George Stalk Jr. > Quotes

“After the funeral, Joe approached the director and asked him how he determined the print quantity. The director told Joe that he had observed, in his many years of running funerals for all kinds of people, that about 250 people signed the register every time. The anomaly of the prayer cards impressed Joe, and he concluded that if 250 people come to a person’s funeral he must have had some degree of influence over them in life—perhaps enough to suggest what type of car to buy or whom to buy it from. After that funeral, Joe began to think of each prospect, not as a just as a customer, but as a window onto an additional 250 prospects.”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

“Japanese manufacturers masterfully used a version of this strategy to attack and gain power in many industries in Western markets in the 1970s and 1980s.”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

“Competitive analysis shouldn’t aim to snap a picture of “the answer,” rather it should build a picture around common themes but allow for changing parts. For example, Toyota is now allowing more option-package flexibility as it advances its data systems. But the core competitive story remains the same. By coming up with new products faster, it puts competitors on the marketing defensive.”
― George Stalk Jr., Competing Against Time: How Time-Based Competition is Reshaping Global Mar

“To compress a whole chain’s cycle time, companies have to coordinate in new ways. The system’s total time problem will not be solved by each company working independently to compress its own cycle. There are also too many reasons why a company won’t spontaneously make the changes needed to help the whole cycle. Actions have to be taken together by pairs or groups of companies.”
― George Stalk Jr., Competing Against Time: How Time-Based Competition is Reshaping Global Mar

“In Girard’s book How to $ell Anything to Anybody he describes what he calls the “Rule of 250,” which states that everybody in the world knows at least 250 people with whom they have some degree of influence. The Rule of 250 is the basis for Joe’s approach to selling. His method is to identify people— such as a union boss, a community leader, or a well-known businessperson—who have particularly strong influence with their 250 friends and acquaintances and do everything it takes to turn those people into satisfied customers. They will do much of Joe’s work of selling for him.2”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

“The growth team was further convinced that Honda was the best model to follow by another piece of data they discovered. After the first year, the rate of decline in customer loyalty was the same for Honda as it was for Ford. Theoretically, then, if Ford could crank up their initial loyalty rate close to Honda’s, they would keep higher levels of service business throughout the life of the relationship with the customer.”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

“Seek outside advice and assistance. Even with a capable internal M&A capability, companies contemplating an acquisition can often benefit from the assistance of outside experts in a particular industry or business area, or from the counsel of an adviser who does not stand to directly gain from the acquisition. Such outside advisers should be used to increase the knowledge and skill of the acquirer, and provide a perspective on the acquisition that is free of traditional industry assumptions and unbiased by internal politics. Most important, the outside adviser should be able to help identify the sources of competitive advantage to be exploited by the merger or acquisition and the best path to obtaining that advantage. How many CEOs do their own brain surgery, close their own real estate deals, or manage their own divorces without the aid of outside advisers?”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

“Make all efforts fast, focused, and fundamental. Every project undertaken in a turnaround should deliver payback—demonstrable and quantifiable—in twelve to eighteen months. This is fast. Every chosen performance improvement project should be protected from the onslaught of “neighbor” projects that always move in next door and claim to be related. These projects must be banned. This is focus. And, as we’ve said, only those efforts that go to the heart of the matter should be considered and pursued. This is fundamental.”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

“Federal-Mogul’s quest for increased profitability was just one aspect of a larger strategy: It wished to become the leading global player in its industry, not just the North American leader. Although their business with the U.S. automakers was strong, Federal-Mogul had no contracts with the Japanese manufacturers, nor did it have much of a presence in Europe. Gormley decided that the only way for Federal-Mogul to grow was for it to become the worldwide supplier of choice, with the lowest costs and highest quality.”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

“The principal thrust of management has been to invest in technology and to cut price to achieve account penetration. Very little effort was being expended in strengthening the field service responsiveness of the company. But the customers want service more than technology and low prices!”
― George Stalk Jr., Competing Against Time: How Time-Based Competition is Reshaping Global Mar

“Time is relatively straightforward to measure inside a company once management begins to focus on it. Time is captured explicitly in measures of elapsed time—lead time, cycle time, and so on—and implicitly in metrics normally used in engineering and finance—machine uptime, product yield, inventory turnover, and the like. When all these time-related measures are brought together with maps showing the organization’s main flows and interaction patterns, a powerful picture of the company’s problems and opportunities comes into view.”
― George Stalk Jr., Competing Against Time: How Time-Based Competition is Reshaping Global Mar

“The scope of CarMax’s business, coupled with its information system and management expertise, enables the company to make better purchasing decisions and create a fast-moving product mix. Used vehicle dealers buy most of their inventory at auctions hosted by dealer associations, leasing companies, and the manufacturers. The capability to make advantageous and winning bids is based on experience, up-to-date market information, scope of knowledge, and the deep pockets needed to make large purchases.”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

“To play the game of hardball to its fullest requires a hardball state of mind. In this book, we have not focused on such matters as personal coaching, skills building, or self-improvement. But, as our stories show—and as we know very well from our experience with clients—playing hardball entails more than strategy.”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

“The strategy that these Japanese companies employed so successfully in the 1980s can be applied in almost any industry and market, just as Federal-Mogul, an auto parts manufacturer, did to overcome a rival, JP Industries (JPI), in the early 1990s.”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

“Traditional factories attempt to maximize the length of their production runs in an effort to amortize lengthy and costly setups over the maximum number of pieces. Flexible manufacturers, on the other hand, try to shorten their production runs as much as is possible. To prevent the costs of short runs from getting out of control, management focuses on reducing the complexity and hence the length and costs of setups and changeovers. The logic behind this approach is as simple as it is fundamental to competitive success: reduced run lengths mean more frequent production of the complete mix of products and faster response to customers’ demands.”
― George Stalk Jr., Competing Against Time: How Time-Based Competition is Reshaping Global Mar

“Texas Instruments (TI) fell into the irrelevance trap in calculators and watches. By relentlessly building volume, driving down costs, and lowering prices, TI achieved leading market share in both products. Retail prices for watches and calculators plunged below $15, and TI dominated the volume channels, including supermarkets and discount stores. Casio, Sharp, and Seiko—all Japanese companies—followed TI’s lead in pursuing volume by slashing prices and designing costs out of the products and their manufacturing. But, as prices sank, the Japanese companies introduced new products with many more features than TI’s offerings. Prices were so low, consumers were willing to pay a few dollars extra for features such as solar power, more mathematical functions for calculators, and styling features for watches. Before long, TI’s relentless pursuit of higher volumes and lower costs became irrelevant to consumers, and the Japanese companies took over the categories. If you have not examined your costs, in detail, within the past five years—or if you believe your competitors have not—it is very likely that there exists, lurking somewhere in your cost structure, a major opportunity to improve your profits, weaken your competitor, and expand your influence. There are limits to cost-raising strategy. As important as price is to your customers, they care about other things as well, including product features, quality, time, and status. So, even as you pursue this hardball strategy with gusto, remember the mortal words of Dirty Harry: “A man’s got to know his limitations.”2”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

“Hardball is not about extreme executive behavior, playing outside the lines of legality, or even about being mean. It is about creating discomfort for others and tolerating it yourself. In baseball, a hardball move is when a pitcher faces an aggressive batter and sends him a message by throwing a 98-mile-an-hour pitch high and inside. The pitcher does not intend to hit the batter and he has sufficient skill and control not to.”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

“In other words, individual businesses are more or less left to fend for themselves in the profit center structure. For example, in a profit-center corporate structure, a high-growth operation will generally receive capital commensurate with the returns it is generating. This can often mean that such a company does not get all the capital it could use because a high-growth operation must invest resources before demand, which increases its expenses and reduces profitability. Conversely, a slow growth operation in a profit-center corporate structure can generate large volumes of excess cash which more often than not, gets reinvested in the operation because it is profitable, whether the operation needs the investment or not.”
― George Stalk Jr., Competing Against Time: How Time-Based Competition is Reshaping Global Mar

“Directing their value delivery systems to the most attractive customers, which forces their competitors toward less attractive customers. The most attractive customers are those who cannot wait for what they want. The least attractive customers are those who will wait because the price they want to pay is low compared to the prices the more impatient customers will pay. Money is made on patient customers only if costs are low, while money is made on impatient customers from higher prices and low costs.”
― George Stalk Jr., Competing Against Time: How Time-Based Competition is Reshaping Global Mar

“It is now more important than ever for a company to think of itself as one player in an interdependent chain of companies competing against other chains for the ultimate customer at the end.”
― George Stalk Jr., Competing Against Time: How Time-Based Competition is Reshaping Global Mar

“In the competitive environment of the latter twentieth century, innovations in competitive strategy have life cycles of ten to fifteen years. Each innovation is followed by major shifts in competitive positions and in corporate fortunes.”
― George Stalk Jr., Competing Against Time: How Time-Based Competition is Reshaping Global Mar

“The team discovered that the Honda dealers did not relegate service to second-rate status. Rather, they used it as a marketing tool. They mailed notifications to their customers, reminding them that their next service was due and encouraging them to have it done at a Honda dealership. The language suggested that a Honda automobile is a precision piece of machinery that should be maintained regularly and only by the Honda service experts who knew the cars best. One of the growth team members, whose wife drove a Honda, brought in a mailer she had received from her dealer. The headline warned, “Don’t let strangers under your hood.”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

“Establish a pattern of rapid product innovation. Sell new products outside of Wal-Mart for as long as possible at as high a premium as possible and then sell through Wal-Mart when the products mature. But Wal-Mart is quick. The window of opportunity won’t be open very long. They will likely want to bring the new products inside before you’d like them to. If you resist, they may create a knock-off, as they did with Mainstays, which is positioned against Martha Stewart’s Everyday brand at Kmart.”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

“Hardball players apply focus, speed, and intensity to all stages of M&A. They are better at identifying the specific asset or capability needed to achieve competitive advantage and deciding whether it’s best to develop it internally or obtain it externally. They excel in identifying and assessing targets, calculating the maximum price to be paid, negotiating deals fast in a disciplined fashion (and walking away if a deal gets too pricey), and then integrating acquisitions quickly and efficiently in order to achieve the strategic objectives. They know what they want and then get it at a price that’s in line with the acquisition’s strategic value.”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

“When a time-based competitor can open up a response advantage with turnaround times three to four times faster than its competitors, it will almost always grow three times faster than the average for the industry and will be twice as profitable as the average for all competitors.”
― George Stalk Jr., Competing Against Time: How Time-Based Competition is Reshaping Global Mar

“Experience suggests that these teams must be given radical goals, like collapsing time in half. Otherwise, assumptions aren’t challenged. The whole premise is using bottlenecks, breakdowns, and unmet customer needs as opportunities to learn. The teams use a variety of techniques—root-cause analysis, scenario building, pursuing conflict between two people until the real problem crystalizes, and old-fashioned imagination. Between regular meetings, research into technical or other problems is done. There are no formal reports to the team members’ superiors. The teams report to a senior steering group that is responsible for all the breakthrough teams operating. This steering group is responsible for managing change under the time-based vision that the management team has decided to pursue.”
― George Stalk Jr., Competing Against Time: How Time-Based Competition is Reshaping Global Mar

“There was, however, a danger lurking in this strategy: Federal-Mogul’s own competitive instinct. It was very likely that Federal-Mogul could build its competitive advantage into decisive advantage and, conceivably, lure JPI so far down the rabbit hole that it could not escape. JPI was, after all, financially unstable. It might not realize what was happening to it—and take steps to change its strategy—before it came to the brink of disaster. Dennis Gormley knew that his team, conditioned by their long history of competing in a cutthroat industry with high fixed costs, had come to believe that there was nothing better than winning business, no matter how thin the margin. Gormley realized that now things had to be different; sometimes it would be better to lose a bid against JPI.”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

“Time-based competitors know the value of time in their businesses, just as Henry Ford knew it in 1921. They know that as they increase their abilities to give their customers what they want faster than their competitors can, their profitability grows. The managements of these companies know that when their responsiveness exceeds that of their competitors, they can charge consistently higher prices, their costs to provide value and to serve their customers are reduced, the costs of their product development resources decrease, and as a result of these advantages, the productivity of their assets improves.”
― George Stalk Jr., Competing Against Time: How Time-Based Competition is Reshaping Global Mar

“Eagle knew what it was doing. The company, in a “take it and make it your own” move, had hired many former Frito-Lay employees to staff its product development operations, run its manufacturing plants, and manage its marketing activities. These Eagle managers knew Frito-Lay’s processes as well as, if not better than Frito-Lay’s own staffers.”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?

“Once you’ve entered the heart of the matter, however, how do you concentrate your energy and keep it focused on the heart-of-the-matter issues? Hardball leaders do it by thinking of themselves as being in a perpetual turnaround. Even if the company is already successful, or becomes so, they continue to try to make it better, to find new sources of competitive advantage, build a virtuous competitive cycle, answer new threats, serve new markets, or solve whatever new challenges arise.”
― George Stalk Jr., Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win?