Summary

Praise for Rules to Break & Laws to Follow: How Your Business Can Beat the Crisis of Short-Termism

"A fascinating, highly readable synthesis of business principles, technology, sociology and common sense, Rules to Break and Laws to Follow persuasively shows the connection between customer trust and business profits, and then explains how to make it happen. As a bonus, you'll learn how to make your company more innovative, how to ensure your employees actually enjoy what they're doing, and how to deal with the kinds of service and quality breakdowns that occasionally plague any company, even a well-managed one. This book should be on your required reading list."
-- Stephen M. R. Covey , bestselling author of The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything

"Over the years, Peppers and Rogers have given me valuable advice about navigating the changing business landscape. This book is a must-read for managers who want to empower their employees and customers to'make change their ally."
-- Jim McCann , founder and CEO of 1-800-FLOWERS.COM

"Highly readable and entertaining. Make sure everybody in your firm reads this book by last Friday."
-- Dror Pockard , CEO of eglue

"In a time when most companies are built to flip, Peppers and Rogers have planted a stake in the ground to help you survive past the next round of financing or consumer fad. Knowing what rules to break is arguably even more important than what laws to follow, and this book imparts knowledge for both."
-- Guy Kawasaki , cofounder of Truemors and author of The Art of the Start

"Peppers and Rogers have created the unthinkable: an enjoyable wake-up call! Their book serves up one compelling and provocative idea after another, and the authors enjoy debunking some of our most deeply ingrained business beliefs. Read this book and your customers will thank you."
-- Dan Heath , coauthor of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Choice Review

Customer gurus Peppers and Rogers continue their mantra that customer focus is essential for organizational success. Managers must break away from three common practices that result in a misguided emphasis on what the authors term "short-termism" and instead focus on establishing and maintaining customer trust to achieve long-term success. Peppers and Rogers present illustrative examples of the fate of organizations that fail to understand customer trust, offering practical guidance on how it can be developed. In addition to examining familiar themes (e.g., employee empowerment and innovation) as part of customer trust, they introduce and explore more original issues, e.g., approaches for valuing customer trust and maintaining it in an age characterized by unprecedented access to customer feedback. While parts of the book parallel themes developed in the authors' previous works (e.g., Return on Customer, 2005), this volume presents them in the most integrated, comprehensive manner to date. While rich in examples, the main body of the work, at less than 240 pages, is concise. Substantial value comes from the notes and reference sections accompanying each chapter. Expanding on chapter anecdotes with greater background and context, they add significantly to the volume. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through professional collections. S. Gove University of Dayton

Library Journal Review

Peppers and Rogers (Return on Customer), founding partners of the Peppers & Rogers Group, challenge listeners to break the standard rules of business and consider a new way of thinking about creating real shareholder value in today's competitive environment, operating with today's technologies. As they observe, customers can now electronically share their experiences with millions of other customers, which has changed the world of business so rapidly that from their perspective the old, established wisdom about running a company just doesn't apply. Common assumptions that no longer hold include the belief that the best measure of success is current sales and profit, that with the right sales and marketing effort you can always get more customers, and that company value is created by offering differentiated products and services. These iconoclastic authors instead provide ideas on how a business should operate in order to be successful and retain customers in an environment vastly different from just five to ten years ago. They suggest how businesses can surmount the crisis of short-termism, an intense focus on meeting current numbers while missing everything else--which, say the authors, is smothering many businesses. They also explain their new rules, namely, that customers will do business with a company tomorrow only if they and their friends trust that business today, and employees will work to earn customer trust only if they trust their employer. The bright, lively narration by both authors helps to maintain listener interest in this material, which will more likely appeal to senior executives running international conglomerates that depend on technology to reach and satisfy customers around the globe. Highly recommended for academic libraries supporting a business curriculum and for larger public libraries.--Dale Farris, Groves, TX (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.