Idea 35 - Organizational excellence Many esoteric works on management never make it past the campus gates. Others can influence the way companies are organized and run, though they usually have to filter their way through the consultancy profession first. A limited number of management books deliver an idea that's gripping enough to be read by senior management itself, drinking directly from the source. But only one has single-handedly created a whole new industry - In Search of Excellence, by McKinsey consultants Tom Peters and Robert Waterman. You could say that the book created two new industries: the mass business book industry and the Tom Peters industry. It appeared like a torch of hope to a benighted corporate America that felt it had lost its way in the dark. Battered by competition from the most unlikely source, in markets they had dominated proudly only a few years before, American managers reached for Peters and Waterman like a cartoon man-en-knees-in-desert