25 Fast Ideas for Slower Times

10. The Power of Positive Thinking
"Stop disciplining employees. If you catch people doing things right, they will do things better in the future. When we did this at the Bellagio, performance went up, and turnover went down."
-- Arte Nathan, former VP of human resources, Mirage Resorts Inc. and director of the Data Intelligence Center of the Unifi Network division, PricewaterhouseCoopers

11. You Should Get Out More
"I don't want to hear that someone else beat us to the marketplace because we didn't get out of the building. You have to get out and talk to people to find out about your problems."
-- Frank Hauck, executive VP of products and offerings, EMC Corp.

12. Getting to Know You
"We spent most of the 20th century creating things that people somewhere might like. Then we broadcast messages to find those people and get their money. Today, instead of giving people a lot of choices and taking orders, we are beginning to serve customers better by getting to know them. A company that knows what I want has a great advantage over a company that offers me a slew of choices and makes me sift through them."
-- Martha Rogers, partner, Peppers and Rogers Group

13. The Downside of Technology
"The greatest misconception is that technology makes customer service easy. In many cases, technology makes the provision of service more difficult because it introduces entirely new ways of recording information that are not compatible with yesterday's techniques. At the same time, expectations have far exceeded technology."
-- Hal Logan, president and CEO, Manheim Interactive

14. Messy Is Beautiful
"Today, rabid rationality drives the culture of business -- especially in the U.S. -- straight into a dead end. Abandon the safety of structures. Forget tidy assumptions. Face up to the messy reality of the world. Revel in it. People do not act with rational, unemotional self-interest. Over the past 18 months, the stock market has given us a sharp lesson in the limits of rationality. As it turns out, even the market's completely wired into moods and emotions."
-- Kevin Roberts, CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi

15. Everybody Must Get Stoned
"In the new world of work, passion and expertise are the Rosetta stone."
-- Julie Anixter, managing director of new media and R&D, Tom Peters Co.

16. Don't Stop Now
"I'm seriously pissed off, absolutely irritated that Lucent, Nortel, and Cisco are in the tank. It only goes to show that those companies have astonishingly stupid customers. Now is the time to turn the heat up, not down.... Go bananas on IT and marketing spending while your competitors are too stupid to do so."
-- Tom Peters, management guru and author

17. (In)Action Item
"Create a "To-Don't" list that contains tasks, rituals, and meetings that you should never waste your time on again. Then stick to it."
-- Tom Peters, management guru and author

18. Staying Creative in Mentally Constipated Times
"Celebrate weakness. Play the fool in your group or your company by embracing inversion, absurdity, and perseverance. Inverted thinking may help you leapfrog the competition. And just think of the innovations that rose from failure: Post-it Notes, the telephone, Silly Putty, the lightbulb."
-- Annette Moser-Wellman, author of The Five Faces of Genius