In Search of Excellence: What Do Millennials Really Know About Business?

It turns out that Millennials might actually know a great deal.

At least this is the impression I got from a post I read on LinkedIn by Julie Lyons-Wolfe.

Wolfe, who is the President and CEO of a company called The Handpiece Clinic - which specializes in repairing dental equipment - caught me a little off guard with her insight regarding what was at one time considered to be a seminal business book. I am of course talking about In Search of Excellence.

When the book by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. first came out in 1982 it became a Number 1 National Bestseller, prompting what I can only refer to as being "The Excellence Movement". Yes, I bought the book shortly after it was published based on the almost fanatical praises of my manager.

It was a time when we wore 3 piece suits - anybody remember vests, Exxon Mobile topped the Fortune 500 list, and Ronald Reagan raised taxes for the first of 5 times as President.

Back then Microsoft was on the cusp of greatness while Apple's Steve Jobs, who's company just a short 2 years earlier had gone public instantly creating more millionaires than any other company in history, took the helm of the McIntosh project after being kicked-off the Lisa team.

It was a very exciting time, and Peters' expounded wisdom captivated business people the world over. How could we have missed the subtle undertones of wishful thinking and flawed analysis that Wolfe intuitively picked-up part way through reading the book in 2014?

However as I continued to read the book while sharing what I had read with others, the generational wisdom it purported to provide turned out to be little more than a series of disjointed revelational soundbites. Like a decadent dessert, Peter's words sounded great but had little substantive or for that matter enduring value.

Wolfe it seems caught something that most of us missed in 1982 but was later exposed by industry experts . . . Peters' research on what made companies excellent was not only flawed but perhaps even fabricated. Flawed in that the companies the authors had identified as being excellent, proved to be less than accurate based on their poor performance in subsequent years.

Despite the above revelations, ones by the way that Peters somewhat indecisively denies, the book seems to have an extended shelf life in which its influence still reaches into the here and now. After all In Search of Excellence was recommended to Wolfe, who just assumed the CEO position in the family business, as being a must read for an up and coming executive.

The fact that she spotted a problem in the book that I as well as millions of other experienced business people missed the first time around, makes me wonder if today's business professionals are more on the ball?

It would seem like a logical conclusion given the fact that unlike any other time, the Millennial generation has unlimited access to an abundance of information and expertise that just wasn't available when we were their age. Perhaps this has enabled them to develop a more sophisticated filter through which to view the purportedly latest and greatest trends or success breakthroughs.

Whatever the reason, the Wolfe post clearly demonstrates that today's Millennials are more scrutinizing and less naive when it comes to gurus and their secrets to success.

Now if you will excuse me, I will have to see if I can unload my Wang Labs stock.

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