In Search of Excellence

In Search of Excellence is an international bestselling book written by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr..

First published in 1982, it is one of the biggest selling business books ever, selling 3 million copies in its first four years, and being the most widely held monograph in the United States from 1989 to 2006 (WorldCat data).

The book purports to explore the art and science of management used by several 1980s companies.

In Search of Excellence did not start out as a book, as Tom Peters explained when interviewed in 2001 to mark the 20th anniversary of In Search of Excellence. In the same interview, Peters claims that he and Waterman were both consultants on the "margins" of McKinsey, based in the San Francisco office.

In 1977 McKinsey director Ron Daniel launched two projects; the first and major one, the Business Strategy project, was allocated to top consultants at McKinsey's New York City corporate HQ and was given significant resources, but could not manage to effectively implement strategy.

Peters states that directly after graduating with a PhD from Stanford, and returning to McKinsey, Daniel handed him a "fascinating assignment." Motivated by the new ideas coming from Bruce Henderson's Boston Consulting Group, Peters "was asked [by Daniel] to look at 'organization effectiveness' and 'implementation issues' in an inconsequential offshoot project nested in McKinsey's rather offbeat San Francisco office." While Daniel's first project was focused on Business Strategy, this second project was concerned with Organization, which Peters defined as involving "the structure-and-people side." This "Organization" project was seen as less important, according to Peters in a Fast Company interview.

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