That''s a fantastic summary of the way high-performance enterprises view the world today. And Petzinger is uniquely qualified to translate this kind of broad sentiment into rubber-meets-the-road business examples and language. He''s been a business reporter for the Wall Street Journal for over two decades, and for the last four years his column "The Front Lines" has been one of the most important continuing sources of inspirational case studies from the new paradigm of business.
Given this background, you''d expect this book to be a collection of detailed and useful case studies of companies on the forefront of new approaches to management, strategy, marketing, human resource policy, innovation, and other key disciplines. Petzinger doesn''t disappoint; any imaginative business executive will be able to draw dozens of practical ideas from the experiences of the firms profiled in The New Pioneers.
A few examples of ideas:
Suggest that employees discover new efficiencies that make their jobs unnecessary. The Mercedes-Benz Credit Corporation did that as part of a wide-ranging push to encourage risk-taking and creativity. How''d it get buy-in? By promising that no one would be laid off-no one-and that anyone who eliminated their own job (with a new software package, for example) would be rewarded with another job of enhanced prestige. One result: By 1998, J.D. Power ranked Mercedes-Benz Credit #1 in the country for customer satisfaction.
Give people opportunities to play and have fun on the job. The astonishing success of a small chain of used book stores begun in Dallas, Half Price Books, which grew in the mid-1990s to over 50 stores and $50 million in sales, was based in large measure on the principle that (as Petzinger puts it) "the more playful people were, the better for the business."
Set your divisions, departments, or franchisers free to innovate-and use them to create a dynamic web of innovation. Great Harvest Bread Company does this in part with a bold statement in its contract with franchisees: "ANYTHING not expressly prohibited by the language of this agreement IS ALLOWED."
As CEO or division- or group-head, accept the principle that if you truly (1) hire great people, (2) trust them, and (3) turn over control of the enterprise to them, "at any moment [your] company might change shape or dimension without [your] prior approval." That''s Petzinger''s summary of the attitude Charles Koch takes to Koch Industries, his family-owned energy, agriculture, and financial services firm. He treats his employees "as if they were entrepreneurs in a free society" and bases his management style on the principles of humility and tolerance. Oh, yes-Koch is a $30 billion company that, before UPS went public, was the second-largest privately held firm in the nation; now it might be tops.
The case studies, drawn from Petzinger''s Wall Street Journal column, are revealing. But another aspect of the book exceeds expectations - the way Petzinger weaves the most influential new business thinking (dare I say "theories"?) into the discussion.
Ranging smoothly from total quality (in its new and updated guises) to high-empowerment management to complexity theory to networked business models, Petzinger draws the lessons of his case studies in a larger context. The result is a rich and rewarding mix of the empirical and the theoretical, the general and the specific. Among the best recent books on business trends, The New Pioneers stands out for this characteristic: It''s one of the few that moves so seamlessly between cases and theory.
In sum: A great story, well-told, filled with specific ideas and lessons that could be applied in any enterprise smart enough to realize that just about everything it thinks it knows-about its markets, its customers, its employees-is likely to be wrong.