Rules to Break and Laws to Follow: How Your Business Can Beat the Crisis of Short-Termism (Microsoft Executive Leadership Series) [Kindle Edition]

Don Peppers (Author), Martha Rogers (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Harnessing the power of connected customers and networked employees is now the key to success and that's what this book is all about." (Bookviews.com, April 2008)

Product Description

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

"A fascinating, highly readable synthesis of business principles, technology, sociology and common sense, Rules to Break and Laws to Follow persuasively shows the connection between customer trust and business profits, and then explains how to make it happen. As a bonus, you'll learn how to make your company more innovative, how to ensure your employees actually enjoy what they're doing, and how to deal with the kinds of service and quality breakdowns that occasionally plague any company, even a well-managed one. This book should be on your required reading list."
-Stephen M. R. Covey, bestselling author of The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything

"Over the years, Peppers and Rogers have given me valuable advice about navigating the changing business landscape. This book is a must-read for managers who want to empower their employees and customers to?make change their ally."
-Jim McCann, founder and CEO of 1-800-FLOWERS.COM

"Highly readable and entertaining. Make sure everybody in your firm reads this book by last Friday."
- Dror Pockard, CEO of eglue

"In a time when most companies are built to flip, Peppers and Rogers have planted a stake in the ground to help you survive past the next round of financing or consumer fad. Knowing what rules to break is arguably even more important than what?laws to follow, and this book imparts?knowledge for both."
- Guy Kawasaki, cofounder of Truemors and author of The Art of the Start

"Peppers and Rogers have created the unthinkable: an enjoyable wake-up call! Their book serves up one compelling and provocative idea after another, and the authors enjoy debunking some of our most deeply ingrained business beliefs. Read this book and your customers will thank you."
- Dan Heath, coauthor of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 2518 KB
• Print Length: 320 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (December 21, 2007)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00194DC9W
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #405,949 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Short-Termism vs Soustainability, February 6, 2008

By 

René F. Lisi (Zurich, Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rules to Break and Laws to Follow: How Your Business Can Beat the Crisis of Short-Termism (Microsoft Executive Leadership Series) (Hardcover)

I read all books from Don and Martha. "one to one future" was the first and the best book I've ever read related to CRM. "return on customers" was a first attempt to demonstrate that company value isn't necessarely equal to EBITDA and value of shares. Don and Martha introduced here the concept of long-term view vs short-termism.
With this latest book "rules to break & laws to follow" - I've read it in one day! - they follow their concept of demonstrating what real value to a company means.
I do like especially the introduction of an "employee/empowerment"-dimension which was a little bit missing until now.
Real great book. A must for all leaders and managers.
René F. Lisi

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars General long-term business principles, October 4, 2010

By 

Erik Gfesser (Lombard, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rules to Break and Laws to Follow: How Your Business Can Beat the Crisis of Short-Termism (Microsoft Executive Leadership Series) (Hardcover)

Purchase of this text by this reviewer followed on the tails of "The Strategy Paradox: Why Committing to Success Leads to Failure (and What to Do About It)" by Michael E. Raynor (see my review) and "Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour through the Wilds of Strategic Management" by Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand, and Joseph Lampel (see my review). While initial interest in this work by Peppers and Rogers was due to its seeming focus on the strategic versus the tactical, however, potential readers should note that the authors instead investigate and present general principles that any firm should follow.

At the outset, this text does not beat around the bush. For example, in the first chapter the authors respond to the following first three rules to break by writing "No, no, no. No to all the above. These Rules to Break are really just assumptions about how business works, at the most basic level. They probably aren't written down anywhere in your strategy document, but they have almost certainly backed up your thinking and your company's actions for as long as you remember.": (1) "the best measure of success for your business is current sales and profit, (2) "with the right sales and marketing effort, you can always get more customers", and (3) "company value is created by offering differentiated products and services".

The authors further this instruction by pointing out that all of these assumptions are wrong. "If you operate according to these false assumptions, not only will your business fail to create much value, but you'll also soon find yourself trapped in a Crisis of Short-Termism. Everything you do will be so furiously centered on making today's numbers that you will become increasingly blinded to everything else. Business swept up by this crisis find that even as they try to do the right thing for their shareholders, they end up destroying value rather than creating it. So while these Rules to Break may look no more dangerous than ordinary common sense, in truth they're deadly."

According to the authors, executives need to change their mental models of what it means to succeed. The new model that Peppers and Rogers is based on the understanding that long-term business success relies on customer success as a prerequisite, and that employee trust of their employer precedes employee drive to earn customer trust. Interestingly, even though new technologies are presented as making possible sophisticated analytics, subverting the power of hierarchies, connecting consumers electronically, and undermining the advantages of new products, the authors state that it is customer trust that will provide a guideline for action even if financial metrics are not yet at the needed level of sophistication.

In the opinion of this reviewer, the third chapter entitled "Customers Are a Scarce Resource" is one of the best in the book, and if the potential reader does not have enough time to read all the chapters, they need to read this one. In this chapter, the concept of customer lifetime value (LTV) is discussed. "New customer acquisition has always been the quintessential goal of traditional marketing and is something often trumpeted to shareholders. But raising your customers' lifetime values is just as important, because over and above whatever profit you are earning currently, increasing your customers' LTVs increases the value of your business."

The authors continue by stating that the philosophy of some businesses is "based on the belief that as long as its sales and marketing effort is effective, it can always acquire more customers from somewhere. But this is a false assumption - a Rule to Break. Instead, to make the right decisions as a business, you must always take into consideration the population of customers and prospective customers truly available to you. After considering the whole population of customers and prospects, your job is to employ that population to create the most possible value for your firm. Because customers are scarcer than other resources, using up customers is more costly than using up other resources."

The fifth chapter was also especially enjoyed by this reviewer, where in discussing how to increase the value of one's business the authors present the concepts of "customer equity" and "Return on Customer" (ROC) that follow a discussion of ROI. The examples and accompanying tables in the third and fifth chapters are very well done. The thoughts that the authors share on innovation in the tenth and eleventh chapters were also appreciated, where the production of new ideas is said to be more important than making money from every new idea, and where the need to differentiate between "wise failures" and "fiasco failures" is said to be an important distinction, reminding this reviewer of a quote by James Cameron, who was recently quoted as saying "If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success".

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clean Out Your Closet, July 5, 2010

By 

Scott Alcott "Author, I'm Not Lance!" (Princeton, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rules to Break and Laws to Follow: How Your Business Can Beat the Crisis of Short-Termism (Microsoft Executive Leadership Series) (Hardcover)

Over the years, everyone's business has accumulated clutter like that closet at home. If you're not careful, the clutter gets in between your employees and the customer and everyone loses. Don Peppers and Martha Rogers are closet cleaners. They want your business to look in the mirror and do what it knows is right. Turns out that what's good for the customer is also good for employees and the CFO at the same time. I've had the privilege to see Don Peppers speak--he uses data, real world case studies, and knife-sharp common sense to teach what is wrong and right in business today. Somehow, he's able to be motivating, funny, convincing...and right, all at the same time. His books read like a Don Peppers speech: thoroughly enjoyable, breezy read, and makes you want to go to work early and bring a folding chair to your next meeting (you'll have to read the book to get this great reference!). If you plan to be in business in 10 years, you better read "Rules to Break and Laws to Follow" right now!