The Rules of Business

Into the chaos that American business finds itself in the 1990s comes Robert Kriegel and Louis Patler, who suggest that companies who are going to survive and thrive in the 1990s and beyond are going to be those companies which embrace change. Kriegel and Patler take on conventional wisdom and traditional business approaches and suggest that these are no longer the ways to win. As the title of their book suggests, If It Ain't Broke, Break It!

The authors use a surfing analogy throughout the book and the term "unconventional wisdom" (as opposed to conventional wisdom). While the surfing analogy at first stretches the reader's sense of credibility, the authors do a good job of likening operating in today's business environment to rid

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and cite the example of one legal counsel who took the extreme step of forbidding anyone in the company from sending him copies of memos in the form of "cc's." The authors find that the number of ordinary memos sent is far too high, but the number expands exponentially when covering (CYA) memos are sent as copies to people not on the original distribution list. These covering memos are a waste of time, according to the authors, not only for the people who receive them and have to dispose of them, but also for the people writing the memos and trying to figure out who all should receive copies. Eliminate the "cc" and productivity will increase (84). Kriegel and Patler also suggest that individuals keep track of their successes. As a society, we tend to focus on our failures and shortcomings, according to the authors. How much more successful we can become if we focus on our successes and use those to build patterns of success in our lives. They suggest building a logbook of successes that can be reviewed before presentations or important meetings in order to fill the individual with confidence through remembering successes in the past. This is not to say that individuals should not seek to improve their shortcomings, but th
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Approximate Word count = 1351
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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