Chip R. Bell - Beep! Beep!: Competing in the Age of the Road Runner

LOONEY TUNES characters, names, and all related indicia are trademarks of Warner Bros. 2000.

BEEP! BEEP! Copyright 2000 by Warner Brothers, Chip R. Bell, and Oren Harari. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

For information address Warner Books, Inc., Hachette Book Group, USA, 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017, Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com.

ISBN: 978-0-446-93059-8

First eBook Edition: May 2001

COMPETING IN

THE AGE OF THE

ROAD RUNNER

CHIP R. BELL & OREN HARARI

Published by Warner Books

A Time Warner Company

PRAISE FOR BEEP! BEEP!

Helps managers be more like the fast-moving cartoon character, and less like his nemesis, Wile E. Coyote, a perpetual loser!

Wall Street Journal

BEEP! BEEP! helps desk jockeys outwit Wile E. Coyote on the information superhighway.

Vanity Fair

Wacky though it sounds, the BEEP! BEEP! metaphor is a good one!

Newsday

Who will emerge as the key source of wisdom on management issues in our brave new Internet world? Someone fast, erratic, and perhaps even a bit feathery? Someone likeBEEP! BEEP!the Road Runner!

St. Petersburg Times

Okay, okay! Its a cute concept... using Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner for lessons on managing in 2000. But Bell and Harari arent lightweights by any meansand neither is this book!

Management General

You know the boomers are running the world when cartoon characters like Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner start popping up in business books! The main lesson of BEEP! BEEP!be a paragon of speed and adaptability to succeed.

Training Magazine

The message of Bell and Harari is simple, clear, and presented through interviews with successful businesspeople and through humorous descriptions of scenes from the Warner Bros. cartoon.

Publishers Weekly

A must-read for any leader... loaded with practical and humorous insights... right on target.

ROB ROBINS, executive vice president, Visa USA

Regardless of the business youre in, this book is a gem... a great presentation on what it takes to succeed in this new millennium.

ED SELLERS, CEO, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of South Carolina

BEEP! BEEP! captures perfectly both the spirit and the lessons we all need to have a running start at competing and succeeding in the future.

ALAN M. WEBBER, founding editor, Fast Company

A wild ride that brings leaders practical wisdom and cutting-edge insights in a very entertaining way. Bell and Harari will turn you and your organization into a Road Runner!

RICH TEERLINK, former CEO, Harley-Davidson Motor Co.

From the first page to the last... filled with provocative ideas and sound advice for business success in the new century.

THOMAS J. DONOHUE, president and CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

A refreshing guide to working on the edge.

EUNICE AZZANI, managing director, Korn/Ferry International

Dedicated to:

Bilijack Ray Bell

Jordan Liam Harari

Dylan Samuel Harari

Road Runners of the New Millennium

Road Runners dont have prefaces... they just begin!

And in This Corner, Weighing Twenty-three Pounds...

Two cartoon characters meet on the New Mexico desert to match wits. Spectators are instantly struck by the David and Goliath parallel. The program that came with the tickets says that coyotes can run thirty miles per hour... and this particular coyote is hungry, already tasting his next meal. And it tells us that roadrunners cant really flysoaring short distances is about itand can run sixteen miles per hour... tops.

Wile E. Coyote brings several other advantages to the fray. He has a seemingly endless arsenal of roadrunner-trapping gadgets, provided by a mysterious manufacturer named Acme. And he relentlessly uses these tools against his scrawny, defenseless opponent with great cunning and stealth. He is a master planner, obsessed with visions of fricasseed roadrunner!

The line on this match heavily favors the Coyote. Who would bet a dime on the multicolored, gawky bird who seems oblivious to the fact that a contest is even underway? Yet time and again, the Road Runner eludes and escapes! As we toss the stubs of our betting slips, the Road Runners victories baffle us.

The Road Runners feats defy logic. He races through imaginary tunnels as if they were real. He never gets wet when theres water everywhere. He outmaneuvers a faster, stronger opponent by making speed superfluous. He turns the ingenuity of his opponent into embarrassing results... so embarrassing that spectators laugh, even though they bet on the Coyote. How can we comprehend such absurdity?

The Road Runner has a secret that Wile E. never figures out. He is operating under completely different rules. He understands what Albert Einstein once said: You cant solve the problems of a paradigm from within the paradigm.

This book is about the Road Runner paradigm. Wile E. cant even pronounce paradigm, much less understand that as long as he clings to an outmoded set of assumptions to guide his plans and actions, he cannot avoid the blunders and errors that doom him to perpetual hunger.

A paradigm is a way of viewing the worldlike Newton vs. Einstein or Ptolemy vs. Copernicus. You remember from school days studying about the lengths people will go to hold on to their favorite worldview. When nature did not fit the Earth is the center of the universe paradigm of Ptolemys day, astronomers added a fudge factor called epicycles to make it work. Like Wile E., they worked harder to protect conventional wisdom than to give it up. Ptolemys are still out there in full force today.

Success in this new millennium requires a completely new way of managing ourselves and our enterprises. The rules of the road have changed and we must master them quickly if our businesses and our lives are to be successfuland fun. Solving future challenges with present-day patterns will be as futile as the Acme schemes on which Wile E. relies. Its like trying to solve a Zen koan with Western logic (... so, what is the sound of one hand clapping?). Like Wile E., we scratch our heads in confusion, even after we hear the answer. It isnt that Wile E. doesnt know that he loses; he doesnt understand why he loses! Our hope is that youll be ready for the riddles of the new millennium by the time youve read the last word on the last page.