could you manage without him?

Scottish managers into thinking the unthinkable.

The main weapons in the Peters armoury are words. Yes, he will zap supporting slides on to a giant screen. And he has been known to dispense survival kits to his audiences - anything from bags of kids' sweets and stressballs to copies of his latest book - to help them surmount the crazy times we live in. But the core Peters tool is talk. Lots of it. Peppered with stories, jokes, insults, questions and gobbets of curiously-homespun management wisdom, Peters-speak is designed to transform the attitudes and aspirations of his audiences in ways that inevitably draw comparisons with the great American religious evangelists, through Billy Graham onwards. The Peters challenge, though focused firmly on Mammon, ranges from the aspirational - we can all be Michelangelos - to the mawkishly sentimental - love all, serve all. The big unanswered question is whether all those hours spent cajoling, surprising,

and sometimes inspiring his business audiences worldwide achieve anything of lasting value in the way those who come under his spell run their companies in the wake of a Peters experience. Or is this simply sophisticated entertainment for harassed men and women in suits?

There is no doubt that the Tom Peters industry has a loyal following. Comparing him with his peers and rivals, like Peter Drucker and Michael Porter, the Economist scored Peters low on influence, originality, and intellectual coherence, but gave him a maximum five score, well ahead of his rivals, when it came to the devotion shown by his followers. Peters slays his audiences.

But having metaphorically slain them, do they come away with any fresh answers to the questions and challenges that daily confront them in their own companies? Like all who ply his trade, Peters has a reputation for staying one step ahead of the game, peddling this year's fashionable management theory before the imperfections of last year's have been fully exposed. The major glitch in the Peters' oeuvre to date lies in the 1982 book - In Search of Excellence - which made his name. Co-authored with Robert Waterman, the book Peters now refers to simply as Search purported to seek out the lessons of America's most successful corporations. The trouble was that, two years on from publication, many of the corporate role models the authors identified were no longer success stories. Some were really toiling. The authors were ripe for a media doing. The magazine BusinessWeek duly dished it out. ''Oops!''

screamed the cover. Inside was a 12-page analysis of where Peters and Waterman had got it hopelessly wrong.

For someone who has admitted to a very thin skin - ''I'm devastated when I get bad reviews. I laugh a lot of that shit off but every wound is fatal,'' he told biographer, Stuart Crainer - that episode could have spelt the end of a promising career. But Peters survived and prospered. Now he is surprisingly frank about the shortcomings of Search. The eight principles the book contained have, he claims, survived intact. ''Just the companies haven't.''

He is even blunter about what the Tom Peters experience is

all about.

''According to the press I make my dough as a guru. Revolting. That's not my take. I just talk about stuff I've seen, try to confuse people I talk to. Yet most who attend my seminars are looking for answers.

''Thanks for coming, but how tragic. There are no answers. Just, at best, a few guesses that might be worth a try.''

These few guesses don't come cheap. Peters charges upwards of $100,000 for just one day's work. Talking about stuff he's seen and trying to confuse his audiences has turned this Vietnam War veteran and McKinsey management consultant, through the seminars, the books and the syndicated newspaper columns, into a

multi-million dollar industry.

It just goes to show that even uncertainty, sold with enough flair, can command top dollar in today's marketplace.