Rules to Break and Laws to Follow: How Your Business Can Beat the Crisis of Short-Termism

by Don Peppers, Martha Rogers

Overview

Rules to Break &Laws to Follow

From the dynamic writing team whose classic bestseller, The One to One Future, launched the Customer Relationship revolution, Rules to Break and Laws to Follow brings the unique Peppers and Rogers perspective to the most important issues facing businesses today.

Based on their decades of experience working with leading companies around the world, Peppers and Rogers are kicking the business model up yet one more notch. Written in their hallmark conversational style, Rules to Break and Laws to Follow will help you make better decisions a dozen times a day:

• Why short-termism drives your business, and what you can do to stop it while still paying the bills
• Why new, interactive technologies mean that customer trust is more important today than it ever was before
• How respectful disagreement and dissent within your business can lead to better decisions, more innovation, and an engaging workplace environment
• How to recover your customers' trust after it is undermined by a PR disaster or some other problem
• Why social networks of customers don't always act rationally, and how best to use such networks to benefit your organization
• What kind of corporate culture you need to ensure that your employees create real value for your business even when no one's looking over their shoulders
• How to create a "climate of innovation" at your firm to ensure a continuous flow of new ideas, product and service improvements, and creative decision-making

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781118381076
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	03/01/2012
Series:	Microsoft Executive Leadership Series , #24
Sold by:	JOHN WILEY & SONS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	816 KB

About the Author

Don Peppers & Martha Rogers, PhD, are the founding partners of Peppers & Rogers Group and 1to1 Media, the world's premier customer-focused consultancy and award-winning publishing company, now part of Carlson Marketing Worldwide. In addition to hundreds of trade and academic articles appearing in publications including Harvard Business Review, they are the coauthors of the bestselling "1to1" series of business books, available in seventeen languages. In addition, they have written a comprehensive graduate-level textbook, Managing Customer Relationships. Their most recent book was the highly successful Return on Customer, challenging companies to measure business success entirely differently, and documenting the customer base as a revenue-producing asset for businesses, capable of driving a company's long-term economic worth. Peppers and Rogers have been cited on numerous lists of thought leaders and business gurus, and serve on several boards.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: False Assumptions 1

A "Perfect Storm" of New Technologies 3

Imitation, Circular Mills, and Mythbusting 4

Crisis of Short-Termism: The Mother of All Problems 6

Questions Every Business Needs to Answer 8

Primacy of Customer Trust 12

Chapter 2: "Value" Is the New "Profit" 15

Jabbing at the Elevator Button in the Stock Market 17

Focus Only on the Short Term and You'll Lose Sight of the Long Term 19

Customers Create Long-Term Value, Too 20

The Secret Life of Companies: Short Games 22

Take the Money and Run 26

Business Models Behaving Badly 29

Short-Term Gain, Long-Term Loss 30

Stupid Is as Stupid Does 34

Chapter 3: Customers Are a Scarce Resource 37

Using Up Customers 43

Which Do You Choose: Customers or Money? 45

Money Is Still the Root of All Investment 48

What’s in Your Budget? 50

Rethinking Your Whole Business 53

Chapter 4: In the Long Term, the Good Guys Really Do Win 57

Reciprocity: The Golden Rule Applied to Customers 60

The Man with the Folding Chair 61

Does Your Firm Practice Reciprocity? 65

Customer Trust Is an Antidote to Short-Termism 68

Treat Employees the Way You Want Them to Treat Customers 73

Chapter 5: Increasing the Value of Your Business 79

Embroider on Your CFO's Pillowcase: Customer Equity 80

Ratcheting Up Your Customer Equity 84

What Return Are You Getting on Your Customers? 86

Value Creators, Value Harvesters, and Value Destroyers 89

Getting Credit for Earning Customer Trust 92

Chapter 6: Culture Rules 97

Defining and Managing Culture 98

Do as I Say, Not as I Do 99

Welcome to the "Conceptual Age" 101

Galloping Decentralization Means Culture Is More Important 104

Creating a Culture of Customer Trust 109

Hey! There's a Person in There! 113

Chapter 7: Capitalism Redux: Greed Is Good, but Trust Is Even Better 117

Reputations Go Online 120

Taking the Friction Out of Commerce 122

Playing the Ultimatum Game 124

Technology Facilitates Reciprocity 127

Technology Seen through the Wrong End of the Telescope 129

Chapter 8: Customers and Honeybees 131

Who's on Your Speed-Dial? 132

Diverse Connections 135

Customer-Inspired Innovation 138

Word of Mouth: Business Opportunity? 143

Chapter 9: Oops! Mistakes Happen: Recovering Lost Trust 151

Competence Also Required 154

Recovering Lost Trust 156

Competitive Success Can Harm Trust 159

Trust, Competence, and You 163

Chapter 10: Innovate or Die 167

Responding to Change 167

Technology, Progress, and Change 169

Creating a Climate of Innovation 172

Supporting the Lunatic Fringe 175

Creativity Cannot Be Commanded 177

Chapter 11: Order and Chaos 181

Efficiency Often Undermines Innovation 183

3M Loses Its Innovative Mojo, Then Gets Its Groove Back 186

Having It Both Ways 189

Your Customers Can Help You Strike the Right Balance 192

Does Trust Encourage Innovation? 194

Chapter 12: The Wisdom of Dissent 199

Diversity and Variety 201

Size Does Matter 205

Avoiding Bad Group Decision Making 206

Chapter 13: Engaged and Enabled 211

The Power of the Network 214

Employee Engagement 216

Employees with a Sense of Mission 221

Giving Your Employees the Tools and the Power They Need to Create Value 223

Chapter 14: Leaders Needed. Inquire Within 227

The Twelve Laws to Follow 228

Notes 239

References 257

Index 285

Editorial Reviews

Peppers and Rogers (Return on Customer), founding partners of the Peppers & Rogers Group, challenge listeners to break the standard rules of business and consider a new way of thinking about creating real shareholder value in today's competitive environment, operating with today's technologies. As they observe, customers can now electronically share their experiences with millions of other customers, which has changed the world of business so rapidly that from their perspective the old, established wisdom about running a company just doesn't apply. Common assumptions that no longer hold include the belief that the best measure of success is current sales and profit, that with the right sales and marketing effort you can always get more customers, and that company value is created by offering differentiated products and services. These iconoclastic authors instead provide ideas on how a business should operate in order to be successful and retain customers in an environment vastly different from just five to ten years ago. They suggest how businesses can surmount the crisis of short-termism, an intense focus on meeting current numbers while missing everything else-which, say the authors, is smothering many businesses. They also explain their new rules, namely, that customers will do business with a company tomorrow only if they and their friends trust that business today, and employees will work to earn customer trust only if they trust their employer. The bright, lively narration by both authors helps to maintain listener interest in this material, which will more likely appeal to senior executives running international conglomerates that depend on technology to reach andsatisfy customers around the globe. Highly recommended for academic libraries supporting a business curriculum and for larger public libraries.
—Dale Farris

Library Journal

The human tendency is to imitate what already exists, hold onto familiar assumptions, and work for tangible, immediate results. In the age of social networks and viral opinions, businesses would do better to put their energies into what is harder to see and measure—earning customer trust and embracing management practices that increase employee engagement, creativity, and loyalty. The two business consultants flesh out the details of this sea change with strong thinking and vivid examples from many realms. Peppers and Rogers make the topic inviting with their colloquial language and perfect tone. Their reading keeps the atmosphere casual and authentic without diminishing the urgency of their message. T.W. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2009 - AudioFile