what's good for the goose could cook the gander

8/13/2019 What's Good for the Goose Could Cook the Gander

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Whats Good for the Goose Could Cook the GanderBest Practices: How to spot them, how to evaluate them, and when to ignore them

ContentsChapter 1: Google: One of Americas Preeminent Companies and a Great Business Success

Story 1A critical examination of Google, its business practices, and how the company serves as a rolemodel for others.

Chapter 2: Finding Solutions in Unexpected Places 9How GM reduced warranty costs through the application of a business practice discovered atAtlantas Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Chapter 3: How Cisco Became a Networking Giant 17What we can learn from Cisco, which made mergers and acquisitions an art form andleveraged strategic alliances to become an economic powerhouse.

Chapter 4: Repeat Performers: Organizations That Appear to Be Unendingly Successful

25Why are some companies seemingly successful year-after-year while others make a big impactand then fizzle out?

Chapter 5: Which Best Practices Might Actually Work for Your Company? 33Which best practices are well-suited for your company, and why should you consider rejectingmost of them?

Chapter 6: When Do You Need to Be the Best? 41Its too cost prohibitive to be the best at everything. This chapter describes where to focusyour attention and resources.

Chapter 7: Becoming a Best Practice Leader 49Reaching that goal takes a lot more than simply declaring your intentions. This chapterdiscusses how its done.

Chapter 8: The Ten Characteristics of a Winning Best Practice 57At the core of the matter, these characteristics define best practices that endure.


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Chapter OneGoogle: One of Americas Preeminent Companies and a Great Business Success Story

I was leading strategy sessions for senior executives at a clients hideaway retreat. In one of

those sessions, I listened in as two of the newest members of the team discussedbenchmarking business practices.

Tom, general manager for one of the companys smaller divisions, advocated selecting rolemodels such as Google or Microsoft, discovering what they did best, and adapting their mostproductive business practices for his division carte blanche.

Sharon, vice president of engineering for the companys main division wasnt as sold as Tom.She advocated caution.

Tom shook his head. Cmon, Sharon, youre telling me that our company cant learn fromsome of the giants of American business, companies that have flourished in good times andbad, companies that turn in record sales and profits quarter after quarter, year after year,regardless of circumstances?

I didnt say that, Tom. Sure we can learn from what other companies have accomplished,and not always from the giants. Smaller companies can be role models, too. What Imsuggesting is that whats good for IBM, or any other company for that matter, isnt necessarilygood for us.

Tom smirked. Bet youd love to own one one-hundredth of 1 percent of the marketcapitalization of Google or IBM. You could buy that fabulous estate in Palm Springs you dreamabout, along with a dozen other homes, and your own private plane to ferry you back andforth.

Let me jump in here and mention that I arranged this mock confrontation. I have always beena proponent of the structure that debaters use to frame arguments; the confrontationalaspect exposes weaknesses in both sides of an argument that otherwise would remainunexamined. In this case the argument was: Be it resolved that business practices tobenchmark are best found in iconic companies. Of course, the counterargument challengesthat assumption. Tom argued for, and Sharon argued against. I planned to step in at apropitious time so all three of us could summarize our conclusions and arrive at a consensus.

Tell you what, Sharon, Tom said. Lets get specific and focus on Google. I think we canboth agree that Google is one of the great American success stories.

Agreed.

You cant argue with the fact that in fourteen years since its founding, Google has grown toalmost $10 billion in sales, a truly remarkable achievement.

Im not arguing against facts, Sharon said.

Tom plowed on. Nor can you challenge the fact that Google is the dominant search enginefor the Internet. Nobody, Yahoo! included, even comes close. The name Google is synonymouswith search.Thats uncontestable, but


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Tom held up his hand, palm facing Sharon. Let me finish. Google is also one of the greatinnovators of our age. Google page-ranking algorithm, Google Books, the Android operatingsystem, Google EarthI could go on and on.

Please, dont. Let me get a word in edgewise.

Tom laughed and said, Be my guest.

My point is that our company just cant adopt Googles best practices without first taking aclose look at every one of them to see if theyre suitable for us.

Tom shook his head. Thats more of an opinion than an argument.

Then how about this? You stressed Googles superior innovation practices. But do you reallyknow what they are, and do you understand the potential complexities of developing our bestpractices by benchmarking Google?

Sharon, you do agree, dont you, that Google is a bright, shining example of the best inAmerican business?

Sharon shrugged her shoulders. Sure, but that doesnt mean we should blindly accept theirmethods as ours.

Before either could say anything else, I halted the discussion, sensing that Toms forcefulpersonality was overwhelming Sharon. Why dont we stop here for a moment?

Sharon looked relieved. Tom said, Well, who won the debate?

I smiled. You did, Tom, but only narrowly. Sharon, you made some cogent points, but didntsupport them with examples. That neutralized your argument.

Tom smiled and nudged Sharon.

But Tom, you were taken in by the halo effect.

Tom sighed. I was afraid Id be tagged with that.

The halo effect. How does it impact best practices? Let me begin with an example from thehalcyon business days of the fifties. General Motors ruled the automotive world as the numberone manufacturer of cars and trucks. The company managed its far-flung operations through acomplex matrix organizational structure. Many other less successful companies, in awe ofGMs power and success, tried to imitate the same organizational structure to their

detriment, not realizing that what was good for General Motors was not necessarily good foranybody else. Many of those copycat companies loaded up on unneeded employees and stafffunctions in the false hope of replicating aspects of GMs business. Their results mostlyfizzled.Those companies are prime examples of victims of the halo effect: futilely attempting to copybusiness practices from iconic companies, simply because those companies are successful, butwithout critical examination of how those same business practices will work in their (read:your) organizations. In more direct terms, theyre dazzled by the results realized by iconcompanies and accept without reservation their business practices.


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Now switch your frame of reference to todays business world. Well focus on Google,although we could just as easily have picked any number of thriving companies, such asMicrosoft, Apple, GE, or Disney, to discuss the same issue.

If you drive to the heart of the matter, the question becomes: What can we really learn fromGoogles success? That leads to other related questions: If you select innovation as a best

practice to emulate, what specifically do you mean? Is it that Google developed the most-used search engine? Or Google Maps? Or any of its many other products and services? If so,how do any of the business practices Google uses to sustain them apply to your company?

Few would contest that Google perfected the business of using search ads to generaterevenue. In fact, the companys dominant revenue stream comes from advertising. Certainly,there are best practices that other companies can apply from Googles experience. Perhaps ifyou work for an online company such as Yahoo! you might profit from them, but how manyothers, if any, have the wherewithal to take advantage of how Google innovates?

Many have idolized Googles founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Is dropping out of a Ph.D.program, which both did, a best practice to be emulated? How about Googles inability toarticulate its value proposition to Yahoo! when it proposed a joint advertising agreement? The

deal fell apart. Would you characterize that as a best practice? How do you really define abest practice to begin with?Can you even declare something a best practice after so few years in existence? Shouldnt abest practice be time-tested before declaring it invaluable and transferable?

Taking a look at this another way, if an iconic manufacturing company produces its productswith the most technologically advanced equipment, and your company uses older equipmentto produce the same products, can you rightfully benchmark business practices the icon usesto achieve a 2 percent rework rate when your rework rate tops 5 percent? The type ofequipment, as well as a host of other factors, will influence each companys businesspractices.

Googles performance metrics include cost per click, click-through rates, and return-on-investment. Only companies in comparable businesses will be able to benchmark thosemetrics, and perhaps not even then.

Google has yet to prove its a repeat performer. Wildly valuable, the company has made somesolid acquisitions like YouTube, but does that make its approach to innovation a best practice?You could make the case that Googles approach to innovation has become very expensive anddependent on the Google platform to succeed. That places it out of reach for most companieswith limited resources.

Shortly after the Time Warner merger with AOL, I met with the vice chairman of AOL who hadbeen CFO of Time Warner. He said to me: Dave, these people [AOL management] thinktheyre the most innovative people in the world. As far as I can tell, theyve only come up

with one innovation: Its called AOL.AOL was a one-trick pony, and we all know what happened to AOL. The rest of the book willexplore these questions, challenge the statement made above, and examine where tobenchmark best practices and performance metrics that are best suited to your organization.

The bottom line is that if you want to be number two or number three in your industry, you can look for

best practices from others, but if you want to be number one you cannot. You must define the new best

practices yourself. You certainly can look elsewhere to gather ideas, but you cannot allow a companyssuccess to blind you to this reality: Their best practices may not fit your business model. They man not turn


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//David Silversteinis the CEO of BMGI, which he founded in 1999. Since then, he has grown thecompany to an internationally recognized and highly respected firm specializing in business performance,strategic planning and innovation. As CEO, David drives BMGI's strategic direction with a focus oncontinuously improving existing offerings while constantly searching for the next generation of businessexcellence methods, tools and practices. Recently, David has turned his attention to innovation andbusiness strategy and the identification of cutting edge solutions.

As a highly regarded public speaker and author, David shares his vision around the globe where he hasshared the stage with notable figures such as Jack Welch, Larry Bossidy, Jim McNerney and StevenCovey. A sought-after thought leader, he has written on innovation, performance and business leadershipfor numerous publications including BusinessWeek, Inc. Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, AmericanExecutive, Worth Magazine andBP Trends.David has also authored several books on innovation andbusiness leadership, most recently publishing additions to the Connect the Dots Series.

To learn more visit DavesDots.com

what's good for the goose could cook the gander

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