May

20

Book Review: Mavericks at Work

Filed Under Leadership Resources 

 

Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win by William C. Taylor and Polly LaBarre is a great book. It’s one of those business books that stand out from the crowd and not only in it’s cover design! The cover reflects nature of this book, bold, challenging and provocative. The authors describe the book as “more than a how-to book. It is also a What-If book” with the underlying premise that:

“.. in business, as in basket ball, the smart take from the strong - that the best way to outperform the competition is to outthink the competition.. ” and it’s the “..mavericks do the work that matters most - the work of originality, creativity, and experimentation..”

Two aspects of this book really stand out, firstly the curiosity of the authors, who throughout the book challenge your thinking with a number of provocative questions, secondly the book is littered with quotes from the numerous organisational leaders as they tell their story.

“We went deep inside these organisations, looking to understand the ideas they stand for and the ways they work.”

The book has 12 chapters and is grouped into four parts. The books is jam packed with insightful discussion, delving into what makes maverick companies successful. This made the book very difficult to review, however I have selected those thoughts and ideas that really impacted me in each part of the book to give you and idea of the books message.

 

Part One: Rethinking Competition

  • Talking about the link between who Southwest airlines hires and promotes and their business strategy, Libby Sartain explains that ”We examined at the most detailed level and asked, ‘From the minute you think of working here to the minute you leave, what makes this experience unique? What is it about our workforce that separates us from the competition?’”
  • “Anybody who’s running a business has to figure out the higher calling of that business, its purpose. Purpose is about the difference you’re trying to make - in the marketplace, in the world. If everybody is selling the same thing, what’s the tie-breaker? It’s purpose” - Roy Spence
  • “How you talk about your company speaks volumes about how you think about your business. And ultimately, how you think about your business determines how well it performs.”
  • “Re-creating your industry is about creating a story around customers, around employees, around products…” - Arkadi Kuhlmann
  • “At Netscape, the competition with Microsoft was so severe, we’d wake up in the morning thinking about how we were going to deal with them instead of how we would build something great for our customers” - Mike McCue, previously vice president of technology in Netscape
  • “We believe that a new wave of strategic innovation is being built around disruptive points of view. Maverick leaders don’t just strive to build high-performance companies….They present a fresh take on the world that clicks with customers, energizes employees, and shapes their business, from the markets they target to the customers they serve and the messages they send. They understand that the only sustainable form of market leadership is thought leadership”
  • “Companies that compete on a disruptive point of view are defined as much by the opportunities they choose not to pursue as by the businesses they do enter.”
  • “Companies that think differently about their business invariably talk about it differently as well. What language does your company speak?”
  • “The customers who are right for you, they love you. They become evangelists. The customers who you close out, they hate you. But you know what they do when they hate you? They tell everybody about you–and that’s good. It creates dialogue. There’s nothing like differentiation.”
  • “Perhaps the most powerful indicator of a company’s future share of the product market in its industry is its current position in the talent market for that industry: is it attracting more than its fair share of the best people?”
  • If your company went out of business tomorrow, who would really miss you and why? “Why might a company be missed? Because it’s providing a produce or a service so unique that it can’t be provided nearly as well by any other company. Because it’s created a workplace so dynamic that most employees would be hard-pressed to find a similar environment somewhere else. Because it has forged a uniquely emotional connection with customers that other companies can’t replicate.”
  • “Can you identify one piece of how your company operates that if it were to disappear, would be sorely missed in the marketplace? If not, can you identify one good reason why your company is not a risk of disappearing?” 

 

Provocative Questions:

  • What ideas is your company fighting for?
  • What purpose does your company serve?
  • If you do things the way everybody else does, why do you think you’re going to do any better?
  • Did today really matter?
  • Are we who we say we are?
  • Do you have a distinctive and disruptive set of purpose that sets you apart from the competition?
  • Do you have a vocabulary of competition that is unique to your industry and compelling to your employees and customers?
  • Are you prepared to reject opportunities that offer short-term benefits but distract your organisation from its long-term mission?
  • If your company went out of business tomorrow, who would really miss you and why?

 

Part Two: Reinventing Innovation

  • “The best leaders have a crisp answer to the question: why would great people want to work for us?”
  • “Great performers tend to be naturally competitive. They want to know where they stand, they want to know how good they are. They also want to be challenged, to improve their skills.”
  • “You cannot motivate the best people with money. Money is just a way to keep score. The best people in any field are motivated by passion. That becomes more true the higher the skill level goes. People do their best work when they are passionately engaged in what they’re doing.” - Eric Raymond
  • “Wieden argues that his job is to ‘walk in stupid every day’ - to keep challenging the organization and himself, to seek out unexpected ideas, outside influences, and new perspectives on old problems. ‘It’s the hardest thing to do as a leader,’ he concedes, ‘but it’s the most important thing. Whatever day it is, something in the world changed overnight, and you better figure out what it is and what it means. You have to forget what you just did and what you just learned. You have to walk in stupid every day.”
  • “It’s hard to find an executive who doesn’t appreciate the power of the experience curve - the idea that the more you do something (make computer chips, build airplanes, write TV spots), the more productive you becomes. Dan Wieden and his colleagues also appreciate the power of the inexperience curve - the idea that the more you do something, the more important it is to challenge the assumptions and habits that built your success so as to generate a wave of innovations to build the future.”
  • “The most effective leaders are the ones who are the most insatiable learners, and experienced leaders learn the most by interacting with people whose interests, backgrounds, and experiences are the least like theirs.”

 

Provocative Questions:

  • Why should people want to work for us?

 

Part Three: Reconnecting with Customers

  • Levitant says. “For us the foundation of a brand is the psychological contract - the contract between a company and its employees and between those employees and their customers. Great consumer companies are built on genuine passion, plus a day-to-day commitment to great execution”
  • “The challenge isn’t to perform as much as it is to connect, to offer something so distinctive that people can’t help but notice, even in a marketplace with low prices and big claims. In an era of overcapacity and oversupply, overloaded customers are eager to identify with companies that have an appealing identity.”
  • “We’re customer experts. Our focus is on always doing what’s right for a specific customer we know very well. Every product we buy, every real estate decision we make, every action we take, is through the eyes of that customer. Our customer is our category” - Glen Senk
  • “There are so many ways to defy expectations in the marketplace, to do enough little things that you wind up making a big impression on your customers.”
  • “To make their offerings more memorable, companies are working desperately to make them more emotional.”
  • “The first and most important piece of every job, is to tell a unique and relevant story about the space, the product, or the experience. story is the fundamental platform for organizing ideas. That’s how you connect emotionally with people.” - David Rockwell
  • “The next frontier for making products more emotional is to turn them into something social - to create a sense of shared ownership and participation among customers themselves. The more people you invite to shape your company’s personality, the more you enable them to share their ideas with one another, the greater their stake in what your company does - and the more invested they become in its success. In the new world of competition, generating a whole lotta love means unleashing a whole lotta participation.”
  • “There’s always a demand for something distinctive”
  • If you want customer to invest in and talk about your brand, then invest time and money in developing products worth talking about in the first place”

 

Provocative Questions:

  • How do you make a compelling offer to customer who already have more than enough of what you’re selling?

 

Part Four: Redesigning Work

  • “I’m a capitalist, not a social worker. Too many companies spend too much time trying to ’fix’ their mediocre performers. They should spend more time recruiting and retaining great performers.” -John Sullivan
  • “The difference between success and failure, Andreessen and McCue now understand, is not just a function of the markets a company enters or the products it launches. Just as important are the people it lets in the door - who it hires, who it turns away, and the criteria for making those decisions.”
  • “Any company with a disruptive business model has to be clear about the distinctive work experience it creates to support that model - and how that work experience shapes the customer experience.”
  • “Great people almost always have great jobs. So if you want to fill your organization with knockout contributors, you can’t wait for them to knock on your door. You’ve got to knock on their door and persuade them to walk into your office.”
  • “Remember, stars don’t work for idiots. So as you raise the quality of your talent, you’ve got to raise the quality of your management.” - Dr John Sullivan
  • “Great people want to work on exciting projects. Great people want to feel like impact players inside their organization. Great people want to be surrounded with and challenged by other great people. Put simply, great people want to feel like they’re part of something greater than themselves.”
  • “Companies that compete differently tend to work differently from the competition.”

 

Provocative Questions:

  • Be honest: how many companies do you know that are as creative, as disciplined, as businesslike about the people factor in business as they are about finance, engineering, and marketing?
  • What is it about the ideas your company stands for, its point of view in the marketplace, the ways in which employees interact with customers or collaborate with one another, that becomes irresistible to the best people in your industry?
  • Have I established a great fit between the customer experience and the work experience?
  • Are you articulate and persuasive about why talented people are more likely to thrive at your company than at rivals?
  • Why should great people join your organisation?
  • Do you know a great person when you see one?
  • Can you find great people who aren’t looking for you?
  • Are you teaching great people how your organization works and wins?
  • Does your organisation work as distinctly as it competes?

 

Summary

This is an insightful book and is supported by an excellent website, a manifesto and a blog. The book’s appendix also contains a wealth of useful resources that you can explore to gain increased insight into what it means to be a Maverick. I found the book very well written, engaging and challenging. The authors really challenge your thinking, they have done a great job of imparting the reader with the passion and purpose found in the companies they discuss. I highly recommend this book to all those looking to create a disruptive business, seeking to challenge and transform their industries. It’s fresh look at what it takes to disrupt and industry and to compete with passion and purpose.

 

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