Everything You Need To Know About Strategy – A Baker’s Dozen Eternal Verities: Business Mantra

By Tom Peters

13. Do you understand business mantra #1 of the ’00s: DON’T TRY TO COMPETE WITH WAL*MART ON PRICE OR CHINA ON COST? (And if you get this last idea, then see the 12 above!)

“Clients want either the best or the least expensive; there is no in between.”—John Di Julius, Secret Service

Business as usual is dead. And I, for one, say …“Hurray.” (See above, #12:“Show up. Shut up. Or starve.”) John Di Juius gets it. He is a wildly successful, wildly passionate service-experience fanatic … who runs a small chain of beauty salons. He can’t compete with Regis on price. What’s “left”: BE BETTER! BE BEST! BE “THE ONLY ONES WHO DO WHAT WE DO!”

John Di Julius wakes up in the morning with the same issues (and opportunities) that confront GE’s Jeff Immelt and IBM’s Sam Palmisano when they roll out of bed.“It’s not your father’s world.”(In Immelt’s case,“It’s not Jack Welch’s world.” See #4 above on Jeff ’s new- found commitment to “breath-taking, mind-blowing, world-rattling” innovation.)

In short: DON’T TRY TO COMPETE WITH WAL*MART ON PRICE OR CHINA ON COST. Try instead to be “the only ones who do what we do”—whether the tableau is a 1-person accountancy, a 10-chair beauty salon, a 400,000-person behemoth, or your/my career as newly minted “Brand You.”

My bottom line: HOW SWEET IT IS!

Cubicle slavery is on its last legs.
Commodity strategies are by and large bankrupt. Passion and commitment matter most.
Creativity wins.
The individual reigns.
We’re on our own.

(Ben Franklin would chuckle with delight!) (Henry Ford would be horrified!)