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: John Wiley & Sons Inc, 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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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!"

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." Alternately, "That's not our department's job, it belongs to sales.")

* Inside the box thinking: Bureaucracies eschew creativity and reward behavior that doesn't "rock the boat" with continued employment. Accordingly, new, challenging ideas and opinions are clearly unrequited.

* Hierarchical structure: The typical Christmas tree-like organizational chart defining grades or ranks with respective responsibilities and matching coercive powers.

* Impersonal relationships: Both within and without the business or governmental unit, this is the one-size-fits-everybody approach to customer service. (It's like trying to order ham and eggs at the Olympia Caf in that old Saturday Night Live skit: "Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger ... Pepsi, no Coke, no fries-chips.")

* Job placement dependent: Technical qualifications and work rewarded according to a systematized formula reflecting job title and longevity. ("I can't get a raise because I have maxed out my grade level.")

What's wrong with these definitions? Well, nothing if you're brain dead. Bureaucratic systems do "git'er done." You do get your insurance policy. (Even if you are a cave man.) The bank doesn't (often) lose your last deposit. The IRS does make life miserable. Then, of course, there is the FEMA system, but the exception always does prove the rule.

But just as often these systems deliver a ponderously slow, unimaginative, impersonal brand of "one-size-fits-all" product or service. Their bureaucratic nature robs them of their real ability to generate true value for their employees and the changing tastes of the publics they serve. And since that is true for the customer of such a business, it is true for the employee as well who works in a nightmare environment where new ideas are so often stillborn.

Where would Apple be if Steve Jobs had been working for IBM? Where would Fred Smith be if he had entered the package delivery business thinking like the U.S. Postal Service? Where would Richard Branson be if he thought like United or Northwest Airlines? See what I mean?

How Bureaucratic Systems Create Problems

Bureaucracies, by their very nature, create their own problems. Often, the lines of authority and responsibility are so rigidly drawn that breakdowns and slowdowns occur. Any time you have the attitude that a particular competence is "out of your jurisdiction," prompt delivery of services will fall between the cracks.

Group thinking seeps into the organization and employees are unwilling to offer dissenting opinions even when such views are better founded than those held by the majority. (Which is, after all, always correct, isn't it?) Committees formed to solve problems unwittingly become instruments of stagnation where employees actually hide from true entrepreneurial decision-making responsibility. The inflexibility of processes and procedures render the corporate decision-making process burdensomely slow, and at times, frozen in indecision.

The bureaucratic system of rules can produce unwanted, even counterproductive consequences. Remember the book (and movie) Catch-22? The Joseph Heller work adroitly captures the absurdity of living by the rules of others, whether those rules are delivered by governments, corporate systems, families, or friends.

Catch-22, you'll recall, was the bureaucratic rule government imposed to validate the flying readiness of World War II bombardiers. The rule was neatly summed up by Heller as follows:

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. [Capt.] Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr (Bob Balaban in the film) would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian (Alan Arkin) was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. "That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. "It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed. -Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Lest you think that such bizarre results happen only in movies, guess again. That kind of bureaucratic bumbling occurred when California judges applied that state's infamous "three-strikes-and-you're-out" law. Imagine some downtrodden fool drawing a life sentence for shoplifting some golf clubs while another was slapped with 25 years to life with no parole for swiping a slice of pepperoni pizza. Sad but true. Only later did the state pass new legislation to curb some, but by no means all, of the unintended effects of this Draconian law.

The reduction of modern corporate management to an inflexible system, a set of rules, is demeaning to all of us, but most of all to those of us who want to do better. If you are one of those people, you are the one I seek to reach because the glaring truth is that the more bureaucratic the environment in which you work, the more limited you'll be in your capacity to perform, contribute, and add value to the business. That means your financial success will be abridged accordingly and that affects the car you drive, the house you live in, the vacations you don't take. To adhere to such a program is a surefire way to inhibit the individuality that we all crave in the businesses we work for, and in the companies with whom we do business. And it's this individual treatment that's the first element to go in the system.

Maximilian Weber, the German political economist and self-professed guru of the bureaucratic way of life, wrote glowingly of bureaucracy in his essay, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York, NY: Routledge Education, Taylor & Francis Group, 2001). Although Weber never met a bureaucracy he didn't like, he pointed out in his work that bureaucracy starts falling apart when decisions are made on an individual basis-the very basis of the entrepreneurial freedom we need in an entrepreneurial culture.

The Real Cost of Bureaucracy

Bureaucratic systems can limit you, they tend to control your thoughts and eliminate innovation and creativity. What that should mean to you is this: Profitability suffers and everybody takes a financial hit-management, employees, shareholders, vendors, and customers. But employees take the biggest brunt since they seldom share in the very value they help to create.

Karl Marx noted that bureaucratic fallout when he said that bureaucracies rarely create new wealth by themselves. Instead, they control the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth and it's the employee who suffers most greatly:

The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion to the devaluation of the world of men. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity-and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally. -Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts

Of course, it is not all about material things. It comes down to what we call "the quality of life." The bottom line is: If you want to chart new territory, create new ideas, new thinking, a new business, a new way of doing things so you can maximize your life's career contributions, you've got to beat the system that prevents you

Is There Any Hope?

My experience and beliefs tell me there is more than hope-there is a real opportunity to beat the system. However, in order to do so, we need to understand and employ a few simple secrets. As strong as a bureaucracy is, it is a fixed, inflexible system. All fixed and inflexible systems, no matter how strong or entrenched they may appear to be, are susceptible to attack and defeat. Just ask the French about the Maginot line!

Bureaucratic systems are vulnerable when exposed to creativity, innovation, responsible risk taking, open communication, a consistent vision, and ethical leadership. Put all these together on the same team and you create a powerful force. This force is called an entrepreneurial culture and it is just what is needed to beat the system.

And that's what this book seeks to provide. I'm hoping it will light the way for those of you whose entrepreneurial juices are a quart low.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Beat The Systemby Robert W. MacDonald Copyright © 2008 by Robert W. MacDonald. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: John Wiley & Sons Inc
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0470175494
• ISBN 13: 9780470175491
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Sprache: Englisch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar