(FORTUNE Magazine) – A flurry of best-sellers in the past decade transformed former McKinsey & Co. consultant Tom Peters into the Tom Clancy of management experts. Starting with In Search of Excellence (1982) and continuing through A Passion for Excellence (1985) and Thriving in Chaos (1987), Peters encouraged executives to reject older models of the dispassionate, analytical manager and, instead, focus on serving the customer. Tens of thousands of business folk in the U.S. and abroad bought these teachings, and today Peters is a one-man industry, producing films, giving speeches and seminars, and running a lucrative consulting practice. Now comes Liberation Management (Knopf, $27.50), Peters's latest attempt to untangle the Gordian knot of management strategy and, sadly, a book bound to disappoint even his most ardent fans. In a remarkable about-face, Peters flatly states that almost everything he had to say before was, well, wrong. Says he: ''If you've done all of the 'close-to-the-customer' things that I begged you to do in my first three books . . . I'm not sure you'll be any 'closer' five years from now than you are today.'' Gee, now you tell us, Tom. So should you listen to him this time around? Yes and no. Liberation management is Peters's label for the notion that, to be competitive these days, a company must free itself from traditional organizational forms and literally go ''bonkers'' -- constantly shifting its structures and systems in response to markets that change as quickly and unexpectedly as women's fashions. What's unbelievable is his claim that this is a ''revolutionary'' theory. That's like Dear Abby revealing that marriage counseling is a hot new idea. Remapping the corporate organization chart is a topic that consultants and business school professors have been struggling with and writing about for years. The Age of Unreason by Charles Handy and 2020 Vision by Stan Davis and Bill Davidson are just two of the more recent attempts. Nor is reorganization the answer, as Peters suggests. It's just one of many valuable management tools. Even though he's no revolutionary, Peters does offer some fascinating insights, mainly by relying on the tried-and-true case study method. One of his best examples of a successful ''bonkers'' organization is ABB Asea Brown Boveri. This global maker of heavy industrial equipment -- things like power plants and transportation equipment -- operates not as a traditional behemoth managed from the top down but as a collection of small entrepreneurial business units. ABB relies on just three layers of management including a 13- member executive committee in its Zurich, Switzerland, headquarters to supervise some 5,000 worldwide profit centers. One key, says Peters, is ABB's ability to operate a global matrix system that leverages intellectual capital across geographically diverse business units with a minimum of bureaucracy. His description of how this works is one of the few comprehensible accounts of a matrix system ever written. But having the right structure in your bonkers organization isn't sufficient. You must also have entrepreneurial people who act more like Ross Perot than the traditional Organization Man, and who don't get hung up on titles or other trappings of corporate power. In one of his liveliest case studies, Peters spends some time at CNN's headquarters in Atlanta and paints a portrait of a business that is reinventing itself every hour. Here's his description of the action in the newsroom: ''It never takes more than three or four folks, all located within a few yards of each other, to make any decision -- which they do, with no fuss, on the spot, and often on the run. Chairs, too, it seems, are for yo-yos.'' Nor, says Peters, will you find yo-yos at the Body Shop, a fast-growing British cosmetics retailer that is willing to try almost anything -- the test of a true bonkers corporation -- to meet the needs of a world filled with fickle and demanding customers. Salespeople, for instance, are trained to tell funny anecdotes about the origins of Body Shop products. Does it work? Customers seem to love it, and the company is expected to continue growing dramatically. Despite wonderful case studies like these, Liberation Management ultimately overwhelms the reader. If this is indeed ''the nanosecond Nineties'' -- Peters's phrase -- why expect busy managers to struggle through 834 pages? And why organize the book in a way that can be baffling? One chapter, for instance, is titled ''Glow! Tingle! Wow! (Yuck!).'' Amusing, maybe, but not very helpful to someone trying to wade through a sea of complex material. Peters does have a message. If only he could have gotten closer to the customer in delivering it.

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EXCERPT: ''To offer a barrage of customized solutions . . . requires quick change artistry . . . and calls forth the pirate and the gambler in us all.''