I like Tom Peters’ work. His 1997 effort, The Circle Of Innovation, still stands up today as some kind of innovation leadership mindset benchmark. Peters could have justified retiring a decade ago. And in some respects he did. Last year’s 450-page, ‘The Excellence Dividend’ in all probability represents a summing-up of all that Peters has written over the course of his career. A lot of it is written in capital letters. Which, I guess, is Tom telling us he has revealed a lot to shout about over the course of his guru-ship-by-wandering-around life. And so we learn that ‘listening’ is the most important leadership trait. And then so is self-knowledge. Reading is leadership requirement #1. And so is saying ‘thankyou’. And so is preparation. ‘Putting people first’ is a leader’s main job. Everything in Tom’s world of advice, it seems, is more important than everything else.

Which, ultimately, says to me that Tom has missed something critical from his catalogue of shout-y advice. If everything is important, nothing ends up being important. And that includes having an ability to prioritse one important thing over another. If everything is important, the only sensible way to navigate the jungle involves carrying a contradiction-finding torch and a contradiction solving machete.

The only way to make meaningful progress in a right-versus-right world is to transcend the contradiction and create higher-level both/and solutions.

If a top-five management guru doesn’t get this, after fifty years looking for excellence, its no wonder we have a world full of leaders who, as we’re already starting to see in the early stages of the Covid-19 chaos, find themselves struggling to deal with society’s right-versus-right problems armed only with either/or tools. Here’s hoping that chaos brings with it some rapid both/and learning. Contradiction finding is (and has actually always been) leadership skill #1. It’s just hidden itself very well.