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On10th of June,2014, the training and development community in Bahrain was inspired by words of wisdom from the Guru of the Gurus Dr. Tom Peters.

Although I came late, I tried my best to enter as quietly as possible, and joined the nearest table with group of very young Bahrainis, thinking “how lucky you guys are to have an opportunity to experience such a valuable learning event, when I was in your age, the maximum dream to see someone like Tom was through Youtube, if it was existing at that time !”

I couldn’t stop my self to move to the front row after the second break, and kept listening with my heart and soul attached to his voice, thinking of every single point and reflecting it to my own life and business.

I wanted to share some of the secrets he shared with us, in the way I understood, and I highly recommend to read his latest book “

1- Practice is the key for being an Expert in any given area.

2- Talk to others, they have interesting things to learn from, i.e, learn from every opportunity

3- Plan for your team more than they ever dream to be ,

4- Promise people to have the most valuable years of their career life while they are working with you and deliver your promise.

5- Live in a show time moment everyday

6- Be action oriented

7- Strategies are shaped over time

8- Don’t restrict change , change now and adapt as you move forward.

9- To know how to do it right is to start doing the steps which must come first fast, so you learn faster

10- Endless trial and error , this is the only way to move forward

11- do a lot from what you want to do, you will become expert in that field

12- who ever tries the most stuff wins

13- play to master not to win

14- more errors, more advancement

15- everyday you think is bad is a good day for you, check this book.

16- don’t settle for mediocre success ,excellent failures are better

17- most of what I learned are things which I leaner end by doing things wrong!

18- reward interesting failures

19- select the five people who you want to be linked with,, today, everyday, assess people around you

20- who is the most interesting person you met in the last 60 days “this made me stop and think!!”

21- if you think about benchmark, think future benchmark, not current.

22- Check the book ( power of co- creation)

23- The least experience people are on the top! Avoid joining that crowd

24- today people (human capital) are more intelligent than before , capitalize on this

25- score your projects to wow level

26- note, ask tech feedback from young generation

27- work hard in not to be “outsource-able”

28- TGW, things gone wrong, TGR, things gone right

29- may I clean your glasses , concept , little gestures matter

30- create little things which people will remember after 10 years and more

31- parking lot concept, the ending of service deliver must be superb

32- focus on experience , not service deliver

33- build a customer focus enterprise

34- LBT, little big things , small services , little changes huge impact.

35- make the sale transaction as easy as possible And, as convenience to the customer as possible, can they reach you easily ???

36- design , consider the design of your services ,, can they create standards in the market for others ?

37- CDO concept, chief design officer

38- create social relationship with your customer, and engage you team in this mission, reach up to the level where people create fan pages about your services

39- be an expert and a reference in your field , ie, don’t be consultancy provider, be a consultants trainer who happen to consult !

40- it is down to the execution , it is strategy

41- don’t over-do planning

42- be part of the execution team, don’t just watch them from your ivory tower

43- be available , don’t hide behind assistants

44- managing by wandering around , MBWA

45- watch and monitor your service deliver, check how your phones are answered payments , also , this will make the team feel that you care about their output.

46- your calendar tells the truth about you.

47- one big thing at a time , is a character of successful people.

48- focus on one or two goals at a time 49- what do you think , ask customers, ask staff, internal, external aspect

50-listen listen listen , it’s a learnable skill, make it your number 1 core value, as a person, as a company

51- apologize graceful , accept responsibility , communicate, move forward

52- three minutes call concept ,, clients, family, partners , specially during when things goes wrong

53- focus on psychology

54- soldiers , front line are extremely important

55- master and learn about the art of hiring, evaluation and promoting people

56- don’t come short on self assessment

57- ask others to evaluate you

58- to make greatness you need quality team , not quantity team , automate, check what you can minimize which can also lead to productivity improvement.

59- be insanely different, insanely genuine

60- face to face connection is important , however, use your time wisely, if you can save time by a call or email whenever it is appropriate and possible.

61- SME’s case question , employees leaving small enterprises , let them leave, your job is to empower people and have the best out of them, they will leave, that means they will be productive members in the society

Presentation and delivery related notes:

1-The idea of having a quote , terms, concepts, in form of abbreviation is a good idea, trainers must come up with their own terms.

Let me try one, YSMNMH, stands for Your slides Might Need My Help!

One thing Mr. Tom will need to consider is to consult an expert to develop his power point presentations slides cause the fonts were sometimes small and the colors were distractive.

Or, This might be his style , he is Tom Peters after all 😉

2- A small card of time breakdown, or written on a chart near the stage.

3- Dr.Tom might want to be conscious about keeping his hand near his mouth, this makes it difficult to understand his words, specially for people who might find his accent a little difficult.

Finally ,Tom Peters is the Guru of the Gurus and a 71 years old student, we must learn this from him, he inspired us for the last 50 years of human-being history, and he tried his best to be as relevant to the Bahraini audience by understanding the culture and environmental factors. “though I personally think, restricted him in giving an true (Tom Peters)’s way of giving a reality shock feedback, the thing which made me laugh remembering his other original speeches and his style of answering questions and putting his thoughts, he was a bit easy with you Bahrainis, you should see him in his real arena.

God bless you Dr. and Origin Group , and thank you for this great opportunity.