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Guy Kawasaki How to Drive Your Competition Crazy and Rules for Revolutionaries Buy these titles or join our Management
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Business Nugget by Robert Morris In recent years, Guy Kawasaki has written several books that have attracted a great deal of attention and sometimes generated controversy. Kawasaki’s purpose is to challenge his readers to re-think assumptions and premises about marketing strategy. For Kawasaki, the enemy is the status quo. He is an “evangelist”...and proud of it. In How to Drive Your Competition Crazy (written in cooperation with Scott Adams and Michele Moreno, and published by Hyperion), Kawasaki urges his reader to create disruption for “fun and profit.” The book is organized into four parts:
- A pizza chain entering the Colorado market offered a two-for-one promotion to anyone who brought in the Yellow Pages ad of its competition. It’s hard to call other pizza places when their ads are gone. - More than fifty years ago, Richard Sears made his catalog smaller than Montgomery Ward’s so that people would stack the Sears catalog on top of Montgomery Ward’s. His concept was that whatever catalog was on top would be used more often. - When Bank of America closed down some of the branches of Security Pacific after the two banks merged, First Interstate Bank dispatched vans filled with its new accounts personnel to those branches to sign up customers. To these and other of Kawasaki examples could be added a situation in a town in which a national chain opened a new store promoting $5.00 haircuts. Across the street, a family-owned competitor (in business for more than 50 years) felt seriously threatened. Its haircuts were priced at $10-15. What to do? Finally, it placed a large sign in its window: “We repair $5 haircuts.” Contrary to reviews you may have read about his books, reviews which suggest that he is “off the wall”, Kawasaki is really rather old-fashioned. He believes passionately in doing what is right...and in doing it right. Promises made should be promises kept. Always. He never advocates anything that is unethical. He delights in competition, for sure, but competition that achieves success by out-thinking and out-working one’s adversary. Take better care of employees and they will take better care of customers. Celebrate life. Have fun. Drive yourself to what you think are your limits and you will learn that you have under-estimated what you can accomplish. “The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the unlived life is not worth examining.” In How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Kawasaki explains with meticulous care how clear thinking, shrewdness, guts, and hard work can achieve objectives which may otherwise seem unattainable. Know your competition, know your customer, and -- most important of all -- know yourself. In his most recent book, Rules for Revolutionaries (published by HarperBusiness and written with Michele Moreno), Kawasaki urges his reader to be guided by advice from Brancusi: “create like God, command like a king, and work like a slave.” This book is essentially a manual for creating and marketing new products and services. Whereas in How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Kawasaki’s enemy is the status quo, in Rules for Revolutionaries the enemy is resistance to change...a subject which James O’Toole also examines in Leading Change. It is indeed a formidable enemy. Hence the importance of innovative thinking. Everyone in any organization (consciously or unconsciously) worships certain idols. (In ancient Greece, icons were prominently placed near the homes of the most powerful citizens. Those who destroyed these icons were called “iconoclasts.”) Stephen Jay Gould’s concept of “latent potential” helps to explain why so many products and services, originally designed to serve one purpose, subsequently proceed to be invaluable by serving others. For example, following World War II, Honda manufactured a portable unit to provide at least minimal electrical power in Japanese homes. It did that, of course, but its greater use (and value) was as an attachment to bicycles that thereby became recreational motorcycles. “If you build it, customers will come up with lots of good ways to use it.... many of which no one previously imagined.” In order to break down the barriers to innovation, Kawasaki insists, one must “command like a king.” That is to say, have steadfast convictions and then communicate those convictions to others with the power of faith and self-assurance. When asked to explain what a champion is, Jack Dempsey replied that a champion “gets up when he can’t.” Such determination is admirable, of course, but not always prudent. What if David had decided to wrestle Goliath? Agreeing with Jeffrey Gitomer, Kawasaki insists that customers must become “evangelists”, not merely buyers of whatever one sells. Sustainable customer loyalty is the objective, not satisfaction with a single transaction. The same is true when one must generate support when overcoming barriers to change. Two mistakes must be avoided: in Barbara Tuchman’s words, “assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting contrary signs”, and, “the refusal to benefit from experience.” Only by being alert to “contrary signs” while benefiting from experience can anyone hope to prevail. In Part 3, Kawasaki shifts his attention to explaining why one must “work like a slave.” Working smart as well as working hard must also involve at least some humility. That is to say, the most effective leaders in industry, government, the military, etc. are those who lead by example...be it helping to unload luggage, feed the hungry, re-direct tank traffic, etc. The most highly-respected CEOs of “Fortune 500” companies are those who spend at least 40% of their time out of a palatial office, interacting with employees and customers. (Jack Welch spends at least one week a month teaching at GE’s leadership development center.) Kawasaki is absolutely convinced that only revolutionaries -- not evolutionaries -- will achieve fundamental change in any organization. Only they will think creatively, constantly asking “Why?”, What if?”, and “Why not?” Only they will have the power of their convictions and remain steadfast in their commitment, whatever the obstacles may be. And only they will be able to subordinate ego (but not self-respect) in process, investing however much effort may be required. Rules for Revolutionaries offers a unique combination of insights and convictions. For most, it will have greater value after a second or third reading. Are all the “rules” directly relevant to each reader’s needs? Probably not. At least not all at any one time. But in aggregate, they stimulate thought (especially a rigorous re-evaluation of cherished assumptions) and encourage bold initiatives when creating and then marketing new products and services. Rules for Revolutionaries also has value when determining which old products and services still have sufficient value. For the evolutionary, the “enemy” is any threat to the status quo. For the revolutionary, the enemy is the status quo. Kawasaki is the Chairman of Garage.com and welcomes feedback. Find the full list of Robert Morris's Business Nuggets featured by Eastbook.com here.
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