[.ca] Less Is More (ISBN 1591840015)

You Can Successfully Be a Corproate Leader:
This book is an excellent example of the types of practices and procedures almost any company can follow to be successful both financially and ethically. Jennings cites numerous companies who have carved out success while still remaining true to their customers, their employees and their values. Not surprisingly, few of these companies are ones that so called pundits regularly review. As the other reviews have noted, these companies are very successful financially, but they get there by asking the really pertinent business questions, and not by hiding behind an air of executive invulnerability. The leaders are real leaders, more focused on growing the company, serving customers, and doing right by employees. What vividly differentiates these companies from the "name brands," is that in the "name" companies, executives are more concerned with their own compensation, preserving their own existence, and with profits at all costs, than long term success. The questions you should ask yourself after reading this book are, "Where have all the leaders gone?" and "Why don't all companies follow many of Jennings' researched best practices? After that, I would run, not walk, to one of these companies and see if you can start at the bottom and learn what it's like to work in a real company.

Very interesting but divisive and of limited value:
Jennings reads his book on the unabridged audiocassette. He definitely has an announcers voice and is easy to understand. I found his inflections sort of larger-than-life/not natural at first but I quickly got acclimated, not a big issue. The book is fairly long and repeats many important themes like the need for healthy culture, process and vision in many different ways. It might be able to be shorter. The research method Jennings and his team utilized for the book is the driver that makes the book so interesting. By carrying out detailed analysis to locate several under-the-radar, but incredibly productive companies, they managed to isolate some of the common threads for corporate success without being sucked into the vortex of large mega-companies whose stories are already well known and perhaps over-documented. The companies chosen represent a fairly good cross-section of international business, but I would have like to have seen at least one very high tech computer vendor make the cut. There are probably good reasons why there wasn't one, but there was no mention of this if my memory serves... In addition to the excellent research on the case companies, there are also some good insights into legendary companies like Ford and Toyota briefly provided for specific instances. The significant flaw in this book is that when it is taken as a whole, it amounts to not much more than a very interesting, carefully crafted, indictment of most executive management in corporations today. The executives profiled all really know the nuts and bolts of their business and have been with them long enough to really cast Deming-like vision into reality. That plays well for well a while, but with 6 tapes, I'd like something more practical I can start at work tomorrow since I'm not an executive and probably never will be. The book does try to service this need for mid-managers like me towards the end of the book by encouraging that we apply at least some of the key principles to some degree in the hope of making a grass roots difference at least within our department. Actually, the department I work with abides by many of the principles given and they do help. But that doesn't stop large-scale lay-offs, frozen budgets and other realities that most managers really have to live with. The book's untitled theme is that strong success only flows from the top down. In the highly successful cases analyzed, each has exceptional Level 5 leaders (to use Jim Collins terminology). What if where I work is like 90% of all places where the executives turn-over a lot, are forced to optimize all decisions for short-term profit on Wall Street and de-rail some good plans due to economic realities? The book's primary advice to me would seem to be: go to work somewhere else, find that 10% club. Maybe true, but not particularly helpful today. Even for those top-level executives whom this book will reach, it is likely to fall on deaf ears. Not because executives really are the "wing tip shoe wearers, peacock strutting" jerks Jennings occasionally alludes to. No, it is Jennings own inflammatory and derisive language that will tend to make executives shut the book. I wanted to lend my tapes to the president of my company because of the good macro-productivity ideas, but decided I wouldn't because he might take it as my endorsement of this class-warfare attitude. There are other sources out there for most of the information here on egalitarian culture, continuous process improvement, open-book management, profit sharing incentives, etc. I'd be interested to know the average working hours of the employees in the case study companies as a cultural factor but I don't recall this being mentioned. In any case, the productivity measures would factor this in, just a cultural question I have about these companies. Much of what Jennings says is true and interesting. There are some things that can be learned here, but much of it comes down to re-invent almost everything, starting with your executives. Who can implement that? Again, it is the detailed case study research that puts compelling value into this book.

Secrets of Efficient and Productive Companies:
"Secrets of Efficient and Productive Companies" Consultant and author Jason Jennings had always been fascinated with two vital aspects of successful enterprises, efficiency and productivity. In other words, getting more done with the same or less. Jennings states in the introduction to his book, Less is More: How Great Companies Use Productivity As A Competitive Tool In Business, "why wasn't there a book about how the most efficient and productive companies got that way, with lessons that anyone or any company could follow?" To fill the gap Jennings assembled a team of researchers, some of whom were recent graduates of Princeton, Stanford and Berkley, to search all over the world for the most productive and efficient companies. The primary objective was to determine what made these companies tick and why were they successful. The culmination of the research was the publishing of his book describing a mix of companies such as a European airline, a chain of New Zealand and Australian discount stores, a steel maker, a Swedish and Danish furniture retailer, a financial institution, a manufacturing company and a trucking company. The criteria for selecting the companies included in the book was broken down into revenue per employee, return on equity and return on assets, operating income per employee, has the company been overexposed, and might this company pull an Enron. Five principal sections make up the book: Focus, Streamline, Digitize, Motivate, and Embody. Within each section the author explains the component parts that provide the reader with the lessons that will prove less is more. According to the Jennings business is a game and in order to win you must understand how to play the game. Concepts such as understanding the big objective, streamlining, truthfulness, destroying bureaucracy, avoiding layoffs, productivity, leanness, compensation, and financing, are all analysed in simple language. The end of the book summarizes all of the lessons presented with a listing of twelve rules that will show you the way to building a successful business organization. Although much of what Jennings presents in his book has been rehashed in a variety of ways in other business books, nonetheless, it does serve as a useful primer for anyone who does not want to be bogged down with charts, tables, and long-winded self-praise narratives. This review first appeared on the reviewer's own site

Less is less:
Perhaps because of, or even in spite of, positive reviews aplenty from other Amazon reviewers, I found this book disappointing and confusing. A comment in the Introduction caught my attention. Jennings writes "we were eager to avoid Tom Peters' embarrassment when a number of excellent companies sagged badly soon after publication..." Quick Google searches on three (there were more companies; I just did three) Jennings-commended companies (The Warehouse, Ryanair, and Nucor) read more like embarrassments as well. To be specific: The June 4, 2003 New Zealand Herald reported that "The Warehouse founder Stephen Tindall has stepped back into the company's day-to-day operations, leading a scheme dubbed Project Urgency to fix its Australian problems. ... Tindall is leading Project Urgency. Its aim, as the name suggests, is to give the Australian operation a rapid makeover." At the same time, Ryanair had its own problems. Per the web report: "Europe's fast-growing low-fare airline, dropped as much as 14.7 percent Tuesday after the low-fare airline said it expects lower fares and yields this year will pressure its profit margin." The book may provide an explanation: Jennings lauds attention to customer service and satisfaction and chastises those who fail to respond to customers. As Jennings ironically notes: "Other than cheap airfares, customer service at Ryanair is nonexistent." Queried by Times of London reporter as to the paper receiving "more complaints concerning Ryanair's customer service than any other airline," Ryanair's CEO response: "We don't screw them every time we fly them." Nice attitude. A third featured company, Nucor, also turned south about the time Jennings went to press: Nucor's stock price dropped by half between mid 2002 and early 2003. There is more I found unsettling: Jennings repeats canards about "eggs and ham" (the chicken's involvement and the pig's commitment), about showing prospects a heavenly version of product yet delivering hell, and about decentralizing fireworks production (avoiding one big explosion). He mimics Jim Collins's "Get the right people on the bus." He follows Peter Drucker's ideas to produce the anagram, WTGBRFDT ("What's the good business reason for doing this?"). And Edwards Deming must be spinning in his grave when he reads Jennings: "The objective is to perform the task with zero variation." (p.129) The all-too-flattering biographies and profiles remind me of Fast Company or Inc. pieces. The book concludes with a self-congratulatory chapter recommending of Jennings' previous work, an epilogue featuring Jennings' personal trainer, and a lengthy section of acknowledgements that consists of name dropping more than links to research help. He commends his research team of recent graduates of Stanford, Princeton, and Berkeley yet he offers no systematic research, data, tables, graphs, analyses or standards. Jennings has a lot of ideas and inspiration, but little is substantiated. And, in another twist, the book is about more (productivity, profits, revenue per employee), not less. The final product is a watered down amalgam of "In search of excellence" and several other popular business authors and books.

How do you define Productive?:
This little book provides a different prospective on productivity than one typically learns in MBA school or management grooming programs. Without going through the diatribes that many other reviews have opted to write (all very good mind you), his book can be summarized in one statement: "cut out the fat (everywhere) in order to become efficient". Jennings spends time cutting the fat with regard to the management team, communications, organizational structure, decision making, internal processes, analytics/measurements, education/training, and finance (to name but a few). His recipe is to build a vision, get people on board with that vision, document processes, improve them, focus on the customer, and count those things which matter. Definitely not rocket science on the surface, but his analysis of the 10 most productive companies really shows how many of them implemented unorthodox approaches towards recreating their organization. Further, he provides commonalities between these seemingly unrelated companies (different industries, sizes, customer focuses, etc) which he believes elevates these companies above the rest. According to the financial analysis he provides in the second edition, it is hard to dispute his findings. Time will tell if his methodologies is the silver bullet to eliminate waste and drive MEANINGFUL productivity.