This is the eBook version of the printed book. Read the following excerpt from Rethink, Chapter 8: Revolutionary Rethinking at ING DIRECT. In the time of theRoman Empire, money changers set up shop in courtyards where they conducted their business on a long bench called a bancu. In Renaissance Florence, business loans were made across a banco, a desk covered by a green cloth. So it was inevitable that the builders of the echoing 19th century marble temples to Mammon, intent on awing the public as well as their commercial clients, would call their edifices “banks.” And if any single word described the banking process in those days, it was “static.” Bankers were set in their ways. The 20th century ushered in change that shook up the bankers’ world. Technology in the form of wire transfers, telephone banking, and the ATM transformed many of the “hows” in the industry. Banks began to shed their awesome trappings, woo their customers, and imitate retail stores. Then, in the new millennium, still another shock wave rippled across traditional banking operations in the United States: It was called ING DIRECT USA, an online bank that had rethought its business, deciding to put aside the “hows” and, instead, focus obsessively on the rapid shift in the “whats” that had become most valuable to customers. This revolutionary bank has become a role model for creative cost-cutting and significant innovation. Based in Wilmington, Delaware, ING DIRECT USA is a division of the Dutch conglomerate ING Groep NV, an insurance and banking colossus. ING DIRECT, launched in September 2000 by its chairman, president, and CEO Arkadi Kuhlmann. To continue reading, purchase and download now.

This is the eBook version of the printed book. Read the following excerpt from Rethink, Chapter 3: Identify the "Whats" That Are Truly Valuable. Having made the decision to rethink your “whats” and use them as your unit of analysis, you’re now ready to begin the process of identifying and examining their desired outcomes, and judging how to improve their performance. To start, you need to determine which “whats” are truly generating high value for your company. Just to be clear, when I describe a given “what” as having “high value,” I mean that it is contributing to overall performance or differentiating your company from its rivals in some significant way. For example, ship-product might be a high-value “what” in your company because its outstanding performance sets your company apart from its competitors. Or even if its performance is nothing special, it might provide high value simply because it satisfies customers--and customer satisfaction helps keep costs constant. You will want to pinpoint “whats” having high value so that you can focus your “how” improvement efforts where they will count the most. You also need to determine their current performance levels and why they perform as they do. Don’t even think about changing a high-value “what” unless you possess an in-depth understanding of the cause of its performance. Is it the people, the process, the technology, or some blend of those “hows?” As you move through the rethinking process, prepare to encounter some surprises. Your most valuable “whats” might be those you least expect. Witness the experience of Alcoa, the giant manufacturer of aluminum and aluminum products based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. To continue reading, purchase and download now.

This is the eBook version of the printed book. Read the following excerpt from Rethink, Chapter 7: Unravel (and Follow) the Rules. In rethinking yourbusiness to put aside “how” in favor of “what” as your unit of analysis, your view of your company has been expanded through the lenses of value, performance, interconnectedness, and predictability. Now it’s time to think about government regulation. That is not to suggest that the laws and rules set forth by the various branches of government are anything new; they have long loomed large in every company’s business plan and daily operation. What this chapter offers are new ways to incorporate compliance needs into your planning. The tale of Intrade, the Dublin-based, online prediction market, is instructive. For the first four years of its life, the company barreled from strength to strength. The lure was strong: Members could buy or sell futures contracts on upcoming events–anything from the outcome of an election to the likelihood of Osama Bin Laden’s capture. If the price of the contract rose high enough or sank low enough, members could make a bundle. The founder and CEO, John Delaney, didn’t have to worry about promotion. Intrade’s market predictions were so accurate that the media followed them closely and often. In 2004, for example, it accurately predicted the outcome of the presidential election and all but one member of the U.S. Congress. Why so accurate? According to Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw, “Everybody has information from their own little corner of the universe...” To continue reading, purchase and download now.

This is the eBook version of the printed book. Read the following excerpt from Rethink, Chapter 9: Rethinking at Eclipse. Back in the 1970S, people laughed when PC pioneers predicted that a computer would soon adorn every desk in America. Vern Raburn had the last laugh. As Microsoft’s vice president in charge of application soft ware, Raburn helped make that prophecy come true. Three decades later, Raburn found another career, general aviation, and this time he combined predicting with rethinking. Anticipating that private aviation was ripe for revolution, he theorized that his own new six-seat, twin-engine Very Light Jet (VLJ) could be perfectly positioned to take advantage of the new trend. That’s because his aircraft would cost half as much to buy and operate as any of its private-jet rivals. To tip the scales in his direction, Raburn assembled an impressive collection of manufacturing “whats” while discarding some not-so-golden oldies, and he reimagined many of the “hows.” As it turned out, Raburn stumbled when it came to the hard business of execution, but his clear vision and his decision to rethink provides a worthwhile lesson for businesses everywhere. Raburn’s first epiphany was borrowed from Silicon Valley. “Historically in aviation,” he explains, “the term ‘value proposition’ meant that a better plane justified a higher price. In the business I come from, it’s the other way around. You make the product better, and you charge less.” Raburn helped do that for computers, and it’s what his Eclipse Aviation Corporation set out to do for aircraft. Although Eclipse 500s have yet to make a big dent in today’s congested skies, more than 200 have taken off across the country. To continue reading, purchase and download now.

This is the eBook version of the printed book. Read the following excerpt from Rethink, Chapter 5: Make (and Break) Connections. When you rethink your company and study it using the “what” as your unit of analysis, you can see that, at its core, it is a tightly woven fabric of connections--emotional, financial, technical--that cut across organizational boundaries. Pull on one thread and many others might move. The clerk in accounting is related to the chief dispatcher who went to school with the director of advertising. A glitch in production or a spurt in sales can send shock waves from one end of the company to the other, from design to delivery, and it might well affect the bottom line. So before you act upon your knowledge of which “whats” are high in value and low in performance, before you set in motion a process-improvement program, you need to examine the connections between and among your target “whats.” A failure to do so can wreak havoc with a company’s profits and prospects. Dell Inc. learned that lesson the hard way. Dell was launched in 1984 by a young entrepreneur with a brilliant strategy. He would sell made-to-order computers directly to customers, primarily businesses, without benefit of retail outlets. The brick-and-mortar middlemen were charging too much, Michael Dell concluded, and giving customers ridiculously inadequate technical support to boot. He intended to sidestep both pitfalls. In particular, his company was going to provide outstanding tech support. And it did that famously, until the day it didn’t, infamously. In the early 2000s, in pursuit of lower overhead, Dell began to outsource the resolve Customer-Questions/Problems“what.” To continue reading, purchase and download now.

This is the eBook version of the printed book. Read the following excerpt from Rethink, Chapter 11: Morph Again and Again. When Shakespeare wroteHamlet’s great soliloquy, “To be or not to be,” he not only defined human ambiguity, he also foreshadowed the uncertain future of the play. No other drama has been more often recycled, reimagined, reinterpreted, or rethought by successive generations of critics and dramaturges. Shakespeare’s acolytes reinvented Hamletby masking the play’s hero with all sorts of disguises, reflecting their eras and their endlessly varying interpretations of the drama. The vacillating Danish prince has been variously cast as an oedipal English son, a singing Indian rajah, a Japanese Noh noble, a manly daughter, and an effeminate man played by women. The script has been shortened to a speedy 15-minute performance, lengthened to a glacial four-plus hours, and staged without Act 5 (no grave diggers, Osric, or fencing match). Among its countless venues, it was first played at sea on a sailing ship off Sierra Leone in 1607. Thanks to its antiroyal edge, the play has been reworked worldwide to protest assorted bêtes noires, including Germany’s corrupt Kaiser Wilhelm, repressive Communist regimes (Chinese, Czech, Polish), and greedy American tycoons. It has even survived animation, ranging from Spike TV’s cutesy characters (all LEGOs) to Disney’s likeable The Lion King(a Hamlet named Simba). When it comes to business, the unprecedented uncertainty and volatility facing leaders today create turbulence as great as any that buffeted Hamlet. Companies must constantly monitor and massage how they do what they do to adjust to new technologies, new competitive threats, and ever-changing market conditions. To continue reading, purchase and download now.

This is the eBook version of the printed book. Read the following excerpt from Rethink, Chapter 2: The Thinking Behind Rethinking. When businesspeopletalk about the extraordinary productivity gains of the last decade, the lion’s share of credit typically goes to technology. I protest. Although it’s true that major advances in the machines and soft ware that gather, process, and distribute information have made possible whole new ways of organizing work in a company, business productivity owes just as much to operational design theory. In fact, innovative design concepts such as the time-and-motion studies of the early 1900s, the total quality management(TQM) programs of the ’80s, and the reengineering initiatives of the ’90s led to enormous gains in business efficiency. Today, we’re poised for another productivity breakthrough, but to take full advantage of it, we need a new and more powerful approach. This book offers precisely that--a groundbreaking way to lift productivity by maximizing the value of your company’s “whats.” Unit of Analysis: The Task In his landmark 1776 book, The Wealth of Nations, Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith called attention to a revolutionary development in the nature of work in his day. Machines were just beginning to replace manual labor, and most goods were still made by hand, with each worker performing all the operations needed to make the final product. Smith described a far more efficient procedure at a pin factory: One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations... To continue reading, purchase and download now.