Direct from Dell: Strategies that Revolutionized an Industry

Rating:
Summary: Good and Okay
Review: He's obviously a hard-working, intelligent man with a great deal of drive who has accomplished a great deal in life. This book is good light reading. Its writing style is at a junior high level - similar to what most newspapers carry. The sophomoric prose bored me a bit by the third chapter, and it's obvious it was meant more for mass marketing appeal with the additional agenda as a marketing tool for DELL itself. There are some good lessons learned. However, again, there's too much commercialism running through it. That aspect becomes distracting for any serious business research such as a graduate degree, which is the reason I picked it up. Again, I don't discount it (I wish I could be as successful) because he makes an important point - don't doubt your intuition when you're thinking out of the box. I'm only saying that Michael Dell is not a Peter Drucker in how he presents his story. That's not necessarily bad depending on your motivation for reading it.

Rating:
Summary: Fast-paced
Review: Reading this book shows you how fast a business can grow really super fast. Dell started out in his dormroom making computers for customers and now is worldwide. Dell takes you through every step of the way in his monstorous growth. He posed problems that arised from when a company grows too fast, and shows how he solved them in turn.

The book is an amazing triumph in our computer age. You get a better idea of what happened in the 1990's with computers through Dell's unique perspective.

Rating:
Summary: I dont pay to be marketed to
Review: Micheal Dell comes off as a self promoting marketing blow hard and it is not worth the read. [...]

Rating:
Summary: good but missing a little something
Review: Michael Dell is a tech wunderkind. He is a successful businessman. He may be considered a visionary. A business author??? I just thought this book was a little too fragmented for my taste. The book could have gone the way of a full biography or full business lesson. There's valuable insights but the majority is padding. The book could have been condensed to a slim volume. Overall, I thought it was good but nothing spectacular. This shouldn't matter to those who view Dell as an iconoclast. It will belong in your collection.

Rating:
Summary: Banal and Uninsightful
Review: Michael Dell sure isn't an exciting writer. His writing style rivals the Dell's technical manual on excitement. It isn't as if he lacks exciting stories to tell. Dell is one of the greatest success stories in business. But I found his stories to be downright boring. For example, he writes about how he managed the Coke Vending machine at one of his old factories...Who cares??? I wanted to get insights on how Dell beat hundreds of competitors in a business where product and price differentiation are minimal. On this, I was very disappointed. Dell repeatedly sites three things for his company's success 1)execution and 2)having the right people 3)selling direct. But there are other competitors who had the same qualities and now they are either minor players or out of business. This book didn't really gave me the insights I was hoping for.

Rating:
Summary: A decent management handbook
Review: In business, a lot of words and phrases are overused to the point that they lose all their original meaning. "Paradigm" has to be one of the worst. The one that comes to mind when discussing Dell is "revolutionary". Dell is one of the few examples where a word this strong really applies. Taking $1,000 of startup capital to build custom PCs in a dorm room all the way to becoming the worlds leading computer manufacturer and the highest return on investment company in history (ROI = 14,000%) is impressive, but there have been many such basement-business-to-boardroom success stories. The revolutionary part was building the first manufacturing operation that relied on mass customization of an extremely complex product, and succeeding at it. Before Dell, such a technique was considered impossible.

I was struck by the Randian style of Dell's life. Oblivious to the critics laughing at his seemingly naïve attempt to challenge the large, dominant, and established players in a complex and technical industry, Dell proceeds to create an entirely new business and eventually dominates those same critics. Dell is a modern day, real life Henry Rearden, a prime mover whose success benefits the world over. He makes the impossible seem natural, and his modest demeanor masks an unimaginable and limitless drive for success.

Readers expecting an autobiography of Michael Dell may be disappointed; he glosses over his own life in barely half a chapter and quickly gets down to business, so to speak. I was mildly disappointed by this, as Dell seems like a very interesting guy. This was the right choice though, and considering Dell's own personality of economy this seems fitting.

It seems Dell has always been an uncannily direct person, starting in 3rd grade when he purchased a high school diploma from a mail order company in an attempt to save himself another 9 years of unnecessary education. This was a child destined to succeed. He was born with dollar signs in his eyes and was all about the Benjamins before most of us even knew what a Benjamin was. This pattern continued as he earned $2,000 by selling stamps on consignment though an advertisement in a stamp collectors journal. At age 16 Dell earned over $18,000 in one summer by selling newspaper subscriptions by targeting newlyweds from lists he compiled by canvassing county courthouses (the really funny part about that story was that when he told his high school teacher about this, she became angry because it was more money than she made). Finally, the real turning point: Dell's interest in computers leads him to begin upgrading computers for friends of the family. This becomes such a profitable hobby that Dell buys himself a BMW which he drives himself off to college in upon graduation from high school. You all know where things go from there.

From this entrepreneurial beginning, the book succinctly describes Dells early struggles and eventual rise to power. The book is written really as a managerial primer on what it really means to create a "customer oriented" company (again with the buzzwords - but in this case Dell really means it). Dell knows his likely target audience (as always) and the book is divided up into short chapters, each carefully labeled for quick reference. Each chapter is written like an executive summary, with bold headings marking each major subsection. Now that's high "skim value".

Obviously, this is one of those "books every manager should read". Otherwise the books appeal to the general pubic is probably pretty low. Still, anyone who likes a good story of success would enjoy most of the book, and could skip the business-heavy sections. Anyone with an entrepreneurial inkling really should consider checking it out though.

Dell succeeds in distilling the major reasons for Dell's success into a fairly compact book. And he goes on to describe how his philosophy is applicable to any and every company. While most management books are meaningless buzzword dictionaries, Dell crafts a real world guide to creating a successful company. Being customer oriented is more than a buzzword for Dell, it is a philosophy. Dell claims to spend upwards of 40% of his time dealing directly with customers, finding out what they want, need, and are unhappy with - name another CEO who is this committed to his customers. Dell respects his customers, which is exactly where many firms fail. Similarly being direct is no gimmick. To organize your entire firm around and just one level away from the customer is a guiding philosophy for the design of Dells corporate structure.

Rating:
Summary: Great story with practical advice!
Review: The story of Dell Computers is an enjoyable story of how an entrepreneurial young Michael Dell couldn't contain his enthusiasm for his business idea and took it all the way. Without much to guide him beyond his instincts he made some mistakes, but he admits to these and describes them so readers can learn from them as he did. Of course, far more can be learned from what he did right. One of the more noteworthy approaches he mentions is that Dell rewards success by *reducing* the responsibilities of the successful manager- an act many use as a negative disciplinary measure in other companies. The reasoning is that after a division grows from a $10 million market to $200 million, by cutting it back to $25 million, it will be easier for the manager to focus on this smaller block, understand it better, and again grow it to $200 million or more.

Rating:
Summary: Dell Isms
Review: Between 1984-87, Michael Dell managed has taken his company from a $1,000 hobby to a $160 million business. In 1999, it was worth $18 billion and had experience a 36000 percent growth. Dell computer company is a "Good to Great" company. Michael Dell exhibits the type of leadership that a "Good to Great" company should have. Dell's Big Picture: Build a business on what people want instead of what you think they want: 1. listen to the customer 2. respond to the customer 3. deliver what they want. Success is a matter of learning and identifying core strengths. Every new growth opportunity has a level of risk Try to identify potential problems early and fix them. Pace investment to match progress. If there was a way to get something done more quickly and easily, I wanted to try it. Eliminate the middle man. Opportunity is part emmersion and part instinct. Dell's Competitive strategies: 1. faster speed to market 2. superior customer service 3. commitment to produce high quality and high performance product 4. rapid entry to the internet. The PC was going to be the business choice for the future. Surround yourself with smart advisors. If you hire good people they will bring other good people to the organization Dell's Two golden rules: Distain inventory and Always listen to the customer. Always sell direct. Build your infrastructure as you grow. Slow and steady growth with a focus on liquidity. Communication is the most important tool in recovering from mistakes. Interject functional excellence and maintain accountability. Segment by customer. Segmentation offered the solution to rapid growth. Maximize strengths to improve profit. The quality of information is proportional to the amount inventory. Focus on getting quality information and decreasing inventory. Information Technology must reduce obstacles to the origin and flow of information. Acheive velocity by selecting the minimum number of parts that will cover the largest portion of the market sector. Dell's view on company culture: moblize around a common goal, invest in long term goals, don't leave the talent search to human resources, cultivate commitment to personal growth, and get involved. Dell's list of donts: 1. Don't be satisfied 2. Don't waste precious resource 3. Don't play hard to get 4. Marry high tech and high touch 5. Don't forget the customer have different fears, questions, and sensitivities. Dell's beliefs about the customer: 1. See the big picture 2. Run with suggestions from the customer 3. Always think bottom line (find ways to help the customer cut costs) 4. Make yourself valuable to the customer. 5. Be a student. Dell's guidelines for communication: 1. Don't underestimate the value of information 2. Communicate directly with the customer 3. work toward increasing demand verses supply 4. think real time 5. R&D must deliver value-added stuff for the customer 6. Get online and learn from the customer. Focus on the customer and not competition.