The Uniqueness Myth

In Dale Furtwengler’s The Uniqueness Myth and Other Misconceptions That Derail Business, he warns us that devastating consequences occur when business leaders allow themselves to be distracted by the nuances of their industry. His book is supposed to help us stay focused on the things that every business must do to be successful. The book is divided into 10 chapters each corresponding to an important concept that needs to be dealt with in business: strategy, marketing, selling, customer service, pricing, production, organizational structure, the work environment, finance and administrative are all presented in a very organized fashion.

The book is easy to read and quick. It is set up so that there are time saving tips in each chapter that give you access to a concept and you can jump around from chapter to chapter as they stand alone. The core concept is defined and discussed in each chapter and followed by a discussion of other misconceptions that occur. Each chapter finishes with a concise executive summary that brings together the major headings and points.

Rather than being an original work, I would present this book as an edited compilation of 23 other books, many of which I have read. Furtwengler’s footnotes and references in his bibliography to others’ works leave me thinking that he is less of an original author and more of a complier of others information into a readily usable format.

He tells interesting stories to help clarify and example concepts. In the pricing chapter he tells us that Southwest Airlines is competing more with automobile forms of transportation than they do with the other airlines. Southwest’s open seating verses assigned seating is more amenable to competing with traffic than with an airport. There’s a focus on flying smaller airplanes with perhaps less comfortable working conditions, which still gives you an inexpensive method of transportation compared to your car. Southwest’s fare competes with auto travel and provides a significant savings to those not wishing to invest the time. Southwest’s model makes it less able to compete with a full-service carrier with a full schedule, non-stop flights and in-flight amenities. They simply go after a different segment of the market.

In the chapter on production, he tells a story about a customer’s perspective on pricing and quality. A printer taught him to view quality through the customer’s eyes.

He was discussing qualities influence on pricing when the printer asked, "When a customer walks through my door, which do you think he is more likely to buy, a good print job or a great print job?”

Furtwengler replied a great print job of course. Well, the printer gave him one of those gotcha grins and said, “Most people can’t tell the difference between a good print job and a great print job yet the cost of a great print job is dramatically higher.”

The message is clear. The consumer is only going to pay for the quality that they can see. Additional quality driven into the production cost of an activity lowers the margins, lengthens the production time and frustrates the business.

In the book, although there are 10 chapters dealing with 10 concepts, I couldn’t help but notice that more than twice as many pages were spent discussing finance as a part of the business enterprise as any of the other chapters. I’m not sure of Furtwengler’s background, but my guess would be that he has had some frustrations with people being able to understand and interpret financial reports. He spends almost 75 pages describing the decisions that can be made from the information provided by a balance sheet, which manages the resources the company owns; the income statement, which manages the profitability of a company; and a cash flow statement, which manages a company’s cash availability.

The only criticism of the book would be that the final chapter on administration is a bit simplified. It’s really devoted entirely to handling the myriad of regulations and administrative requirements facing a company today. Then it’s a brief discussion on deciding whether to keep those same administrative functions inside the company or to outsource them. I would rather seen some focus on the definition that’s given to general and administrative expenses in the finance chapter on page 246 in table 9.2,  "That anything else that doesn’t fit into production costs or selling expenses actually becomes general administrative expense.”

The book is well organized and concise and even at 330 pages, it reads quickly. You can jump around from section to section and get a quick overview of a variety of topics from six sigma and lean thinking to marketing concepts that every dental laboratory could use. This is a book that’s appropriate for anyone who is not only worried about the uniqueness myth of their business, but trying to shake the E (or entrepreneurial) myth that Michael Gerber has talked to us about.