Leading! Without! Tom! Peters!

By Francine Russo

In late 2004, when management guru Tom Peters cast off the consulting and training company that bore his name, the folks left behind were pretty scared. Yet the partners of the renamed Bluepoint Leadership Development say that they are better managed without the world-famous management consultant and author of In Search of Excellence and Re-imagine! than with him: higher revenues, doubled profitability, loyalty from old clients and a roster of new ones like Starbucks, DHL and GE. "Fortune called Tom Peters the Ur-guru of management," says Bluepoint partner David Parks, "but apparently not when it comes to running his own company."

Well, not so fast. Turns out Peters never really did run the company, although he was its chairman and the owner of some of its well-known programs like Wow! Projects and Brand You. The story of the company's postdivorce ascent reflects its struggle with and ambivalence over the Peters legacy--the inspiration of his driving passion and the pitfalls of his provocateur's stance and ueber-guru status. And it raises the question of whether theorizing about management has much to do with managing.

To hear Peters tell it, he was never interested in running anything but Tom Peters. He says he got talked into lending his name to some smart people he liked so that they could do consulting and leadership training. Meanwhile, he was writing, catching successive waves of the business zeitgeist and playing the lecture circuit. "I have worked at building a brand but not through training and consulting," Peters says. "I'm an ideas person." If Bluepoint says they're doing better without him, he says with a chuckle, "Good for them. I love those guys."

From its founding in 1986, the Tom Peters Co., based in Cincinnati, Ohio, waxed and waned with business cycles, with Peters promoting the company at varying levels of intensity. After the dotcom bust, Peters' high-risk, big-payoff consulting projects, which preached blowing up business-as usual, were less in vogue. The bulk of the company's business was in its safer leadership training, mostly using non-Peters material that emphasized behavioral assessment and leadership preparation. In 2004, Peters, who had moved his personal life from California to Vermont, decided that "it was silly to have a company in Cincinnati that wasn't doing the things I was interested in doing." He divorced it, took a few clients and set up a new "transformational consulting" shop in Boston.

Where did this leave the Cincy crew? With 75% of the clients--if they could keep them--but no identity at all. "As president of Tom Peters Co.," says Gregg Thompson, Bluepoint's president, "I could walk into any executive office and be welcomed." On the other hand, prospects could feel threatened by Peters' destroy-to-create anthem and confused by his welter of enthusiasms.

They renamed the company Bluepoint and focused on leadership development. "We took Tom's advice to his clients," Parks says: " 'Do what you do better than anyone else.' For us, that's leadership training." Their first year was bumpy, with the partners logging lots of travel to reassure clients, most of which they kept, including Microsoft, Nike and New York Life. That assured clients like Mark Hoffman, a human-resources executive at St. Jude Medical. Besides, he says, "Tom Peters didn't offer what we wanted to do anymore."

Since the split, Bluepoint has opened offices in Singapore and Canada and increased average monthly revenue 100%. Its projected 2007 revenues of $4.5 million easily top the $3 million it earned in 2003 with the marquee name on the door.

But the Peters factor cut deeper than the name. The company was filled with his adherents, including some who were itching to emerge from his shadow. "We weren't all trying to be mini--Tom Peters," says Parks, a 20-year veteran of the firm. "[But] some people in the organization had tom peters tattooed on their arm." In fact, some key players who had followed Peters into the company eventually followed him out. Ron Crossland stepped into the void but in January passed the management torch to Thompson while remaining as chairman.

Thompson has a couple of books coming out himself, including Unleashed! Expecting Greatness and Other Secrets of Coaching for Exceptional Performance (co-authored by Susanne Biro). Note Peters' signature exclamation mark in the title. Will Thompson be next to follow the siren of the lecture hall? "Unlikely," he says. "I love leading this community." If so, he may be that rare management guru who actually wants to manage.