Long-term Friend of Gapingvoid, Tom Peters is the Godfather of business book authors. An alumnus of McKinsey, his seminal book, “In Search of Excellence” came out in 1982, and since then he’s been considered one of the great gurus of business thought. Anyone who’s written a business book in the last forty years will have been influenced by him, it really is that simple. His latest book, “Excellence Now: Extreme Humanism” just hit the bookstores, so we asked him to to do a brief summary of what compelled him to write it. Here it is. Enjoy!

The Hour of Reckoning Is Upon Us

We are in the grip of COVID-19 and the most significant social and political unrest in the U.S. since the mid-1960s—what can only be called once-in-a-lifetime chaos. We have—in the business world and beyond—seen organizations and leaders react well, with compassion and care. And we have seen other organizations and their leaders stick to traditional efficiency-and-output-maximization dogma and at times behave in callous, even reprehensible, ways.

Insane as things are, excellence as portrayed in my new book, Excellence Now: Extreme Humanism, is, to my mind, far more important and urgent than ever. Excellence is an encompassing and a 24 / 7 / 60 / 60 activity. It is a must. There is no moral “dimension” to excellence. Excellence as defined here is the whole ballgame and must be reflected in every step we (every one of us) take. Humane and thoughtful and caring and inclusive gestures toward our team members, our communities, and our customers must become our bread and butter and meat and potatoes. They are not “part of us.” They are us. Yes, damn it, we must stop futzing around on issues such as race and gender—and make addressing these issues a, or even the centerpiece of our organizational mission and strategy and daily action assessments. And maybe, just maybe, when the worst of today’s turbulence has passed, we can usher in a new era where people first and caring and compassionate and inclusive leadership and excellence in all we do become the norm—rather than provenance of all too few.