Rules to break and more

I’ve just finished reading, “Rules to Break and Laws to Follow: How Your Business Can Beat the Crisis of Short-termism,” by Martha Rogers and Don Peppers--two of my favorite authors. I absolutely loved this book. These authors speak my language--the language of true business innovation.

The subtitle of the book speaks about breaking out of short-term thinking. The book explains just how limiting a short-term vision can be, meaning an ultimate decline for a business despite any short-term gains.

This book is easy to read. And you’ll want to keep your highlighter and sticky notes handy.

This is a great summary of key ideas shared in the book:

“The most straightforward advice we can given business executives is to suggest that they change their mental models of what it means to succeed during the quarter or during any currently measured business period. And in this book we’re going to do our best to give you a new mental model for business success, based on two very straightforward principles:

1. Customers will do business with you tomorrow only if they (and their friends) trust you today. Therefore, customer trust is prerequisite for long-term business success.
2. Your employees will work to earn customer trust only if they trust you, their employer. So your job is to (a) motivate your employees to treat customers fairly and (b) enable them to do so by providing the right tools, training, and authority for taking action.”

There is a good deal of discussion about the importance of company culture. This discussion includes some examples of good cultures that support long-term business growth and innovation.

The authors have written previous books about understanding true customer value and the type of customer metrics that will help evaluate your business most effectively. Some of those ideas are echoed in this book but worth hearing again. And the examples provided of ways to evaluate business value go beyond the balance sheet, yet don’t have to be painfully difficult to collect and track.

I appreciate the author’s discussion about actions made by a company today impacting its future. At any moment a company can add value or remove value from its customers. Value can be added by building a stronger relationship based on mutual trust and value or removed by only taking advantage of customers in the short term. There is a real change in business value when that happens. This makes sense from a customer vantage point. When a company sends too many marketing messages and is difficult to reach by phone, the likelihood that the customer will continue to work with the company declines a little (and maybe even a lot). As negative experiences pile up, the harder it is for the company to make any money from the customer in the future.

Further, the book makes the argument that when you make decisions solely on ROI (return on investment), you may not be maximizing the value of your company. As the authors explain, accurately measuring the wrong thing can’t help you succeed. Check the book for some charts and examples related to this discussion.

Lastly, I’ll say I appreciated the connection between good experiences and more business (repeat business and new customers from word of mouth). This is one of my favorite benefits of making the effort and time to provide an experience that really meets and exceeds customer expectations--you get more business. Too bad cell phone companies don’t see it this way or our lives would be easier and have a lot less penalty fees from breaking contracts. It often seems that cell phone companies want you to leave so they can find a new customer. Little do they know that those broken bonds last a lifetime, and I’ve got a lot more cell phone consuming years left in me!

So check out this new book. Since you read this blog, you’ll love the book as much as I do.