The Excellence Dividend: Meeting the Tech Tide with Work That Wows and Jobs That Last

Peters (The Little Big Things), a veteran business writer, delivers a superb business tome intended to capture his “thinking over the past five decades” and show its applicability to the 21st century. Peters does a commendable job of parsing an impressive amount of material into easily digestible bites, beginning with simple and elegant definitions of what excellence looks like at work—a tucked-in shower curtain in a hotel bathroom, for example— proceeding to such varied topics as the importance of lunch in the workplace and why women are crucial to any corporation’s success. Peters includes a bounty of reading lists throughout and repeatedly exhorts his audience to “read!” and “study!” Addressing the move toward automation, Peters urges businesses to put their workforces first. Notable stories from Peters’s career begin each chapter, though some of the more dated material, such as a 1978 anecdote about dealing with a computer crash at McKinsey & Co., can feel far removed from today’s business environment. Those who persevere, however, will find Peters a font of management wisdom germane to “surviving and thriving in the unruly times ahead.” (Apr.)