Mavericks at Work: Why the most original minds in business win. William Taylor
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СКАЧАТЬ 1998), Eric Ransdell offers a must-read for anyone interested in DPR. After the company won a Sacramento Workplace Excellence Award, the Sacramento Bee provided a smart take on how DPR works in “Looking Up” by Loretta Kalb (April 1, 2004).

       Chapter Three

       Maverick Messages (I): Sizing Up Your Strategy

      Few companies consciously set out to be just another me-too player with another ho-hum business model, following a bland formula that’s hard to distinguish from everyone else’s. But in industry after industry, that’s precisely how most companies wind up competing, which is why competition feels so unforgiving.

      Roy Spence of GSD&M calls his ultimate goal “positioning beyond defeat”—being so clear about a company’s purpose and so relentless about turning that purpose into a collection of business strategies and operating practices and a set of messages to the marketplace that traditional competitive responses are rendered largely ineffective. “People don’t have time for companies to be confused,” he argues. “Neiman Marcus knows it’s for rich people. Deal with it. Nike is in the business of crushing the competition. So be it. The companies that get in trouble are the ones that are mushy about who they are.”

      As you work on positioning beyond defeat—as you think about the values you stand for as an organization and as a leader—ask these five questions about your company’s strategy.

      1. Do you have a distinctive and disruptive sense of purpose that sets you apart from your rivals? That’s the defining question at the heart of these first two chapters, and it’s what separates the mavericks we’ve highlighted from their me-too competitors. The founders of DPR Construction were determined, from the moment they started the company, to reckon honestly and openly with the designed-in flaws of their industry and to build an organization that would prosper by fixing those flaws. The founders of Cranium didn’t launch their company because they had one good idea for a single board game. Instead, they had a wide-ranging critique of what was wrong with family entertainment—and an unapologetic sense of mission about providing a clear alternative, through board games but also through book publishing, TV shows, and other lines of business that Cranium has begun to enter after its runaway success with games.

      Even when their company was a tiny start-up, the Cranium founders believed and acted as if they were playing for high stakes—not just thinking about games, but rethinking how parents could relate to their kids and how families could relate to one another. “We’ve always acted as if we’re a much bigger company than we really are,” says Grand Poo Bah Richard Tait. “We’re still a fairly young player in our industry, but we conduct ourselves as if we are a global movement. This isn’t a job. It’s the pursuit of a dream, to give everyone a chance to shine. It’s a big, ethereal goal, but we won’t stop until we’re convinced that we’re making progress against that goal.”

      High ideals, to be sure. But don’t confuse high ideals with modest ambitions. Companies with the most values-based critiques of their industries often turn out to be the savviest and most aggressive competitors. The stock market value of fun-loving Southwest Airlines exceeds the stock market value of every other U.S. airline put together. Quality-obsessed HBO was the first network in TV history to generate more than $1 billion in annual profits. ING Direct holds assets of more than $40 million per employee; the average for U.S. banks is about $5 million per employee. In other words, Arkadi Kuhlmann’s outfit is eight times more productive than the competition at generating assets. Who says high-minded values can’t drive cutting-edge performance?

      2. Do you have a vocabulary of competition that is unique to your industry and compelling to your employees and customers? And we mean a real, honest-to-goodness, only-spoken-here business language. Commerce Bank, a fabulously successful financial services company that we’ll visit in chapter 7, has such a unique strategy, and such a homegrown vocabulary, that it actually publishes a dictionary of “Commerce Lingo.” New employees learn the meaning of “One to Say Yes, Two to Say No”: “The rule that states all employees can say ‘yes’ to a customer, but must first check with their supervisor before saying ‘no.’” They learn the essence of “retailtainment”: “The art of engaging customers and creating moments of magic so that every customer leaves Commerce with a smile.” And on it goes for pages, explaining terms that eventually become second nature and ultimately make Commerce a one-of-a-kind competitor.

      Or consider the most exciting and fast-growing company in one of the world’s dullest and slowest-growing businesses. Much as Southwest Airlines has registered gravity-defying performance in a deadweight industry, Whole Foods Market has brought a fresh model of competition to a stale business mired in copycat strategies. The famously high-end grocer (nickname: Whole Paycheck) opened its first store in 1980 and went public in 1992. As of 2007 it had 190-plus stores, 42,000 employees, $5.6 billion in revenue—and a stock market performance that looks more like Google’s than that of its notoriously low-return rivals in the grocery business. (Investors who put $100,000 into the IPO had $3.5 million 13 years later.)