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The leader as management guru; bias for action, close to the customer.
Tom Peters (b. 1942), a McKinsey consultant with a Stanford PhD, co-wrote In Search of Excellence with Robert Waterman after a study of 43 'excellent' American companies. The 1982 book became the best-selling management title of its era and invented the modern management-guru industry — leadership ideas as mass culture.
Peters (with Waterman) turned management scholarship into mass culture. 'In Search of Excellence' made the leader a celebrity guru and culture a strategic asset — for better and worse.
The era: Situation & Contingency — Situational variables are considered; behavior is moderated by obstacles along the path between subordinates and goals.
The leader as management guru; bias for action, close to the customer.
This theory sits in the Situation & Contingency era of the map: Situational variables are considered; behavior is moderated by obstacles along the path between subordinates and goals.
Bias for action and stay close to customers — the excellence basics still hold.
Beware guru-fied best practices detached from your context.