Tom Peters is Mad, Just the Way We Like Him

The book arrived from Amazon in a bigger box than usual. When I extricated Tom Peters' new work, "Re-Imagine!" (don't forget the exclamation point, this is Tom Peters, after all), my first thought was, "Jossey Bass meets Rizzoli. By God it's the first coffee-table business book!

Fortunately, there's a lot more to this tome than meets the eye (though there's a helluva lot to look at). In a departure from his previous books, Peters partnered with the publishing house Dorling Kindersley (DK) for this project. To help you understand who DK is, think of those travel guides that are printed on such high-quality stock that they actually weigh you down while trekking through Europe. Think of those cookbooks with pictures of not only the finished product, but fashion-magazine-quality images of each individual ingredient. Think of that version of the Kama Sutra featurning real-life, body-hairless models in tasteful rapture demonstrating Congress of the Cow. DK specializes in making the world visual, containable, and much less complicated than it needs to be.

I was averse to buying this book. A colleague who has taken somewhat of a mentor role to me sent me another DK "Business" book featuring pictures of a lot of people sitting around a boardroom table (DK's way of demonstrating business strategy). DK doesn't do business well. But Peters doesn't do words well. At least not the usual, properly punctuated, unitalicized, restrained words you normally read in business books. The man defies punctuation. When you look at it this way, this is the most brilliant coupling since french fries and chipotle mayonnaise.

My initial judgement was that the DK format was gimmicky, meant to keep me engaged with drop caps and excessive highlighting. But something else is going on here. By publishing in such an un-businesslike format, Peters escapes readers' expectation of the usual corporate strategy message. This book is more than an expanded HBR article, it's a manifesto. And by making himself the Ralph Waldo Emerson of the business world, not so much explaining as proclaiming, enlightenment comes to the reader not in fits of logic but in the lights that turn on in response to his words. You feel the truth in your gut.

I should offer a full disclosure here--I'm only on page 3--yet I'm starting to smell myself I am so excited about this book. Stay tuned, I'm just getting started.

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[tom peters]

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