Synopses & Reviews
In Do Less Better, John Bell draws on personal experiences from his days in the C-suite and the boardrooms of his consulting clients. He culls his experience to make a convincing case that, in business, sacrifice is the surprising secret to successful focus and long-term viability. Business complexity has never been greater, but it is not the phenomenon itself but rather the inability to cut through the clutter that comes in the way of resurrecting clarity and coherence.
Bell demonstrates how the best business strategies all require this sacrifice. He emphasizes, through case studies and personal anecdotes, the importance of specializing—of a company's willingness to focus on a particular area, vision, or identity in order to create and maintain its value. According to Bell, the specialist always beats the generalist. Doing less, better ensures viability and strengthens a company's competitive edge. Do Less Better will teach business leaders how to keep their company nimble—willing and able to sacrifice and evolve in order to remain relevant and competitive. This smart sacrifice and nimbleness—dumping a pet project that's not profitable anymore, taking your partner's name off the door, altering some beloved company formulae, for example—can be incredibly difficult. However, maintaining this prioritization of nimbleness is crucial as it gives you a hugely significant advantage over companies that are more reactive and slow-to-change. Bell shows business leaders how, in a corporation, you don't have to be an entrepreneur to think like one. But he also asserts that, in order to act like one, you'll have to sacrifice your aversion to risk. You'll have to fight off certain strongly-help or sacred inclinations, such as the tendency to generalize rather than specialize and the desire to preserve and maintain (practices, products, ways of doing business) rather than sacrifice, let go, and innovate. He discusses several disciplines and examples in entrepreneurship, strategy, marketing and branding that help to clear the fog of company complexity. Within problem/solution scenarios, he demonstrate how people and companies succeed or fail at these practices.
According to Bell, doing less, better should by no means lead to doing less work. More often than not, those who embrace the notion of focus, specialization, and streamlining work harder because they are more passionate and emotionally connected to their vision. This is a book for business leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs who are just starting out and need help embracing the practices and philosophy that will allow them to be lean, farsighted, adaptable, and resilient. It is also a book for leaders of established business, who are looking to reduce clutter and encumbering complexity in order to stay nimble and focused enough to maintain a competitive edge.
Synopsis
Early in his career, John Bell and a young leadership team faced the daunting task of resurrecting a company with a broad product range and buckets of red ink. That team took a step few leaders do, setting aside their own egos and trimming the company down to a shadow of its former self. The business that remained grew rapidly because they concentrated on running it, and nothing else. The lesson-learned served Bell well throughout his career as a CEO and then consultant: smart sacrifice is the surprising secret to success.
In Do Less Better, Bell illustrates why sacrifice in the right places cuts through complexity and clears the way to competitive advantage. Dumping your pet projects, reducing your customer list, or turning down new revenue streams can be incredibly difficult to do. It can feel impossible to say, 'Think smaller,' when everyone around you is firmly entrenched in the 'do more' strategic paradigm. Do Less Better demonstrates how maintaining nimbleness and clarity is crucial to outmaneuvering mega competitors. Doing less better in no way implies doing less work. Those who embrace focus, work harder because they are passionate and emotionally-connected to the vision. Bell emphasizes, through case studies and personal anecdotes, the importance of specialization in driving company and brand value. Drawing from his years as a CEO and consultant for some of the world's most respected blue-chip consumer goods' organizations, Bell provides a tool-kit of road-tested strategies for keeping companies lean, creating cultures of innovation, and knowing when to expand and yet, remain streamlined.
Do Less Better is for business leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs who need help embracing the practices that foster agility, foresight, adaptability, and resilience.
About the Author
John Bell is a retired consumer packaged goods CEO and global strategy consultant to some of the world's most respected blue-chip organizations. A prolific writer, John's musings on strategy, leadership, and branding have appeared in various marketing journals and publications such as Fortune and Forbes. He has served as a director of several private, public, and not-for-profit organizations.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Accept the Short-term Pain
2. Your Leadership Reality Check
3. The Steel and Steal of Strategic Sacrifice
4. Urgency for Action
5. Think like an Entrepreneur
6. KISS is not a Rock Band
7. Bastions of Branding
8. Fewer, Better People
9. Regrets… I've had a Few
References