Hello,

I write this post with great excitment… I am reading this Summer a few books (I´ll write maybe about the rest some other time), and I just started Tom Peters´ thought-provoking best-seller of 2003 (almost a decade old, but still quite fresh!): Re-imagine! (the red is important here)…

And I cannot help but feel VERY IDENTIFIED with him in his initial foreword, impregnated with some classical Tom Peters´ humour … Here it goes in case it is of benefit to anyone reading this:

• «Business is Cool. It´s about Creativity and Invention and Growth and Service (…) It´s about Nobel laurate Frederich Hayek´s «spontaneous discovery process.» At its best, it´s about building things that make life less burdensome… About getting us beyond –far, far beyond– the quasy slavery of the Middle Ages, the servitude of the first 150 years of the Industrial Revolution, and the cubicle slavery of the last three quarters of a century».
• The harsh news: this is NOT Optional. The microchip will colonize all rote activities. And we will have to scramble to reinvent ourselves. As we did when we came off the farm and went into the factory, and when we were ejected from the factory and delivered to the white-collar workers …  The exciting news is (as I see it, anyway): This is NOT Optional. The reinvented you and the reinvented me will have no choice but to scramble and add value in some meaningful way.»
• The punch line to my story… the story of «why this book»… is a tombstone (punch line, tombstone — an odd juxtaposition, maybe; but you get to think about such stuff when you get to be 60). A tombstone that bears the eptitaph I most hope to avoid. To wit:

Thomas Peters

1942-2003

He would have done some really cool stuff,

but his boss wouldn´t let him

Oh, Lord, don´t give me that one! (And please, kindly erase the 2003 while you are at it.) On the other hand, I know exactly how I want my tombstone to read:

Thomas Peters

1942-Whenever

He was a Player

Not «He got rich.» Not «He became famous.» Not even «He got things right.» Rather: «He was a Player.» In other words: he did not sit on the sidelines… and watch the world go by… as it was undergoing the most profound shift of basic premises in the last several hundred years (if not the last thousand or so years).»

Up to here Tom Peters… Thought-provoking, uh? … That´s why I wanted to share it (I hope the author doesn´t mind): WAY TO GO, TOM PETERS!! I want my tombstone to read the same!! … And I must say that through JAL21, I am «playing» like never before in my life!! And I do hope it will make a difference, at least a small one …