A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

BASE YOUR STRATEGY ON THE SITUATION ■ 211
that re-organization was the equivalent of major surgery, he added the cautionary
note that sometimes major surgery was necessary.
5. Do the unexpected. When you have competition, it is most effective to
surprise your competition and do the unexpected. Peter once pointed out
that Sony did this <strong>with</strong> the transistor. Though the transistor was invented
in the U.S., American companies were committed to the vacuum tube and
estimated that the transistor could not be commercialized for many years.
So they didn’t try. Sony licensed the transistor patent and, in a couple of
years, built a workable portable transistor radio which grew into a business
which soon made vacuum tubes obsolete. This principle can also be profitably
applied <strong>with</strong> customers, so long as the surprise is pleasant. It goes
along <strong>with</strong> the concept of giving your customers more than they expect.
6. Keep things simple. Someone at NASA once calculated that if every
single one of the parts in one of NASA rockets was 99.9 percent reliable,
the rocket would fail 50 percent of the time. The more things that can go
wrong, the more will go wrong. If you want less to go wrong, keep your
strategy simple. Peter’s concepts and the strategies they led to were never
very complex. They were easy to implement.
7. Prepare multiple simultaneous alternatives. Since some actions
inspired by your thinking are going to fail, you should always have “Plan
B” in place and be ready to implement it. Peter felt that many strategies
were not mutually exclusive. If one idea didn’t work, don’t abandon the
objective, proceed <strong>with</strong> an alternative.
8. Take the indirect route to your objective. Moving directly against any
human thought or endeavor arouses opposition. No one likes to be sold
anything. However, most people are eager to take advantage of a bargain.
The difference is subtle, but the results can be decisive. The same principle
holds true in a situation where there is competition that must be
faced. The strategy you use may make all the difference. Sony, for example,
didn’t set out directly to replace the vacuum tube <strong>with</strong> the transistor.
Rather, Sony put the transistor in a product and proved its advantages.
Sony didn’t need to hit anyone on the head and sell the transistor’s advantages.
They were obvious.
9. Practice timing and sequencing. The Bible says that there is a time for
every purpose under heaven. Implementing the “right” strategy at the