Tom Peters’s True Confessions (Continued)

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My seventh confession: Search was perfect. There are no mistakes in it. None, none, none. The eight basic principles that I wrote down on that pad of yellow paper in May 1980, and that became the eight key elements of the book, were right. They were right for 1982. They were accurate. They were correct. Nothing was wrong with them in 1982.

So where’s the confession, you ask? Well, the book is flawed as hell. And we told one big lie — unintentionally, but a lie nonetheless.

Here’s why it was perfect: We absolutely nailed the eight points of the compass that people needed to think about and work on … in 1982. I could quibble with my own language, with the choice of words for some of the eight points — but they were the right eight points. If you look at the world of business in 1982, those eight points said what needed to be said. Period. End of story.