Author Spotlight
James Champy
is one of the leading management and business thinkers of our time. His first best seller, Reengineering the Corporation, remains the bible for executing process change. His second book, Reengineering Management, another best seller, was recognized by Business Week as one of the most important books of its time. But, Champy is also an experienced manager and advisor. He is the Chairman of Consulting for Perot Systems. He speaks and writes with the authority of real business experience and brings pragmatism to the world of business. Champy observes that there is not much new in management, but there is a lot new in business – and a lot to learn from what’s new.
Champy’s latest book, Outsmart! How To Do What Your Competitors Can't, is a New York Times Best Seller. This concise, fast-paced book shows how you can achieve breakthrough growth by consistently outsmarting your competition. Champy reveals the surprising, counterintuitive lessons learned by companies that have achieved super-high growth for at least three straight years. Drawing on the strategies of some of today-s best -high velocity- companies, he identifies eight powerful ways to compete in even the roughest marketplace. You-ll discover how to find distinctive market positions and sustainable advantages in products, services, delivery methods, and unexpected customers with unexpected needs.
Introduction from Champy’s book, Outsmart! How To Do What Your Competitors Can't
In my more than 30 years of work as a consultant and author, I've learned that the best ideas are found inside companies. But it wasn't always so. There was a time when I strayed from the realm of hands-on pragmatism to search the writings of philosophers for ideas that could be applied to business. To be honest, I thought that quoting the ancients made me sound smarter.
One day, while waxing philosophic during a speech in Monterey, Mexico, I encountered a far smarter gentleman of a certain age sitting in the front row. He interrupted me to ask how the philosophy of Mexico's nineteenth-century ruler, Gen. Antonio Santa Anna, could be applied to management. What could a man both admired and reviled contribute to business? The answer, which my interlocutor duly shared with all present, was a gem of pragmatism. Santa Anna, he told us, firmly believed that whatever worked was the right thing to do.
I have taken his lesson to heart, and this book describes the very real and practical strategies that are working for today's most successful businesses, strategies that I believe will sustain their success into the future. Because the primary goal of all good strategy is growth, the companies analyzed in these pages are among the world's fastest-growing enterprises.
But equally important, their revenue-producing ideas are neither hypothetical nor based on esoteric technologies. They don't require hundreds of millions of venture capital dollars or the vast sums from stock offerings to implement. Rather, they are strategies that any business leader can easily and immediately understand.
This is the first in a planned series comprising four compact volumes on the key topics of strategy, marketing, leadership, and operations. Taken together, the books aim to deliver the most current intelligence available on how to succeed in today's brave new world of business. An ambitious objective? Yes. But what I see a host of companies accomplishing today has me both excited and encouraged.
My ability to write about these matters does not derive from scholarly pursuits, although I've braved assorted academic challenges. Necessity drove me to learn by doing. It is a path that I recommend to anyone who seeks a powerful curriculum and an unforgettable teacher.
In my younger years, I assumed that I would join my family's construction business in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a mill city north of Boston. My quest for relevant knowledge sent me to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where I studied engineering, then to Boston College where I studied law. Finally, I returned to Lawrence for my early training in business.
In my family's company, there were no strategies, business plans, or budgets. We did what seemed right—day by day. We hired people, bought equipment—even acquired real estate—that seemed good for the business. Risk taking was a natural act. We had no spreadsheets, and the most advanced form of technology was a mechanical calculator. But the business worked—most of the time.
In Lawrence, I also had my first taste of a multicultural world. We had stone masons from Italy, carpenters from Quebec, and painters from Ireland. I learned a lot from these folks—something about teams, but more about how, when left alone, good people will do the right thing. I carried this and other lessons into my life in business.
Thanks to my MIT roommate, Tom Gerrity, I was later treated to an advanced course in commerce when he invited two MIT friends and me to join him in a business venture. In 1969, we launched Index Systems, an information-technology start-up based on Tom's Ph.D. research into automating management decision making. We each invested $370, the bet of a lifetime. Because our work was on the cutting edge of technology and business change, we serendipitously became an acquisition target for a bigger company nearly two decades later. In 1988, Computer Science Corporation (CSC) bought our firm and turned it into CSC's management-consulting arm. I became CSC Index's CEO and chairman after the Wharton School of Business lured away our hottest property, Tom, to become the school's dean. I was left to expand CSC Index into what became a $240 million company.
Out of those Index years came the ideas—developed with Michael Hammer and other colleagues—that formed my first book, Reengineering the Corporation, which argued that companies need to change radically and be managed from a process perspective. It became the best-selling business book of the 1990s. I followed this with a second book, Reengineering Management, in which I contended that leaders had to change their own ways of thinking before they could change their organizations. And in a third book, X-Engineering the Corporation, I made the case that process change must extend outside company walls to suppliers, customers, and business partners.
My current job as Chairman of Consulting for Perot Systems gives me access to many leaders who live and work on the frontiers of business, where the rules of industry are stretched (and sometimes broken). What I learn from these leaders is what I teach to others, and I write books to crystallize the findings of my latest field research.
My best work, however, has always been done with collaborators. And for this book, and the three that will follow in this series, I must acknowledge and thank the talented editors and researchers at Wordworks, Inc.—Donna Sammons Carpenter, Maurice Coyle, Ruth Hlavacek, Larry Martz, Molly Sammons Morris, Cindy Sammons, Robert Shnayerson, Robert W. Stock, and Ellen Wojahn; and Helen Rees and Joan Mazmanian of the Helen Rees Literary Agency. I would also like to acknowledge my very able assistant, Dee Dee Haggerty. And, as always, I am grateful to my wife, Lois, and my son, Adam, for their support, advice, and tolerance when I write. Lois and Adam keep me grounded.
Nothing pleases me more than sharing what we have discovered with people who might actually use it, especially when the ideas we have uncovered are not only fresh, but simple and practical. Ahead lies a world of creative companies with uncommon strategies and a singular record for making good on them. How do they do it?
If you missed our complimentary webcast, featuring Jim Champy you can
view an archived recording here.
Lynn O'Shaughnessy
has been a professional journalist for nearly three decades. She is a former LA Times reporter and syndicated columnist, and a financial journalist. Her previous books include Unofficial Guide to Investing; Investing Bible; Retirement Bible; and The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price. She contributes regularly to such publications as BusinessWeek, Money Magazine, Chronicle of Philanthropy, AARP: The Magazine, Bloomberg Wealth Manager Magazine, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Kiplinger's Retirement Report, and Consumer Reports MoneyAdvisor.
Foreword from O'Shaughnessy’s book, The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price
A few weeks ago, I had to break a student's heart by giving her some bad news. This particular student had worked hard throughout high school, earning solid grades while taking a full slate of challenging college prep courses.
She had participated in an impressive list of extracurricular activities, and spent many diligent hours preparing for her college entrance exams. Throughout her junior and senior years, she and her single mother had visited many college campuses, and she'd applied to a nice list of colleges. She'd ended up doing well in terms of admissions, getting accepted to five out of the six great colleges she'd applied to.
One particular college on her "accepted" list was her clear favorite. She'd been pleasantly surprised to be admitted to that college because her grades and test scores were a bit below the school's average. But, she had been admitted, and now she and her mother were sitting in my college counseling office with her financial aid award letter.
"They gave her a $10,000 scholarship!" the mother said excitedly. "We didn't expect that, and they're the only college that gave her a scholarship." The college had also included a $12,000 a year need-based institutional grant, $2,500 a year in federal work study, and a $3,500 annual federal loan.
That's when the bad news started to kick in. The cost of attending the student's dream college the following year would be just over $48,000, leaving a $28,000 gap between the college's price tag and the financial aid award.
The mother had the option of closing the gap through a Federal PLUS Loan for parents. That would have meant monthly payments of $223 a month spread out over the next ten years. But that would have only gotten her daughter through the first year. To pay for four years of college, the mother would have likely had to borrow at least $72,000, which would have generated monthly payments of $829.
What's more, the mother would still need to come up with $10,000 a year that the federal aid formula had determined was her fair share of her daughter's college expenses. "That'll be like having a second mortgage!" the mother said, as her daughter's face fell in disappointment.
My student and her mother aren't alone. Unfortunately, I've heard similar shock expressed time and time again by the families I work with as a college counselor, and seen the same look of disappointment on the faces of many students as they realize their "dream college" isn't in the works financially.
While popular media has loudly touted the increased competition for admissions to our nation's top colleges, the truth is, for many students, getting in isn't the problem. It's how to pay for college once you do get in.
Parents and students are having to make tough choices these days, and that's adding to an already stressful process. According to a recent poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News, 70% of parents surveyed were "very concerned" about how they would pay for college. Only 6% of parents reported that they were not concerned with college costs.
As a financial journalist and parent of teenagers herself, Lynn O'Shaughnessy is uniquely qualified to tackle some of the tough choices families face as they look at college options for their children. She's started the discussion at exactly the right place: with the money side of the equation.
By providing a thorough overview of the many factors affecting college costs and financial aid today, and suggesting realistic solutions for solving the college cost crisis faced by most families, she gives both parents and students a blueprint for a realistic college search.
In clear, easy-to-understand language, she explains how choosing the right colleges to apply to in the first place can not only ultimately improve a student's chances of admission, but their family's ability to pay the tab. The College Solution is a wonderful resource for parents, whether their children are about to apply to college or are still many years away from high school.
Take its message to heart, and you'll lessen the likelihood of having to break disappointing news to your own child about the affordability of their "dream college."
Carolyn Z. Lawrence
Independent College Advisor
AdmissionsAdvice.com
Jamul, California
If you missed our complimentary webcast, featuring Lynn O'Shaughnessy, you can
view an archived recording here.
