Sunday, August 13, 2006

In search of excellence

I have just finished reading the book "in search of excellence" by Tom Peters and Waterman. This was about the besr run companies in America during the late 70s and early 80s. Some of it is sort of dated. They really like the IBM that made mainframes, and are also very enthusiastic about the IBM sales force. I remember that many people hated IBM because the sales force would sell computers to the IT managers, but the people who used the machines hated the systems. This book was meant to be very influenciable, but after it was written many US companies started to downsize their workforce. Another thing they got wrong was "pringles". One of their favourite companies had developed pringles crisps. They originally lost money. I am actually scared of pringles crisps because if I buy a tube it usually lasts about 2 hours. So I fondly look at them (as well as Tesco vodka) at the supermarket, but usually don't buy them. I can't believe somethibg so addictive is a failure.