Earlier this year I was interested our perception of chaos in the market.

Tom Peters published “Thriving on Chaos” in 1987. The “Handbook for Management Revolution” offers a lot of advice on how hyperactive managers can effectively foster a workplace culture of urgency and impatience.

Peters’ book was an 11 month NY Times bestseller and is described by some as being his best. It’s a powerful piece of work.

It’s amazing the way he transformed the value and connotations of the idea of “chaos”. My used paperback copy is marked “Property of Idyllwild Presbyterian Community Church Women 1991″. I’m not joking. Peters metaphorically and literally made chaos an attractive concept for even the most mundane among us. It was a beautiful strategy.

Here’s a money line from the preface:

“Most fundamentally, the times demand that flexibility and love of change replace our longstanding penchant for mass production and mass markets, based as it is upon a relatively predictable environment now vanished.”

Revolution was in the air sisters and brothers. Not the type of chaotic revolution that results in uncomfortable changes to our lifestyles, but chaos and revolution nonetheless. The MC5 would not approve. Rural California secularist church womens’ groups, on the other hand, were no doubt profoundly impacted.

If 1987 was a chaotic marketplace, what do we call this condition 20 years later? I used to like the word chaos, now it seems completely insufficient. Any suggestions? Any other words we haven’t already co-opted from radical groups to describe the new era of management strategy?
[tags]chaos, revolution, Tom Peters, 1987[/tags]