Article
How Will You Get There From Here?
The three rules
Today's senior executives must perform a delicate balancing act: achieve profitable growth and strategically manage costs while intelligently navigating current and future opportunities and risks. It sounds impossible, doesn't it? It is possible with a partner who can help link strategic vision and execution. We do more than leave clients with reports and analysis. We work collaboratively with them to focus solutions on the real issues affecting businesses and deliver long-term, tangible value.
What are the Three Rules?
- Better before cheaper: Compete on differentiators other than price.
- Revenue before cost: Drive superior profitability with higher prices or higher volumes, not lower cost.
- There are no other rules: Change anything/everything in order to abide by the first two rules.
These rules capture how the high-performing outliers deliver superior performance over the long run, despite facing the same constraints as competitors. The Three Rules provides powerful and detailed examples: Merck in the pharmaceutical industry, Abercrombie & Fitch in retail and Maytag in appliances as well as smaller, less headline- grabbing companies like Weis Markets in grocery and Heartland Express in trucking. When faced with difficult decisions — do a deal or build from within?; diversify or stick to the knitting?; take a risk or play it safe? — these three rules can guide business leaders to make the right choices to create and hew to a path to exceptional performance. The more persistently these rules are pursued, the better the chances of beating the competition—and the odds—and becoming truly exceptional.
Learn the actions companies and their leaders have taken to achieve high performance.