Tom Peters does not do understatement. But speaking via telephone last week from Boston he seems genuinely agitated. What scares him is the "stunning statistic" that he has just read in the Wall Street Journal, to the effect that in the last 36 months foreign companies have built 60,000 factories in China.

It surprised him, he says, but more importantly it surprised the merchant bankers he had dinner with the night before. It is further evidence to support the latest proposition from the management consultant turned best-selling author of business books.

"The amount of change and turbulence and turmoil - and the speed associated therewith - in the global economy deserves the most extreme language that a person can muster," he says.

The consequence of this flux is that corporations that are not prepared to deal with volatility and individuals that are "not prepared to deal with the total change in what a career is all about" are doomed.

Sound a bit familiar? Just another manifestation of the sort of bumper sticker wisdom that passes for insight in these days of pseudo-visionaries and fad diets?

By Mr Peters's admission, it is a message he has been promulgating one way or another for more than 20 years, since the publication of his genre-defining management book, In Search of Excellence, and returned to more recently in last year's bestseller Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age. The difference, he says, is that this time there is "an almost desperate sense of urgency" about what he is saying.

"At some level it represents no change whatsoever [in his thinking], because I have been talking about things like an action bias ever since In Search of Excellence in 1982. But my definition of speed and action and taking charge of your own career in 1982 bears little resemblance to the words and music in my Re-imagine book and I put that through yet another filter over the last two years [since starting to write Re-imagine]," he explains.

Arguably, it is his longevity that separates Mr Peters in the management guru business, where the blindingly obvious is frequently dressed up as revelation. Although he has his critics in this regard, he has a strong following where it counts: the world of business.

A lot of what he has to say is obvious, concedes Mr Peters. But it is only "obvious to the 2 per cent who are dealing with it and it's less obvious to the 40 per cent who are not dealing with it all," he argues.

Big companies are aware of issues such as the rise of China as an economic power and most of them already have a strategy of sorts.

"But what about my wife running a $4 million turnover textile company who has invested a decade in developing exceptional relationships with Indian producers only to find that the Indian producers are totally incapable of competing with the Chinese?" he asks.

The answer, at a national level at least is to change everything, he argues. "The education system stinks, the definition of a corporation stinks, the definition of leadership stinks..." he says.

This holds true as much for Ireland and Irish workers as any other Western economy. "It applies to anyone who thinks you can work 35 hours a week for twice the pay of everybody else and still exist economically," he says.

At the level of leadership, change means the days of the hierarchical structures that we have had for the 250 years of the industrial revolution are over. "You cannot run the United States army that way and you cannot run a corporation that way, when the metabolism of the planet has literally increased dramatically."

For individuals, it means the end of careers as currently understood. "The bureaucrat is an endangered species. He is either going to be wiped out by the Indians or by a microprocessor - take your pick".

It's a chilling message, particularly if you happen to be a bureaucrat.

But when you think about it, says Mr Peters, what was so great about being a bureaucrat?

"I get absolutely hot under the collar and red in the face when people in 2004 talk about 'take me back to the wonderful years of 1984' where I was trapped in a bloody three metre by four metre office on the 37th floor of a high rise for 30 years.

"I would rather live on some Irish plot, plucking potatoes than live in a damn high rise like my father did," he says.

But of course not everybody agrees, he says. "I live on a farm. I have a different view of the world, If I didn't have soil to return to at the end of a trip I would go crazy. If I had to work in a high rise I would shoot myself."

Strong words, but perhaps they are easy to say when your farm is a 1,300-acre spread in Vermont paid for by royalties from management books bought in their thousands by the unfortunate denizens of high rises.

Tom Peters will give a four-hour briefing at the Irish Management Institute on October 14th. For more information freefone 1800 22 33 88 or visit www.imi.ie.