to make the really really big bucks doing so. Either Peters is onto something, or we are all fools for treating him like he is. What I believe is that he has inserted himself into business speak as one of our principal formulators of vocabulary to dress up our normal drudgery as something more than it is. Peters pumps businessmen up, flatters their vanities, and sends them back to the real work with a new vocabulary of "change agents," "WoW projects," and innumerable other expressions of similar banality. He tells them that what they are doing is significant and interesting, and that they can make every project into a fantiastical thing that will change the workd as well as enhance their careers. This boggles the mind, particularly if you have read it more than once in such puffed up venues as Fast Company and Wired, which I believe bring the the profession of journalism to the crudest boosterism, akin to the promoters of primitive Western cities in the 19C America. In Project 50, Peters offers "fifty ways to transform every 'task' into a project that matters." They range from "reframing" the task as it was posed (make it revolutionary) to selling it succinctly ("metaphor time!") to implementing it ("celebrate failure"!! as a learning experince and as a useful exercise of thinking "crazy") to Exiting ("Seed your freaks into the mainstream"!). If this does not want to make you vomit, try reading it straight through. Doesn't it make you cringe? And yet. In my education work with managers whom I sincerely admire and who are undoubtedly highly intelligent and savvy, they gobble this stuff up and use it. While they disdain much of the ridiulous in Peters' vocabulary (the "nub", etc.), they find it profitable to discuss these ideas and it inspires them to change. Thus, I must conclude that there is something is all this hype, something useful that gets pulled out and applied. I just wish that it didn't seem so trivial and silly, so over the top for people who consider themselves writers. I saw a group of extremely bright people wave this book like it was Mao's Red Book durin the cultural revolution. It was stupefying. So I must say: this book is useful. I make money from it too. And it changes behavior, at least in the activities that I have seen as an education professional. Thus, I must recommend it with a grain of salt. Don't get carried away, but don't have too closed a mind either.
Rating: 
Summary: Guides you in making your work and your life matter.
Review: When you learn to use this little book you can turn nasty little jobs into opportunities that are rewarding. Sounds like the same old words but it sure doesn't feel like "the same old" when you get it to work the first few times. It MAGIC and it makes your project fun, manageable, and they are all set up for further correction and deeper development.
I used to hate making some business telephone calls and after I defined the project and found the WOW in it, it became O.K and then went on to be one of my strengths and I'm making friends on the telephone now and have doubeled my income. This is powerful and Tom Peters is to big a part of our business evolution to not have as a traveling companion as we become more and more part of the global brain.
Rating:
Summary: Guides you in making your work and your life matter.
Review: When you learn to use this little book you can turn nasty little jobs into opportunities that are rewarding. Sounds like the same old words but it sure doesn't feel like "the same old" when you get it to work the first few times. It MAGIC and it makes your project fun, manageable, and they are all set up for further correction and deeper development.
I used to hate making some business telephone calls and after I defined the project and found the WOW in it, it became O.K and then went on to be one of my strengths and I'm making friends on the telephone now and have doubeled my income. This is powerful and Tom Peters is to big a part of our business evolution to not have as a traveling companion as we become more and more part of the global brain.
Rating:
Summary: buy, or borrow this book NOW!
Review: whether you are a tom peters fan already or someone new to his world, you need this book. if you do not want to change the world (and your job along with it) after reading the first chapter, you better check your pulse, 'cause you are probably dead. this guy fires me up and i have told everyone i know about it. Before you ask, i do not know him, have never met him nor do i have any vested interest in his work, other than that work will get better and cooler if more people would read his stuff and try a few of his ideas. that's why i push him and his ideas, i'm selfish. i want work to be fun and a whole lot less like work.
Rating:
Summary: WOW! A business must!
Review: WOW! Buy it. Read it, no ABSORB it. But put it to work BEFORE you finish the book. So many parts of this book struck a cord. I took rapid prototyping to heart and used existing tools to completely revamp a process. Project Time - 2 1/2 hours, time savings - 2 hours per day x 3 employees! Approval and buy in took a week. (Our normal process would have taken months). If you try to read this and then put the principals in practice you will be overwhelmed. Practice as you go along. Tom is cutting straight to the meat with his "50" series books. You NEED these books.
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