Beat The System: 11 Secrets to Building an Entrepreneurial Culture in a Bureaucratic World - Hardcover

MacDonald, Robert W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0470175494 ISBN 13: 9780470175491

Verlag: Wiley, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

Smart guidelines for building flexible, innovative companies

Beat the System is a follow-up to Robert MacDonald's controversial but successful first book, Cheat to Win. Packed with proven, real-life advice, Beat the System shows readers how to deal with the bureaucracy that can smother the creativity and entrepreneurship essential to long-range business success. Beat the System teaches readers how to beat the bureaucratic system by building entrepreneurial cultures in their businesses, their departments, or even their individual jobs. MacDonald skillfully describes how business cultures develop, how bureaucratic procedures and processes seep into them, and how to build an entrepreneurial culture even as we live in a bureaucratic world. At the heart of his system are practical steps that create a sense of ownership among employees, invites their participation, creates a common mission, fosters an entrepreneurial atmosphere, and shares the rewards with all.

Robert W. MacDonald (Wayzata, MN) is a true visionary in the financial services industry who rose from a door-to-door insurance salesman to the CEO of Allianz Life of North America. He was also the founder, CEO, and chairman of LifeUSA.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Robert W. MacDonald is a true visionary and business contrarian who rose from a door-to-door insurance salesman to the very pinnacle of the corporate world. He was the founder, CEO, and chairman of LifeUSA, a life insurance company which was formed in 1987 and sold to Allianz SE for $500 million. He retired as chairman and CEO of Allianz North America. He is also the author of Cheat to Win: The Honest Way to Break All the Dishonest Rules in Business.

For more information, please visit www.cheattowin.net.

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Praise for

Beat The System

"The equivalent of an MBA all in one great book! MacDonald's entrepreneurship provides intellectual energy to transform dreams into reality."
Ken Dahlberg, entrepreneur extraordinaire and decorated World War II Flying Ace, founder, Dahlberg Hearing, Miracle Ear, and Carefree Capital, Inc.

"This is a gloves-off call to action, from America's most authoritative expert on the idea and action known as entrepreneurship. MacDonald not only knows what to do, he coaches and exhorts you to do it, and do it well!"
John Klymshyn, bestselling author of The Ultimate Sales Managers' Guide and How to Sell Without Being a Jerk!

"MacDonald gives his readers permission to beat the system and then identifies what it takes to create that entrepreneurial culture, honestly, through creativity and innovation. His practical approach provides guidance for anyone looking to reinvent themselves."
Sally J. Smith, Chief Executive Officer, Buffalo Wild Wings, Inc.

"If you've ever dreamed of owning your own business, or just breaking away from the corporate drones that surround you, MacDonald gives you the perfect road map. His eleven secrets come from his own experience as a successful entrepreneur in a bureaucratic world, so you know they work. A great read!"
Warren Greshes, author of The Best Damn Sales Book Ever

"In America we are constantly bombarded by messages that say: This is the land of opportunity! Go for it! Live your dreams! And yet the system is designed to take the wind out of our sails and keep us stuck exactly where we are. In his terrific new book, MacDonald reveals how to take your job or your business exactly where you want it to go. If you ever feel like the system is keeping you down buy this book and read it now!"
Joe Calloway, author of Work Like You're Showing Off!

"Caution: Using the lessons from this book will turn your slow, unresponsive company into a nimble, focused, and ferocious competitor. MacDonald provides a hands-on guide for building a culture that delivers results year in and year out."
Randy G. Pennington, author of Results Rule!

Aus dem Klappentext

Does bureaucratic inertia have your business locked in a losing status quo? Are you being held back by gray suits who won't allow innovation and creativity at work? Do you want to build a business that isn't slowed down by the concrete shoes of bureaucratic indecision or stifled by unimaginative groupthink? If so, maybe it's time to beat the system!

In this insurgent guide to business success, Robert MacDonald shows professionals, business leaders, and entrepreneurs how to smash the bureaucracy that smothers the innovative, entrepreneurial spirit essential to long-term business success. Whether you own a small business, run a large corporation, or work for someone else, Beat the System provides proven, real-world advice for building an entrepreneurial culture in your entire organization, your department, or even in your individual position.

When MacDonald founded LifeUSA, people thought he was a madman for trying to compete against giant, entrenched competition in the stagnant life insurance industry. But with a willingness to challenge the status quo and question the rules of the system, he grew LifeUSA into a hugely successful player in an industry that was actually shrinking at the time. Now, he shares the eleven entrepreneurial secrets he used to defeat bigger and stronger competitors.

We live in a bureaucratic world, but fighting the status quo is a business strategy that works. Beat the System outlines a proven plan for creating a business culture that creates, innovates, and moves fast enough to overtake even the most entrenched competition. Whether you're starting a new business or simply trying to advance your career, you really can succeed wildly if you have the right weapons to storm the battlements of bureaucracy.

Nobody said it would be easy; fighting the forces of darkness never is. But with these smart, entrepreneurial strategies, total unconditional victory will be yours but only if you play by your own rules. Beat the System is a practical, worldly guide to developing your own entrepreneurial, revolutionary spirit and building that spirit into every brick of your organization.

It's time to take a stand and call out the agents of oppression: "Mr. Bureaucrat, tear down this wall!"

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Beat The System

11 Secrets to Building an Entrepreneurial Culture in a Bureaucratic WorldBy Robert W. MacDonald

John Wiley & Sons

Copyright © 2008 Robert W. MacDonald
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-470-17549-1

Chapter One

Bureaucracy: The Enemy of Business Success

The system was established to protect the status quo and to discourage individuals from seeking better ways to do things.

If the United States is noted for nothing else, it surely must be credited as a country that has contrived a system for just about everything, from the mundane to the munificent. We have judicial court systems, political systems, and religious systems; we have systems of armed forces, systems of governments, and educational systems. And we have systems that impinge on us on a more personal level, too.

Buy gas for your car and you're confronted with a system. Self-serve is the system de rigueur. You pull up to the pump, insert your credit card, and pump your own gas (or E-85, but that's another system). If you want to pay in cash, or want to buy a quart of oil, you have to enter through this door (not that door, that's the exit door),and take the long way around the racks filled with high-margin candy bars, and join a lengthy queue of people buying lottery tickets, the latest issue of People magazine, or fishing for 99 cents and a coupon to pay for a 44-ounce "big gulp" soft drink (uh-oh, that's Big Gulp(r), yet another system).

That's today's gas station system (and it almost makes you wish those Texaco guys hadn't retired). There is another system waiting for you at the fast-food joint, the place where you renew your drivers' license, at your daughter's school, your drive-in church, your favorite supermarket, the place where you buy eye glasses, and, of course, the business where you work.

Systems Can Be Good for You

With this massive proliferation of systems at all levels of human activity, you'd think that we would be very sophisticated in their use. And generally, I'd agree that we are. Systems are not only necessary in many cases, but downright useful. (And if you don't believe me, try driving northbound on the interstate in the southbound lane.)

Systems make life easier, safer, more uniform, more understandable, and even less expensive to enjoy. If the teenager flipping burgers at a McDonald's in Poughkeepsie had to figure out how to make a Quarter Pounder(r) with cheese every time he made one, you can be sure it wouldn't taste anything like the one you'd get in Toulouse (besides, as the movie Pulp Fiction told us, the French don't eat a Quarter Pounder, they eat a "Royale with Cheese" since the French use the metric system. But that's another system, another story).

The preflight check system used by airline pilots is certainly considered a useful procedure, wouldn't you agree? Without it, there's no telling if other crucial systems are impaired or unworkable. Without it, you might be introduced to a few other systems you might wish to avoid, like the hospital system, the burial system, and the like.

Systems Can Think for Us

Uniform plans, programs, and procedures take much of the independent thinking out of our lives with favorable results. This is particularly true in business. In fact, businesses, second to governments, are the mother lode of systems.

Everywhere you scan the U.S. business landscape, you'll find systems: systems that regulate employee behavior; systems that organize ideas, principles, and doctrines; systems that establish procedures and processes; systems that reduce costs and bring a more established order and harmonious arrangement where otherwise there might be chaos.

If you have a job, any kind of job, you're probably face-to-face with systems of all kinds that largely take over your job of thinking: IT systems. Bookkeeping systems. HR systems. Shipping systems. Payroll systems. Employee manuals. Like it or not, systems like these help make businesses run. Businesses can't survive without them and accordingly, although ruefully, we rarely quibble about their usefulness.

Our systems are useful, as well as pervasive. Systems have diffused our culture to such an extent that we take them for granted in the same way that we expect the light to go on when we throw the switch or cars to drive on the right-hand side of the road.

Systems have become ingrained in our thinking. We unquestioningly, even unthinkingly, accept the requirement that you must play by the rules of the game. Only a lunatic would do otherwise. Right?

Where Systems Go Wrong

If systems bring us so much good, who, then, can fault these procedures that assure us an unparalleled standard of living?

I can. And so can millions of other Americans who have discovered that good systems can go bad and, when they do, they cry out to be Beaten with a capital B; to be circumvented, overcome, and defeated.

Interestingly enough, it is not the systems themselves that are to blame for the faults of U.S. enterprise. A system, after all, is just the methodology for doing something, not the something itself. Rather, the blame lies in the "glue" that holds systems together. That sticky stuff is bureaucracy and it has bollixed more good business systems than all other problems combined. Bureaucracy turns good systems into bad. Bureaucracy turns simple, useful programs and procedures into inflexible rules and regulations and the employees who work for them from creative, enterprising stem-winders into impersonal, unthinking troglodytes.

Whether we like it or not, we live cheek by jowl with bureaucratic systems of all kinds. And dealing with bureaucratic systems is nothing more than the flip side of working for a bureaucratic system. If you have a job, if you manage a company, you probably work for a business that's far too bureaucratic. And that means, ipso facto, the less freedom you have to flex your creative muscles and fully realize your potential.

What's a Bureaucratic System?

When we think of formal bureaucracies or "bureaumania" as I like to call them, we think of a system in which the means become ends in themselves and the greater good is often lost in the press for uniformity. Parochial or sectional interests are swapped for the good of the whole. And that means individuality, your individuality, is largely an anathema to the System.

Worst of all, bureaucratic systems left uncontrolled have a nasty habit of becoming increasingly entrenched, more bureaucratic, more corrupt, and perpetually more narrow-minded. They are more difficult to work with, just as they are more difficult to work for.

The Components of a Bureaucracy

The essence of the bureaucratic system-because it is a system-is a series of controls-rules, really-that are established to enlarge and perpetuate its own existence and the methodologies that enforce compliance. And whether the rules are oral or written, they are meant to rigidly define business operations.

The textbook definition of the bureaucratic organization suggests a system marked by:

* Standardized procedures: Pronounced rules exist, particularly those based on written documents like SOPs and employee manuals, and there are sanctions against challenging them.

* Formalized divisions: Grouping responsibility together with delimited authority and responsibilities. ("I can't do that. That's Brenda's job."...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Wiley
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0470175494
• ISBN 13: 9780470175491
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Wiley-VCH GmbH; product_safety@wiley.com; ; Boschstrasse 12; Weinheim; 69469; Deutschland