Ranked #44 in 2003.
In Search for Excellence (co-written with Tom Peters) was featured on the Thinkers50 Management Classics Booklist in 2022.
In Search of Excellence sold three million copies in its first four years.
In their 1982 book In Search for Excellence Waterman and co-author Tom Peters showed us what differentiates successful companies from the rest. Their analysis was compelling because it could be used by companies and executives to foster eight skills that make companies grow faster and more profitable. These eight characteristics of winning firms include quick decision making, closeness to customers, entrepreneurship, employee satisfaction, and a lean and simple organization. The primary idea espoused was that of solving business problems with as little business process overhead as possible, and empowering decision-makers at multiple levels of a company.
Waterman earned his bachelor’s in geophysics from the Colorado School of Mines in 1958, and an MBA from Stanford University in 1961. From 1963 until 1985 he worked for management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, becoming a director in 1976. Later he directed his own company, The Waterman Group, and served as a founding director of the electric power firm, AES. Waterman also served as chair of the RLS Foundation, the national non-profit organization that sponsors research, raises awareness of, and looks for better treatments for restless leg syndrome, and served on the boards of the World Wildlife Fund, the Scleroderma Research Foundation, the US Ski Team, the ASK Group, Boise Cascade, AES Corporation, and McKesson.
In Search for Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best Run Companies (with Tom Peters, Grand Central Publishing, 1982); The Renewal Factor (Bantam, 1987); Adhocracy The Power to Change: How to Make Innovation a Way of Life (Whittle Direct Books, 1990); What America Does Right: Learning From Companies That Put People First (WW Norton & Co, 1994).
“Waterman and Tom Peters, with In Search of Excellence, almost single-handedly invented the management guru industry.”
Stuart Crainer & Des Dearlove, Thinkers50
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