Mavericks at Work: Why the most original minds in business win. William Taylor

Mavericks at Work: Why the most original minds in business win - William  Taylor


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are building great things,” says Peter Salvati, “then people ought to be benchmarking themselves against you. They ought to be trying to emulate what you do.” Adds Doug Woods, “This is not about something internal at DPR. This is about being a force for transformation. We want to lead the industry to a different place.”

      That’s the essence of strategy and the logic of competition at every company we’ve visited in these two chapters—from ING Direct’s campus in Wilmington, Delaware, to Cranium’s fun-and-games headquarters in Seattle, to HBO’s building near the beach in Santa Monica, to our many stops in between. Sure, it may seem safer, more prudent, more conventional, to devise a game plan for your company that conforms to the generally accepted rules of how your industry works. But if that’s such a winning formula, why are so many industries in such dire straits? That simple question speaks to the long-term futility of a business formula based on strategy as mimicry. Back in chapter 1, ING Direct’s Arkadi Kuhlmann said it best with a question of his own: if you do things the way everybody else does them, why do you think you’re going to do any better?

      NOTES - CHAPTER TWO

      COMPETITON AND ITS CONSEQUENCES: DIRUPTORS, DIPLOMATS, ADN A NEW WAY TO TALK ABOUT BUSINESS

       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


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