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Reload, Fire, Aim

Whether or not its concepts are still considered as sacrosanct as they originally were, In Search of Excellence continues to be one of the best-selling business management books in the world. Written by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman and published in 1982 by HarperCollins, it has been dubbed “The Best Business Book of All Time” by reviewers and academics. The book identifies eight themes that are the common elements among 43 companies that Peters and Waterman studied, evaluated, and deemed “excellent.”

The theme that has been cited—and followed—most often through the years is represented by the title of one of the book’s chapters: Ready, Fire, Aim. The lesson taught is that the great companies have a bias toward action and don’t waste a lot of time discussing what might work. They keep management meetings to a minimum and are comfortable using a methodology in which they make mistakes and learn from those mistakes, rather than trying to figure it all out in advance.

We don’t know whether Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, ever read In Search of Excellence (for one thing, the book is still required reading in many colleges, and Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard in his sophomore year), but the two mantras associated with Facebook sure sound like variations on the theme: “Done is better than perfect” and “Move Fast and Break Things.” Both slogans make the assertion that being prone toward getting things done, even if they aren’t fully ready, is better ...