Jason Jennings - The reinventors: how extraordinary companies pursue radical continuous change

Wow! Jennings and his researchers have taken the complex subject of embracing constant change, reinvention, and growth, and broken it down into simple bite-size pieces. The Reinventors will be the catalyst that helps your business achieve its full potential.

Dr. Robert Kriegel, New York Times bestselling author of If It Aint Broke BREAK IT!,Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers, and Performance Under Pressure

Leaders of companies like Kodak and Blockbuster should have read Jenningss book on reinvention. Their businesses would surely be more relevant and innovative than they are today. Read this now or take the chance of following their unfortunate fates!

Tommy Spaulding, New York Times bestselling author of Its Not Just Who You Know

Jenningss ideas are powerful and highly practical. Embrace the steps he lays out for you in The Reinventors and your business will rocket to new heights.

Sean Atkins, senior vice president, Discovery Communications, former senior vice president of HBO, and angel investor

Jason Jennings hits it out of the park with the best road map for change and growth in business today. Read it and reinvent your business like never before!

Mark Thompson, New York Times bestselling author of Success Built to Last, visiting scholar at Stanford University, and co-founder of Richard Bransons Virgin Unite Growth Academy

As you read these words your business is either being reinvented or being destroyed. With Jason Jenningss new book, The Reinventors, youll learn how the best leaders conquer this challenge every day and youll gain a practical blueprint for creating your own success story. I loved this book and you will too.

Vince Thompson, author of Ignited and managing partner at Middleshift

THE
REINVENTORS

How Extraordinary Companies Pursue
Radical Continuous Change

JASON JENNINGS

PORTFOLIO / PENGUIN

PORTFOLIO / PENGUIN

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published in 2012 by Portfolio / Penguin,

a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright Jason Jennings, 2012

All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Jennings, Jason.

The reinventors : how extraordinary companies pursue radical
continuous change / Jason Jennings.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN: 978-1-101-56912-2

1. Total quality management. I. Title.

HD62.15.J46 2012

658.406dc23

2012005774

Printed in the United States of America

Set in Bembo with Friz Quadrata

Designed by Sabrina Bowers

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

To Bruce Ritter, longtime friend and financial adviser,

who came up with the idea for this book

THE
REINVENTORS

INTRODUCTION

I broke Thomas Wolfes cardinal rule and went back home to the town where I grew up. I parked my rental car a block off Main Street intending to wander through the downtown business district.

I remember it being filled with bustling department and clothing stores, drugstores, restaurants, more barbershops and salons than you could count, crowded supermarkets, hardware centers, and insurance agencies. It was so jammed with cars and people, you had to look both ways before you stepped off the curb to avoid being run over.

But as I turned the corner, I saw a ghost town minus the tumbleweeds.

Boarded-up buildings were covered with grime and graffiti, parking meters were mere stumps, their heads lopped off in hopes that saving a quarter would cause shoppers to return, and there wasnt anyplace to buy anything. The only things left were a few little bars and a handful of antique and junk stores.

As I walked, memories of the people I knew who had owned and operated the stores that lined the streets came flooding back. There were the Lowenstein sisters, who had owned the towns flagship department store. Leah, Rose, and Bertha had fought successfully, like Patton battled the Germans, to keep competitors from gaining ground on their turf, and often swatted competitors away with the phrase There are already enough stores downtown and we dont need any more!

There was the towns favorite drugstore owner, Joe, who when asked if he was planning on building a new store out on the highway where some out-of-towners were constructing new stores had replied, No way, theyre all going to go belly-up because nobodys going to drive all the way to the highway to shop. For the record, the highway is five blocks from downtown and has become the main shopping area.

I also heard the voice of Tony the barber, whom Id once asked if he wanted to grow his business and get bigger and whod replied, I dont want any more business and I dont want to grow. Im happy with things just the way they are.

I had liked and respected these people. They were business-peoplesuccessful, smart, sophisticated, and Id grown up thinking they must have known something and must have had most of the right answers or they wouldnt have been running a business.

During my trip home I asked around and heard the depressing last chapters of the Lowenstein sisters, our family druggist, the affable Tony, and all their peers. Not one of the downtown merchants had ever gotten a dime from the sale of their business. In fact, as the tsunami of regional malls, discount centers, outlet malls, rapidly changing shopping patterns, the Internet, and shopping on our smartphones chipped away at their business, it was death by a thousand cuts. They were too old, too tired, too set in their ways, or too entitled to ever change anything, and they remained stubborn in their belief that because they were there they had a right to be successful. One by one their businesses spiraled into closure.

It would be easy to write these people off as small-town simpletons or remnants of a world that no longer exists. But when you read between the lines these people are like a lot of us. The Lowenstein sisters focused on the competition instead of the customer. Joe the druggist had all the answers. And Tonys business wasnt broke, so why should he mess with it? Its all very familiar.

My hometown is an apt metaphor for what will happen to you, your job, and your business unless you become a reinventor completely committed to constant radical change and growth.

EVERYONE MUST BECOME A REINVENTOR

Your job as you know it and your business as it is currently run will eventually change. The only chance any of us have for prosperity is to constantly reimagine, rethink, and reinvent everything we do and how we do it in order to remain relevant. We must all become reinventors, and wed better do it quickly.