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Reinventing Work/50 List
Series
The Project50
The Professional Service Firm50
The Brand You50
Design + Identity 50
Power + Action 50
By Tom Peters
New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1998
Reviewed by David Brown
getting part way through them all) but there's a lot that just
makes good sense. And if you're already on his wavelength here and
there, it makes you feel wonderfully validated.
In The Project50, Peters argues that all work today can
and should be conceived of and practiced as a series of projects:
problem, reframe, research, prototype, iterate, hit deadlines, sell,
finish, celebrate, and on to the next. In The Professional Service
Firm50, he argues that everyone, from a one-person independent
contractor to the manager of an accounting department, needs to
see and model themselves after the best sort of "professional
service firm," with its unwavering focus on clients, skunkworks
passion, and commitment to insanely great work. In The Brand
You50, he takes his argument of accountability and opportunity,
responsibility and action down to the single individual, the irreducible
and single most important unit of production. Each short book contains
some 50 chapters-"chunks," in the terminology of a source
quoted in The Professional Service Firm50. And each chapter
is an exuberant observation – exhortation – assertion
– lesson plan for improvement. His voice is unique and personal.
His typographic acrobatics are occasionally annoying and mannered,
but after a while you forget/forgive them probably because they
always seem to be in the service of his sincerity and enthusiasm.
What better way to encourage people to break the rules, reject conformity,
eschew cynicism and irony than to do it himself?
Peters understands better than almost any so-called business expert
or self-styled guru that it is all about behavior: what a person
does when no one else is looking. An organization and its performance
are nothing more or less than the sum of the behaviors of the people
who comprise it, and what I admire the most about Peters's effort
and mission is that he understands that and it is to that single
and singular person that he wants and intends to speak through the
books in this new series. He sits squarely in the mainstream of
a deeply American, fundamentally optimistic current whose great-grandfather
was probably Ben Franklin: a person not only has an opportunity
for self-improvement, but also both the responsibility and the wherewithal
to improve. And from great work comes joy, identity, the moments
that, when remembered, make a life.
But bottom line, how can you not respond positively to a book that
includes a chapter heading, "DESIGN-IS-IT. I.E.: ONE OF THE
SINGLE MOST POWERFUL FORCES IN THE WHOLE BLOODY UNIVERSE"?
At least one of each of the "50" lessons in the three
books is explicitly about the importance and value of design, and
design is a thread throughout. Promised in the next round of the
Peters 50List series is The Design +Identity50.
David Brown is the former president of Art Center College of Design
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