by Michael Finley
Copyright © 1996 by Michael Finley

Now, with "Tom Peters' Career Survival Guide" CD-ROM, (Houghton Mifflin Interactive, $39.95) Peters is not only taking his wit and wisdom electronic, but switching topics, all in one swell foop -- from managing organizational change to managing change in your professional life.

Peters, a former McKinsey consultant, is one of the most interesting of the going gurus because he is bound to no single idea, such as reengineering, continuous improvement, or the learning organization. Instead, his game is to cheer on all these things, even when they contradict -- anything to break the grip of 50 years of "rational management."

Rational management -- precise planning, thoughtful implementation, and sober evaluation -- worked fine back when markets stood still for years at a time. In today's hectic global marketplace, nothing stands still for more than a minute or two. Thus an element of zany excellence -- what Peters calls Wow! -- is called for. And Wow! is what Peters calls for in the three modules of his Career Survival Guide:

"Reinvent Yourself." Peters believes people acquire value through continuous learning, both inside and outside their official job description. This module encourages you to talk to people outside your company and outside your industry, to read, to network, and to avoid the dreaded mold-on-a-rock status that befalls so many wearing suits today. An individual must not be an interchangeable cog, he insists, but should a "brand" unto himself or herself -- someone customers cluster around even when the rest of the organization is second-rate. An analogy might be to professional athletics or politics, where team or party identification is second to the star system. Jobs and companies don't matter -- only Wow! does.

"Be a Project Maniac." Project orientation turns us from clock-punchers into entrepreneurs. Instead of emptying our in-box everyday, Peters urges us to see our careers as a series of proactive projects with beginnings, middles and spectacular ends. A project manager is never a specialist, hammering out the same task over and over. Instead, we become "Jacks and Jills of all trades," overseeing the project from one end to the other, learning skills on the fly, dazzling customers as we go.

"Think Resume." The philosophy to this resume-building toolkit is that a Wow! individual needs a Wow! brochure describing his or her dazzling attributes. Peters' examples stress value to the hiring entity over the usual names, dates, and titles that clutter resumes. But he began losing me a bit at this point. It seems to me that if you are following Peters' earlier recommendations, you will be hired on the basis of the relationships you form, and the voodoo that you do, not because of what a piece of paper says.

But the great thing about Tom Peters is his cheerful willingness to jump ship on an idea that no longer appeals to him. He will tell you to go for process one minute, results the next. "Whatever works" is his mantra. Though he took a lot of heat in 1993 when he decided the next big trend in business was to "go crazy," he survived. (Unlike Michael Hammer, the godfather of reengineering, an idea that has ticked so many people off worldwide that he's having now trouble getting gigs.)

The problem with Peters' career approach is that it may not be necessary, at least not this week. Unemployment in Minnesota is holding fast at 2%, which is like, nothing. Most of the country is post 3% unemployment figures. Employers are actually looking forward to the sudden availability of former welfare recipients. No one saw this coming.

At the same time, a poll last week showed 46% of workers are worried about losing their jobs today -- way up from the so-called Bush recession of 1991 (31%). It is as if we all know we can get some kind of job, but we have no confidence it will be something we will like, or be able to hold onto.

That is where Wow! becomes attractive. In a world where workers are fast becoming commoditized, the winners will be those individuals whose talent, knowledge, and personalities defy commoditization.

But how many of us are up to that? In the real world, when competition heats up that hot, the natural response is to get very, very discouraged. The problem with Peters' frenetic do-everything, be-everyone strategy is that it wears people out. Only a handful of Tom Peters clones -- cross-functional extroverts who compete by collaborating -- are possessed of that indefatigable energy.

Peters himself may be so busy with so many projects that he is unable to keep his own promises to customers. When I attempted to log onto HMI's Tom Peters Online module (http://www.hminet.com/tompeters), to take the lessons of the Survival Guide to the next level, there was no such module. Come on, Tom, break time's over -- get back to Wow! x

Michael Finley is author of Techno-Crazed: The Business Person's Guide to Controlling Technology Before It Controls You, from Peterson's.Visit Michael Finley at his home page, or e-mail him at mfinley@mfinley.com

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