Book Review of Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win

Managing Organizations and People (MM511)

2014/2015 Term 1

Book Review of

Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win,

written by William C. Taylor & Polly LaBarre

Wu

16th November 2014

Introduction

Nowadays, the market can be described as overcapacity, oversupply and even overload, and doing business in a conventional way will no longer lead you to success. Mavericks at Work is a book which aims to open readers’ eyes and encourage them to think and aim higher and bigger. The main argument of this book is “Playing it smart is the key to success in the hypercompetitive market”. However, playing it safe is no longer playing it smart, and the authors point out that playing it smart is to stand out from the others with distinctive set of ideas. According to the Oxford Dictionary, “Maverick” means “An unorthodox or independent-minded person”. This book shows us the practices, strategies and leadership styles of 32 mavericks organizations with different background, culture and structure, and explains how the spirit of the mavericks leads to their success. It focuses on 4 methods for organizations to stand out, they are “Rethinking Competition”, “Reinventing Innovation”, “Reconnecting with Customers” and “Redesigning Work”. Real cases of the mavericks organizations are used to illustrate these methods.

Rethinking Competition

The authors believe that playing it smart could help organizations beat down the stronger competitors in vigorous competition. In the introduction, the authors quote the coaching mantra of the very famous Hall of Fame basketball coach, Pete Carril, “The strong take from the weak, but the smart take from the strong”. As mentioned in the book, most people pay attention to the same things, and not pay attention to the same things. Therefore, you will never succeed if you only follow the conventional way. The spirit of playing it smart is to create a new set of rule which allows you to make use of your own advantages.

One of the good cases is from ING Direct USA, a retail bank in the US. In 2000, while most of its competitors are adopting an aggressive strategy of attracting customers with large amount of deposit and investment, ING Direct USA only wants to target customers who would deposit small amount for saving purpose, and its mantra is “Leading Americans back to savings”. The simplicity of its products and business model makes ING Direct’s costs very low, and thus guarantees higher interest rates to depositors. This results in rapid growth of customer base and amount of deposit, and the company became one of the 40 largest banks in the US. This example illustrates how ING Direct created a new market for itself, allowing it to make use of its advantage and uniqueness.